England Life and Accident Insurance, Guilds and Trade Organizations, Burial Clubs, Freemasons - International Institute

Development of Life and Accident Assurance
In England an early form of personal insurance was run by the mediaeval monastic institutions. A wealthy person could purchase a corrody which could provide care within the monastery or regular cash payments.

For more ordinary folk the craft and trade guilds and livery companies, and later certain industrial assurance companies, played an important role in provision for their members in times of sickness and for the families when they died. Self-help groups called friendly societies and burial clubs assured similar help for many social strata; and co-operatives and trade unions also played their part. It was not unusual for a person to be involved in the administration of more than one type of self-help society.

At first the Commercial life assurance companies only catered to the upper end of society, but during the 19th- and 20th-centuries most burial clubs, friendly societies and industrial assurance companies either evolved into or were displaced by life assurance companies. By the beginning of the 20th-century employers were also providing sick benefits.

In order to be able to access the records the family historian will need to find out if an ancestor had an insurance policy and which company it was with. Some suggested avenues are:


 * Wills
 * Death Duty indexes
 * Family papers
 * Indexes to company records
 * Consult Cockerell and Green and local archives to find which companies had agents in his nearest town.

The records of the first company, the Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office were discussed by Bellinger (Insurance History Forum. Genealogists’ Magazine Vol. 21 #7, page 235-238.). Their records date from 1705 to 1890 and include minutes, accounts, correspondence and the policy records. When policies were taken out by a member to provide for his dependants one can find:


 * Names, ages and relationships
 * Occupations
 * Addresses
 * Sometimes other information such as executors, guardians and
 * bankruptcies

They are most useful for connecting families dispersed across the country or, indeed, abroad. Bellinger also notes that the wealthy often took out numerous policies on unrelated people who may not have been aware of the fact. Such life policy interests were advertised for auction in the latter part of the 19th century.

For inspiration read the following accounts:


 * Woodward (Insurance Records Expose a Painful Secret. North West Kent Family History Vol. 6 #8, page 250-253) describes her success with insurance records for a 2nd great grandfather.


 * Scarr (Death by Accident? A Test Case. Genealogists’ Magazine Vol. 24 #6, page 254-255.) tells the tale of an ancestor involved in a test case of insurance law in 1904.


 * Liz Carter (Charity Begins at Home. Practical Family History #44, page 20-21) describes the different forms of charities and insurance available to the poor.

Guilds and Trade Organizations
Greek and Roman occupational guilds operated as cooperatives where members paid money into a pool that ensured that their family would be cared for should the head die young (Krasner-Khait).

Digging into the minutes and sundry records of the guilds and other craft and trade organizations including trade unions reveals much of use to the family historian. Many organizations for the relief of poor, sick and aged members were founded, for example in bookbinding at least a dozen societies were operational at one time or another. Some changed their name and some merged with others of-course:


 * Amicable Society of Bookbinders.
 * Bookbinders’ Consolidated Relief Fund.
 * Bookbinders Consolidated Union.
 * Bookbinders’ Friendly Benefit Society.
 * Bookbinders’ Pension and Asylum Society.
 * Bookbinders’ Pension Society (election of two pensioners in Jaffray’s scrapbooks in British Library).
 * Bookbinders’ Provident Asylum Society built an asylum in 1843 in Balls Pond Road, Islington to care for aged and infirm members. An illustration of this building appeared in The Builder 1868, and can be viewed with the Jaffray collection online. London Metropolitan Archives also has a 19th-20th century file on this asylum under Metropolitan Benefit Societies Almshouses (LMA/4228).
 * Friendly Society of Bookbinders.
 * Friendly Society of Journeyman Bookbinders of London and Westminster.
 * London Consolidated Society/Lodge of Journeyman Bookbinders.
 * National Union of Bookbinders and Machine Rulers.
 * Society of Day-working Bookbinders of London and Westminster. It is worth contacting the relevant archives and doing Internet searches for the records of such institutions.

Burial Clubs
In the 19th and 20th centuries a pauper’s burial was considered the ultimate disgrace for the family; even resorting to applying for assistance from the overseers or guardians of the poor was better than suffering the indignity of a pauper’s funeral. Insurance companies did not cater to the weekly wage earner until at least the 1850s and the need was filled by burial clubs run by local or national friendly societies. Burial clubs were enormously popular with the working classes who made small weekly payments in order to provide for a decent funeral and perhaps short-term subsistence for the widow and orphans (see chart below). Further details on Victorian funeral customs are described by May (The Victorian Undertaker, 1996), and on the Victorian poor by McLaughlin (The Poor Are Always with Us, 1994).

Chart: Advert for a Burial Club (Undated, Society of Genealogists’ collection, original illustrated in Genealogists’ Magazine Vol 28 #2, page 53)

Freemasons
A distinction has first to be made between:


 * Operative Masons, those who worked at the stone mason’s trade and have been organized in guilds for hundreds of years. Here the term freemason referred to one who worked the best-quality freestone, a fine-grained, easily sawn sandstone or limestone. A system of lodges was developed to suit the itinerant nature of the trade but these had ceased to have any connection with the trade by the 17th century.


 * Speculative Masons were non-operatives; they did not work at the trade but belonged to one of the lodges of the charitable organization called the Freemasons which originated in the mid-17th century. It is these that are dealt with here.

Millions of men have belonged to this organization popularly called the masons, each first registered as a member of a local craft lodge, headed by a worshipful master. There are Provincial Grand Lodges and the governing body for England and Wales is The United Grand Lodge of Antient, Free and Accepted Masons of England. Some women were active during the period 1663-1723, and currently there are two groups that admit women: The Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons, which seceded in 1913, and The Order of Women Masons which has admitted only women since 1935.

Freemasonry is not restricted to white Anglican Conservatives but open to any social class, occupation, race, colour, political persuasion or religion that professes a belief in a supreme being. Members have to be at least 21 years old, or 18 if at Oxford or Cambridge universities. Discussion on the so-called secrets of masonry and how to contact any of the 10,000 lodges in England and Wales is found in Family Tree magazine Vol 10 #2, p 18.

Examples of Masonic Charities include:


 * The Grand Charity originated in 1727 and supports masons, their dependents and others in need.


 * Masonic Schools - Royal Masonic Institution for Girls in 1788, and the RMI for Boys in 1798 which provided education for members’ children throughout the British Isles (Chapman 1992). These were combined in the 1980s into the Masonic Trust for Boys and Girls which alleviates poverty and provides education for freemasons’ and other children.


 * The Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution has provided an Asylum for aged and decayed freemasons since 1836, and annuities since 1842.


 * The Royal Masonic Hospital was in operation from 1913 until 1996.

Records are freely available in the museum and library at Freemasons Hall, 60 Great Queen Street, London WC2B 5AZ. See their website and library catalogue and much is on film as well. Along with the friendly societies and others, lists of members had to be submitted to the quarter sessions from the 1790s and these provide a most useful entry point for the researcher (see Gibson’s Quarter Sessions Records for Family Historians, 1995). Examples of masonic records include:


 * Who’s Who in Freemasonry (below).

Chart: Who’s Who in Freemasonry 1913-1914 Lever Press, London (5)


 * Information on the New Masonic Library in Exeter.


 * Lodge histories, for example the History of the Lodge of Friendship No 6, Margate, Kent includes minutes, lists of members 1767-1947 and subscribers, and references to many individual masons (Rotch).


 * Lists of freemasons in Cheshire 1799-1894 on.


 * The Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076 at Freemasons Hall is the historical branch and is especially helpful for emigrant and immigrant masonic ancestors. Their journal is called Ars Quatuor Coronatorum.

My Ancestor was a Freemason by Pat Lewis contains a wealth of information, with examples of certificates and jewels, and helps distinguish masonic and friendly society symbols and regalia. He describes precisely how to go about getting information on a masonic ancestor.

___________________________________________________________________

Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online course English: Taxes, Lists, Business, Electoral and Insurance Records offered by The International Institute of Genealogical Studies. To learn more about this course or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com]

We welcome updates and additions to this Wiki page.