Hand in Hand — 325th anniversary
On 12 November 1696 a group of 12 men met in Tom’s Coffee House in St Martin’s Lane London to sign the deed of settlement for a new insurance company. The company, initially known as Contributors for insuring houses, chambers, or rooms from loss by fire, by amicable contribution, would later become known, by its emblem of two joined hands, as the Hand in Hand.
The symbol of clasped hands demonstrated the support which was there for any member who was unlucky enough to suffer damage to their property in one of the fires that frequently occurred in the capital. Hand in Hand was the third fire company to be established in the UK and the first to be run on the mutual principal where any profits were divided amongst the policyholders instead of going to shareholders. The system proved successful, and the company was able to weather the trials and tribulations faced by its competitors to become the sole surviving insurance office of the 17th century. By the time its assets and business were transferred to Commercial Union in June 1905 it was the UK’s oldest insurer (and frequently claimed to be the oldest insurer in the world).
Hand in Hand is the oldest of the ancestor companies which have come together to form what is now Aviva. The world of the twelve men who attended that very first meeting was very different from the one we live in today. The Great Fire of London had only happened 30 years earlier, the Bank of England had just been established, and King William III was on the throne having recently survived an attempted assassination. The fastest transport was a horse drawn carriage, the fastest means of communication was by hand-written letter delivered by a courier on horseback, and business was transacted in coffee houses by men in powdered wigs. But in the modern world of driverless cars, mobile phones, and zoom meetings the fundamentals of insurance remain the same. Aviva exists today to support and protect our customers in the face of an uncertain future, just as the founders of the Hand in Hand established a company to protect their members from loss after fires.
This blog marks the anniversary of the Hand in Hand’s foundation and the birth of the company we are today. It explores the stories of some of the customers we protected, the fires we fought for them, and the men who ran the business. It will also explore how our other ancestor companies have built on the legacy of Hand in Hand to continue meeting the needs of our customers in an ever-changing world.
The policy registers of Hand in Hand offer a window onto London from the late 17th to the mid-19th century as it grew to become the largest city in the world. We might imagine that insurance in this period was only for landed gentry and wealthy businessmen, but Hand in Hand’s customers came from all levels of society. One page from a policy register in 1735 has Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle (one of the greatest landowners in England and a future Prime Minster) and Mark Lawrence, a cheesemonger from Little Windmill Street Westminster, both insuring their homes. Other pages show policies for churchwardens alongside those for Jewish synagogues, dissenting ministers, and ‘the people called Quakers’. William Wilberforce jnr., the son of the leading slavery abolitionist, appears in the register only a few pages after Thomas Storer of Golden Square whose family owned estates in Jamaica where slaves were used.
A surprisingly large proportion of those taking out policies were women. Often they are recorded as widows, wives, or spinsters but some have occupations listed such as milliner Elizabeth Leacroft, brewers Margaret Bucknall and Elizabeth Duffin, school mistress Mary Goose, and cow keeper Elizabeth Sealey Steele (whose entry appears in the same volume as Samuel Whitbread’s insurance on his brewery).
The policy registers reveal details of properties on well-known London thoroughfares such as Pall Mall, Downing Street, and Leicester Square where clockmaker William Cambden insured a property in 1735 next door to the Earl of Leicester. There are also numerous homes and businesses insured on long-lost lanes, streets and alleys in the capital like Tobacco Pipe Alley which was lost under St Katharine Docks Marina, Green Lettuce Lane which is now Laurence Pountney Hill, and Blow Bladder Street which has become part of Cheapside.
Insurance was provided for many prominent London properties such as St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, The British Museum, and Lambeth Palace. Hand in Hand also insured brewers Whitbread, Truman, Charrington, and Elliot (later part of Watneys) so the registers contain enough information on public houses and inns to plan a very elaborate 19th century pub crawl.
As well as the brewing dynasties, there are plenty of other famous customers in the volumes. Hand in Hand insured bankers like Robert Herries (inventor of the traveller’s cheque), Sir Henry Hugh Hoare who was a partner in the private bank of C Hoare and Co., and Child & Co. which, according to Wikipedia, is the third oldest bank in the world. They also insured stationer John Letts, creator of the first commercial diary, publisher Thomas Norton Longman, and auctioneers Mr Christie and Mr Sotheby. In the 1780s the company insured optician John Dollond (whose name lived on in Dollond & Aitchison until it was absorbed by Boots in 2009), tea man Richard Twining, and the distillery of Philip Booth which was later to produce Booth’s Gin. Artistic customers identified so far include equine portraitist George Stubbs, wood carver Grinling Gibbons, and sculptor Henry Cheere who was responsible for a number of monuments in Westminster Abbey.
Although most of the property insured was in London, those taking out the policies were spread throughout the UK and Ireland. Geagle Badcock who insured property in 1786 was a cook at Pembroke College Oxford while widow Jane Bonnell lived in Carmarthenshire and Daniel Tanner gave his address as Brackondale in Norwich. Property owners from further afield include sculptor Peter Scheemakers of Antwerp and widow Mary De Jersey who came from Guernsey! In the 1750s, Jane Rendell insured property in trust for John Charlett of Annapolis Royal in what is now Canada and in 1776 Paul Amsinck insured several warehouses at All Hallows the Great in Southwark on behalf of the Hanse Town of Lubeck in what is now Germany.
Over the more than 200 years of its existence, Hand in Hand protected London’s theatres, livery companies, museums, hospitals, townhouses, and workhouses. It also provided a safety net for thousands of individuals — carpenters, hatters, gingerbread bakers, and peruke makers — who lived and worked in the capital.
It wasn’t long before Hand in Hand took the next step in protecting its customers and set up its own fire brigade. On 5th September 1699 Thomas Gibbons, John Bayley and John Meggots were appointed as the first firemen and by the end of the month they had been joined by Timothy Alderson, Thomas Gosling, and Thomas Newstead. All six members of the brigade were watermen who made a living by transporting passengers along and across the Thames. Each man had a registered spot on the river so they could easily be found if they were needed to fight fires. The directors were keen to make sure their firemen were accessible to policyholders and Thomas Gosling was made to move his spot on the river from the Surrey to the Middlesex bank so that three firemen were available on each side of the Thames.
The firemen were provided with a distinctive uniform of blue coats and breeches lined and edged in red. On their upper arms they wore silver badges with the company’s emblem of clasped hands under a crown. The uniform was completed with iron caps, lined with leather, that came down to their shoulders and again featured a badge with the clasped hands emblem.
Initially they were not particularly well equipped for the job: in 1701 their entire kit consisted of one crowbar, two hatchets and 36 leather buckets. The first fire engine was acquired in 1717 and must quickly have proved its value as within six months another, larger, engine was ordered.
Now properly equipped, the Hand in Hand fire brigade fought fires throughout the capital and was regularly mentioned in contemporary newspaper reports. In 1734 they tackled a serious blaze at Temple Bar during which one of their number, William Abrathat, was killed. Contemporary newspapers reported that the ‘violent’ blaze had broken out at two in the morning in the home of Mr Tebbs, a grocer and destroyed 12 other houses before it was brought under control.
The brigade was also in attendance at the Great Fire on Cornhill and Bishopsgate in 1765 which started in Mr Rutland’s barber shop at the end of Bishopsgate Street. High winds spread the flames across the street leaving a trail of burnt out buildings up to the corner of Threadneedle Street and along Leadenhall Street as far as the market gate. According to contemporary newspaper reports, eight people were burnt to death and another three were killed when one of the buildings collapsed. 100 buildings were destroyed, many of which were insured with Hand in Hand. It took the surveyor, Richard Jupp, three weeks to survey all the damage and the company paid £25,758 in claims — the biggest loss on a single fire in its entire history. Another fireman, William Pettit, died after breaking his leg in the Cornhill fire and the board minutes stated that money should be set aside to support his young daughters, Ann and Margaret.
The Hand in Hand firemen continued to fight fires, including major blazes at Albion Mill in 1791 and Ratcliffe in 1794, until 1834 when they merged into the London Fire Engine Establishment which had been formed by a group of fire insurers the previous year.
For most of its history the Hand in Hand had more firemen on its payroll than members of office staff. In 1711, when the company moved to new premises at Angel Court on Snow Hill, there were three members of staff who all lived on the premises.
The assistant clerk was Woodgate Tisser whose lodgings in the office included a kitchen. The garret rooms were occupied by an unnamed third clerk and the messenger, John Legg, whose role included fixing the company’s fire marks to the insured buildings.
The business was run by the chief clerk, later known as the secretary, who was the equivalent of a CEO today. In 1711 this was John Hankinson who was allocated prestigious rooms on the first floor of the new office. Hankinson didn’t last very long in post and was dismissed in 1713 owing the company over £1000. This was a bit of a theme with the early chief clerks: the first chief clerk Rowlands Reynolds, and Hankinson’s successor, William Taylor, were also dismissed for neglecting their duties and taking the company’s money for themselves. Taylor, who had been warned about the way the office was managed in May 1730, was dismissed in August that year owing the company £671.
Hand in Hand struck it lucky with his replacement, John Mann, who was given a gratuity of £105 in January 1776 having faithfully filled the role for more than 45 years. Shortly before Mann’s death, later that year, the board minutes recorded that the company was covering 33,434 properties valued at £15,926,925 and had paid £635,172 in claims since its foundation.
After John Mann’s death, his deputy, Benjamin Rouse, was unanimously elected to be chief clerk. He continued the tradition of his former manager by running the company with ‘unremitted zeal and attention’ until his death in 1814 after more than 50 years’ service. During his time at the helm, Hand in Hand extended its business ‘all over the Kingdom’, began to insure contents as well as buildings, and built new offices at New Bridge Street Blackfriars which they moved into during 1792.
Continuity of leadership was maintained, in part, when Benjamin Rouse jnr. was voted to succeed his father as secretary. Sadly, the family connection was cut short in 1829 when Rouse jnr. died in office. His replacement, George Nathaniel Lyon, was also not long in the role and died of Spasmodic Cholera in his chambers at the New Bridge Street office in 1833.
Three decades later, in 1866, tragedy again struck at New Bridge Street when the then Secretary, Richard Ray, fell from the office window and was killed. Richard’s son, Humphrey Hinton Ray, became the second son of a former Hand in Hand secretary to follow in his father’s footsteps when he took on the role in 1898. His replacement, Herbert Cecil Thiselton, appointed in 1903, was still in position in 1905 when the agreement was signed to hand the business over to Commercial Union.
When the Hand in Hand was absorbed by Commercial Union after nearly 210 years of independent existence, some saw it as the end of an era. A column in the Daily News in January 1905 stated that the acquisition “would remove from the category of British Financial institutions one of its brightest ornaments and leave a blank which never will be filled.” But the act which allowed Commercial Union to carry on business as a successor to Hand in Hand was just another step in the journey to what is now Aviva.
Although Hand in Hand holds pride of place in Aviva’s family tree is it far from being our only pioneering ancestor company. Our pedigree also includes the first mutual life insurer, Amicable Society which was established in 1706. Another of our companies, Railway Passengers Assurance, was the first insurer to offer cover for accidental death which became a concern following the arrival of rail transportation. When transport progressed again to motor vehicles, our company General Accident pioneered car insurance, offering its first proposal in 1896 when motoring was in its infancy.
Yet another of our ancestor companies, Employers’ Liability Assurance, was the first in the UK to offer employers’ liability cover and to work with employers to improve the safety of their staff. Fire safety was tackled by another Aviva ancestor, Mutual Fire, which was the first company to offer discounts for those who installed sprinklers. Other Aviva constituent companies focussed on more niche insurance requirements like Plate Glass of the City of London which was the first UK company to insure plate glass windows against breakage, The Guarantee Society which provided the first fidelity insurance, and The Scottish National Key Registry which was the first insurer to offer compensation to people who lost their keys.
We’ve grown from insuring a small area of London in 1696 to providing a safety net for millions of individuals including royalty, world leaders, famous artists, athletes, authors, and musicians. With our insurance to protect them, people have had the confidence to explore new continents, to build skyscrapers and supersonic planes, to tunnel under the sea and to launch into space.
The Hand in Hand was established in a world where the danger from fire was uppermost in many people’s minds. Over the 325 years since, although new risks have emerged, the companies which form Aviva have innovated and adapted to continue to protect customers and be with them when it really matters, throughout their lives.
This sentiment was perfectly expressed in the extract below which is taken from an article entitled ‘Mr Insurance Man — here is why You are of Importance in your Community’, which appeared in one of our staff magazines in 1929:
“Your word is a good as your bond. You represent companies issuing contracts which carry out what they say, which do not fluctuate or depreciate with the economic swing of the times; which can defy panics, business upheavals or the greatest of catastrophes. You bring to the convenience and support of the businessmen and property owners of your community the immense reservoirs of assets which have been built up through decades of sound operation by the established insurance companies. You make your city a safer place in which to live because of the impetus which companies give to improvements in risks by matching rate reductions with better construction and penalizing carelessness and physical defects. You constantly widen the sphere of protection given to your community as you adopt creative ideas which minimise the risks of business misfortune. There is no business where a new device to protect the public is more quickly welcomed and adopted. You make it possible for those all about you to sleep peacefully at night because, from the protection they buy off you, they know that they can replace their home if it burns over their heads; their factory if it is destroyed by fire; their income if they meet with accident.”
