Wealth, Occupations, and Insurance in the Late Eighteenth Century: The Policy Registers of the Sun Fire Office

Abstract

T he fire insurance policy registers accumulated by the great insurance companies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries constitute by far the largest body of material available for the study of the British economy during the years of industrialization. Each policy provides a good deal of information, not only on the policy-holder, but also on the property insured. Having recorded the holder's name, address, and occupation, the policy specifies the type and value of his property, be it moveables such as plate, stockin-trade, household goods and clothing, or fixed assets such as a house or factory. Unfortunately, such material is extremely bulky and-much worseit is not indexed. A handful of intrepid scholars have dug out invaluable evidence on particular issues such as the level of fixed capital in the Yorkshire woollen industry and the West Riding cotton industry, the identity of Devon cloth manufacturers, housing conditions in Leeds, and most recently the growth of the Leeds insurance market, but much remains to be done.2 A current project, financed by the Social Science Research Council and supervised by Profs. Floud and Supple, aims to expedite such investigations and to stimulate new ones by putting the registers of the Sun Fire Office and the Royal Exchange Assurance (REA) into machine-readable format. The Sun and the REA were by far the largest insurance companies in England for most of the eighteenth century, dominating the market both regionally and nationally. Their principal rival, the Phoenix, was not founded until I782.3 The project has recorded details of all policies taken out between I777 and I786, some 300,000 in number. The information has necessarily been recorded as a summary, providing the policy-holder's name, address, and occupation, the total value of the property insured on each policy, and the policy number for future reference. A succession of computing problems has unfortunately