The jobbers of Change Alley were not behind; the members of Lloyd’s entered keenly into competition, usurers trembled with delight at the prospect of increasing their store, and annuity-mongers threw themselves with ravenous rapacity on the unwary. Under the name of Africanus, Steele selects a well-known character of the day to satirise the “bites and bubble-mongers” of 1710, in “one who has long been conversant in bartering; who, knowing when Stocks are lowest it is the time to buy, therefore, with much prudence and tranquillity, thinks it the time to purchase an annuity for life.” “Sir Thomas told me it was an entertainment more surprising and pleasant than can be imagined, to see an inhabitant of neither world, without hand to lift, or leg to move, scarce tongue to utter his meaning, so keen in biting the whole world and making bubbles at his exit. Sir Thomas added, he would have bought twelve shillings a year of him, but that he feared there was some trick in it, and believed him already dead.”
There is some confusion between annuities and assurances; it is an evidence, however, that the public attention was pointed to the tricks which were current. During this period, there is no trace of any life-office; but it would appear that the Bills of Mortality were regarded with interest, from a paper in the “Guardian” being founded on them, and that they were so regarded is most probably to be traced to their connection with assurance. The following is an extract from a quizzical paper bearing on the mortuary registers. Died
| “ | Of a six-bar gate | 4 | |
| Of a quick-set hedge | 2 | ||
| Broke his neck in robbing a hen-roost | 1 | ||
| Surfeit of curds and cream | 2 | ||
| Took cold sleeping at church | 11 | ||
| Of October | 1 | ||
| Of fright in an exercise of the train-bands | 1 | .” |
Addison also composed the following bill of mortality in a paper “On Dying for Love;” and it is a further proof of the attention paid to the subject, that this great writer took it as a model:—
“T. S. wounded by Zelinda’s scarlet stocking, as she was stepping out of a coach.
“Tim Tattle killed by the tap of a fan on his left shoulder by Coquetilla, as he talked carelessly with her at a bow-window.
“Samuel Felt, haberdasher, wounded in his walks to Islington, by Mrs. Susanna Cross Stitch, as she was clambering over a stile.
“John Pleadwell, Esq., of the Middle Temple, assassinated in his chambers, the 6th instant, by Kitty Sly, who pretended to come to him for advice.”
After 1712, these projects ceased to be placed before the town; and the following odd “bite” had its share in dispersing the hungry crew who proposed them. “There has been the oddest bite put upon the town that ever was heard of. We having of late had several new subscriptions set on foot for raising great sums of money for erecting offices of insurance,” &c.; “and at length some gentlemen, to convince the world how easy it was for projectors to impose upon mankind, set up a pretended office in Exchange Alley, for receiving subscriptions for raising 1,000,000 of money to establish an ‘effectual’ company of insurers, as they called it: on which, the day being come to subscribe, the people flocked in and paid down 5s. for every 1000l. they subscribed, pursuant to the Company’s proposals; but after some hundreds had so subscribed, that the thing might be fully known, the gentlemen were at the expense to advertize, that the people might have their money again without any deductions; and to let them know that the persons who had paid in their money contented themselves with a fictitious name set by an unknown hand to the receipts delivered out for the money so paid in, that the said name was composed only of the first letters of six persons’ names concerned in the said scheme.”
For a period the people had rest from new propositions: as it was found necessary to stop these offices for insurances on marriages, births, christenings, and annuities, and to close the career of gentlemen without a penny; this being done by the insertion of a clause in an Act of the 10th of Queen Anne, enacting a penalty of 500l. on the promoters of such societies.