Mr Miller’s plans and a fire at Clumber House
My new favourite person in the Archive is Robert Leist Miller who worked for Norwich Union. According to his obituary, written in 1848, he had held “situations of great trust and responsibility” at the company for 36 years before his death, at the age of 59. By 1818 he was the chief clerk of the country department, and the staff rules of 1819 refer to him as the manager. In 1827 Robert was sent to manage Norwich Union’s business in Liverpool with responsibility for Lancaster, Chester, and Westmoreland.
The following year he was given an even bigger task when the company decided to review all its manufacturing and hazardous risks. In April 1828, he was instructed to visit all the risks in the northern region to survey them and report back to the board. The directors then met to look through “Mr Miller’s small books” of plans and his assessment of each risk. They decided which ones to keep and which needed to be charged higher premiums and marked their decisions in the books. Once his tour of the northern region was completed, Robert was sent to Scotland where he reviewed the company’s risks in Carlisle, Glasgow, Dundee, Montrose, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh.
Only one of Mr Miller’s ‘small books’ has survived to become part of the Archive — Plan book №4 for Birmingham. Inside the volume are detailed descriptions and plans of each risk surveyed, from vinegar and varnish makers to paper mills and glass cutters. As well as making assessments of the risk posed by activities on the different sites and the needs for more partitions and safer stoves, Mr Miller also made comments on how risks were being managed in Birmingham — this, from a plan for coachbuilder Thomas Brown, is typical: “I really cannot comprehend this policy …the policy and premiums require immediate revision.”
What I really like about Mr Miller is that some of his surveys are also accompanied by comments which give an insight into how he was feeling when he wrote them. So, we know, as presumably did Norwich Union’s directors in 1828, that he was “dreadfully alarmed” by a dog when he visited the premises of japanner, W Harrison.
My favourite comment comes from his survey of property belonging to Joseph Cotterill, backing on to the canal at Mill Lane Deritend, which was annotated with “very cold, very wet & very angry !!!” It is an enormous shame that no one thought to save all of Mr Miller’s books for posterity — I would love to read his comments after surveying Scottish risks in the middle of November.
On his journey back from Scotland, Mr Miller stopped to look at the Duke of Newcastle’s mansion at Clumber near Worksop, and the board minutes recorded that he was “decidedly favourable to the continuance of the policy”. When I looked up the mansion to find out more about it, I discovered a salutary lesson on the dangers of underinsuring.
In the early hours of the morning on Wednesday 26 March 1879 fire broke out at Clumber House. By the time the first fire engine arrived flames were shooting high above the central portion of the building. Contemporary newspaper reports refer to twenty rooms in flames from the basement to the roof and describe “thousands of choice articles” in heaps about the lawn, covered with carpets to protect them from the falling snow. The flames were prevented from reaching the East and West Wings (including the library with its thousands of books), but the oldest part of the house, with the grand staircase and entrance hall, was utterly destroyed.
Initial reports estimated that around a fifth of the Clumber Collection of 500 paintings, had been destroyed. Pieces “lost to the nation” included works by Van Dyck, Titian, Durer, Kneller, Holbein, Gainsborough, and Nollekens. Much attention was paid in the newspapers to the damage done to a series of four painting by Frans Snyders which were apparently so famous “that Napoleon the Great is stated to have declared that when he invaded England he would bring them with him to France”. The Snyders paintings, which were estimated at the time to be worth £40,000, were only insured for £3,500 each. Indeed, according to contemporary newspapers, “the finest works” were only insured at “one half to one fourth their supposed value”.
Reviewing the lost artwork and other treasures in February 1880, a reporter for the Manchester Guardian estimated the total loss to have been “not much less than 100,000l”. In 1879 Clumber House was insured for £50,000 with the Sun, and its contents were insured with Royal Exchange and Norwich Union for a total of £51,000 — only just over half the estimated value of artwork lost. According to the board minutes of Norwich Union, that company’s loss on the fire was estimated to be £12,000.
