The completed sponsorship form by William Charles Macready, further testifies to the men’s close friendship, particularly as Macready promised to keep an eye on Charles and Catherine’s children while they were abroad.” The cause of death was certified as apoplexy.”ĭr Emily Dunbar, Curator, Charles Dickens Museum said: “This intriguing document gives a fascinating insight into Charles Dickens’s health, just before he underwent his first visit to America in 1842. It goes on to report “six weeks later, and less than two months before he set out on his first voyage to America, he took out a life insurance policy for £5,000 with Eagle Insurance, whose actuary Henry Potter Smith became one of his firmest friends and was godfather to his son Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens.” Later the article cites “The Eagle insurance remained in force until the novelist’s death and in October 1870 the Company paid £6,337 7s. Here it is reported Dickens was previously denied a life insurance policy by Sun Life Society, as on the “October 8th, 1841, Dickens underwent a severe if a successful operation for fistula.”
More insight into Dickens’s insurance policy comes from an article written by the Dickens scholar William J Carlton (4). An accompanying policy questionnaire, which appears to have been authored by Dickens’s close friend, actor, William Charles Macready, who’d known Dickens for “four to five years” clarified that the author was indeed in “very good” health and declared him to be “perfectly” sober and temperate. On taking out the policy, Dickens confirmed he was not afflicted by health conditions such as Dropsy, Consumption, Gout, Fits, Haemorrhage and Rapture. At the time he would have been 29 years old and living at 1 Devonshire Terrace in London. His life cover was set at £5000, which today equates to around £300,000 (2) – a sum that in 2022 would only buy half a house in London (3). Charles Dickensĭickens signed a life policy with Eagle Insurance on 19 November 1841. Also in the records was a policy for William Thomas Stead, a well-known British newspaper editor, who died when the Titanic sank. The records from Zurich’s archives (1) have been released to mark its centenary in the UK.Īmong life policies that have survived are those of Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent and Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (Queen Victoria’s son).
Former policyholders include members of the royal family and a pioneering journalist who died on the Titanicįrom literary royalty to actual royalty and a pioneering British journalist, Zurich Insurance is today, for the first time, making available online the life policies of some very famous figures from 19th century Britain.Policies shine a light on how health and life risks have evolved over the centuries.
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