Civil War Medicine (and Writing): Antebellum Life Insurance -Part I

Monday, December 30, 2013

Antebellum Life Insurance -Part I - 1848 Questionnaire

In the next week or so, I'll be posting the text of my "Medical Department" column from the February/March 2014 issue of Civil War News. The column is about the interesting story of the growth of the life insurance industry in the United States up to and including the Civil War, as told in the excellent book, Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010; softcover, 2013) by Sharon Ann Murphy, Ph.D.

In advance of that, I'm sharing some interesting mid-1800s insurance documents in my collection.

The first of these is an 1848 questionnaire filled out as a reference for s prospective customer of a British life insurance company.

Readers of Investing in Life will learn that, to reduce risks, early life insurance companies relied heavily on the personal recommendations of existing customers (or other reputable persons), before issuing a policy.

This questionnaire came from the firm of "Clerical Medical"...there are good Wikipedia entries on the history of Clerical Medical and its founder, George Pinckard, MD. As with several antebellum insurance companies, it is, in a way, still in business today!