Policies led by Angerstein were known as ‘Julians’ and were widely respected. John Julius Angerstein, a popular Lloyd’s insurer and friend of Lord Nelson, originated the Lloyd’s concept of a ‘lead’ underwriter settling a rate which others would then follow. In its wake came New Lloyd’s, whose professionalism and ordered existence entirely quashed the anarchy of the Lombard Street gamblers. The so-called ‘Old Lloyd’s’ ceased to exist.
#Soaring over bastion professional#
An extract from the London Chronicle of the time stated: ‘The amazing progress of illicit gambling at Lloyd’s coffee-house is a powerful and very melancholy proof of the degeneracy of the times.’ġ769 - New Lloyd’s appears – a bastion of professionalism and orderĪ breakaway group of professional underwriters, keen to disassociate themselves from Lloyd’s growing unfortunate reputation, established a new Lloyd’s coffee house at 5 Pope’s Head Alley, London. This drove certain underwriters to more ‘speculative’ lines – putting their names to other kinds of risks, including highway robbery and death by gin drinking – and Lloyd’s coffee house soon became notorious as a gambling den. Underwriters at Lloyd’s coffee house had enjoyed higher profits in the early 1760s, in part due to the Seven Years’ War, but as it came to an end, marine premiums returned to a lower level. The judgment was said to have ‘hit the city of London like a thunderbolt’ – but it eventually became part of the general English law of marine insurance.ġ768 - Lloyd’s, the notorious gambling den A lengthy court case concluded with the agreement that a ship must be ‘seaworthy’ before leaving shore, and that a policy could not even be paid ‘on a ship which suffered from a latent defect unknown to both parties to the contract’. It concerned the voyage of the French-built Mills Frigate – a vessel insured by Lloyd’s - which embarked on a voyage in what was described as a ‘weak, leaky and distressed condition’. One of the most important trials in insurance law history occurred. While there are still no records of how the market was organised at this time, a Quaker businessman’s journal states that in 1757 he went to Lloyd’s coffee house and ‘subscribed the book at two guineas a year’. The first concrete details of actual underwriting recorded. Lloyd’s had come to be the centre of all maritime information. Richard Baker, Lloyd’s master at the time, delivered the news to 10 Downing Street. The Battle of Porto Bello took place between a British naval force aiming to capture the settlement of Portobello in Panama and its Spanish defenders. More than 300 years on, the paper still provides weekly shipping news to London and beyond.ġ739 - Lloyd’s is the centre of maritime information He used Lloyd’s name and not his own because by this time, the establishment had instant recognition in the shipping community and a dedicated audience who would pay for subscriptions. The first edition of Lloyd's List, one of the world's oldest continuously running journals, was first published by Thomas Jemson.
During this period, Lloyd‘s began to dominate shipping insurance on a global scale.ġ734 - Lloyd’s List appears and is still going strong today It would bring large profits to those who could provide it – but it also brought huge losses. The American Revolution of the 1770s, followed by the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s, would soon demonstrate just how vital marine insurance could be.
Lloyd’s was by now established at 16 Lombard Street, in the very centre of the business world, and was emerging as the location for marine underwriting by individuals. A driven man, Lloyd made sure he provided intelligence second to none.ġ730s - Lloyd’s begins to dominate shipping insurance At this time, there were more than 80 coffee houses within the City of London’s walls each one was a centre for entrepreneurs and merchants, and each had a specialist interest to offer.
Nevertheless, what Lloyd’s coffee house specialised in was information about shipping. It was an early sign of insurance, or at least reward. They were believed to have been taken by a rather insalubrious gent with ‘black curled Hair, Pockholes in his face, wearing an Old Brown Riding Coat, and a black Bever Hat’. The article declared a reward for five stolen watches and encouraged anyone with information to contact Lloyd at his shop in the City. In February 1688, Edward Lloyd’s Coffee House in Tower Street was referred to for the very first time in the London Gazette.
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