Although the loss of life was over 5,000, a large proportion of the victims was composed of women and children, a class which rarely if ever carries insurance; again, the majority of the men drowned and crushed were residents of the poorer districts of the town, the wealthier men having abandoned their homes at the first alarm and fled to the elevated places. These victims were caught in their houses, together with their families, and husbands, wives and children died together.
As a matter of fact, the men who work for a living at trades and in the various branches of employment where skilled labor is not demanded, do not carry life insurance as a general thing, except in benevolent or fraternal societies of which they may be members, and this is the main reason why the “straight” life insurance companies, as they are called, did not suffer more than they did.
One of the most prominent insurance managers in the United States said three days after the catastrophe:
“Life insurance companies will feel the blow of the Galveston storm. How much insurance was carried by the victims of the storm is not known, but it must have been great in the aggregate. The large proportion of women and children among the dead will lighten the burden, as they do not often carry insurance.
“The rule requiring the body of the insured to be identified will have to be waived, because of the number of bodies buried at sea and otherwise without identification. Unless the rigor of this rule is relaxed by the insurers litigation will be boundless.
“Practically no property insurance was carried at Galveston.”
Galveston and Houston representatives of the largest eastern insurance companies when seen concurred in the opinion that the insurance policies against storm losses carried by Galvestonians would not aggregate $10,000. They said there was absolutely no demand for such insurance at Galveston.
The head of one of the leading insurance firms in Galveston which represented many large eastern companies said: “We did not carry a dollar of storm insurance at Galveston, and while my information on that point is limited, I feel sure the storm insurance was very small. We never had a request for storm insurance policies. If there had been any demand at Galveston for insurance of this kind we would have heard of it.
“We held $50,000 storm insurance on two big oil mills at Houston and our loss will probably be $40,000 to $50,000 on these two structures. We held $25,000 storm insurance at Port Arthur and about $1,200 at Alvin. The insurance situation at Galveston is very quiet. There was no loss by fire, and I think the insurance against storms was trivial.”
More than 4,000 houses were destroyed; millions of dollars’ worth of property in dry goods, grocery and other business houses—wholesale and retail—was ruined; there was hardly a house in the city which did not suffer damage, the total property losses aggregating about $20,000,000; and yet, living in a section where storms were liable to occur at any time, little or no insurance was carried.