Insurance Claims Of Many Years Ago Tally With Those Of Modern Day Life

Insurance claims for those prone to an accident are part of modern day life, but so too were they many years ago as Aviva archives reveal – from personal accident to the modern day home, car and travel insurance claims.

According to the insurance company archives, wind the clock back over 150 years and the most ordinary events appeared to end in the most extraordinary way, resulting in amazing catalogue of insurance claims.

Victorian life was clearly very colourful and had its fair share of claims, with examples of the most calamitous claims from Aviva customers from the 1860s to early 1900s being:

• A grocer from Lancashire slipped while playing Blind Man’s Buff – £15 paid in 1878
• A merchant from Essex injured his eye from throwing rice at a wedding – £50 paid in 1892
• An artist from Swansea blown down by gale of wind – £30 paid in 1886
• A shipbuilder from Great Yarmouth swallowed a fishbone – £1000 paid in 1900
• A pawnbroker from Brighton injured by a bucket of mortar thrown on his head while walking in the street – £35 paid in 1895
• A merchant from Glasgow injured while jumping out of bed to catch his wife who had fainted – £42 paid in 1895
• A travelling salesman from Belfast hit his head on a pole while watching an accident from the top of a tram – £7 paid in 1904
• An innkeeper from Handsworth, Birmingham, took poisonous potion in mistake for a sleeping medicine – £1000 paid in 1878.

Rob Townend, director of property claims at Aviva said: “Obviously insurance claims change as lifestyles change, but some incidents appear to be as common back then as they are today.

“Even in prim and proper Victorian times people were still tripping up kerbs, falling on ice and slipping on cobbled streets, albeit back then discarded orange peel appeared to be the major culprit.

And added “On the positive side it certainly seems that the work place is a lot safer now that it was back then – the archives show claims from a grocer who was hit on the head by a box of bacon, a pork butcher who caught his hand in the sausage-maker and the publican who injured himself ejecting a drunken man!”

The personal accident policies covered a wide range of professions and groups, from rail passengers and fox hunters to surgeons and solicitors.

Personal Accident insurance arrived a few decades before the launch of motor car and burglary policies, but many years before the bespoke kind of home, travel and car insurance that Aviva offers today.

Anna Stone, archivist at Aviva, said ”

“It has certainly proved to be interesting reading material and I have to say I do have some personal favourites that stand out for their sheer peculiarity – like the vicar from Shropshire who fell while playing a game of Leap Frog, or the gentleman from Mold in Wales who missed a dog while trying to kick it and struck a sofa instead, injuring his big toe!

Of note is that the personal accident policies weren’t just for the man in the street. This was ably demonstrated in 1896 when the Aviva company, Accident Insurance Ltd, acquired its most well-known customer – a 21-year-old Winston Churchill, who was then a young officer in the 4^th Queen’s Own Hussars.

By 1958 Churchill was the longest-standing customer on the company’s personal accident books and in fact never made a claim. This was in stark contrast to his peers, who in the early 1900s were falling in to crevasses on the Alps, rupturing muscles while dancing and being injured by backfiring motor cars.