ABSTRACT
Fire insurance in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain was an ambivalent business, sometimes dynamic, sometimes static, and even laggard. Insurance was at the cutting edge of business development in other areas – marketing, cartel formation, the corporate takeover, and investment strategies. The insurance offices pioneered flexible corporate investment strategies and became widely recognised by institutional and private borrowers as major sources of credit. Fire insurance grew more slowly than national income and the stock of insurable property between the 1780s and the 1810s, and stagnated in real terms. The availability of relatively cheap and financially solid forms of insurance offered a greater level of security to the owners of mercantile, manufacturing and residential property in many sectors of the British economy. The investment by insurance offices in fire-fighting facilities in dozens of towns, however, must have increased popular awareness of fire prevention, and, perhaps, changed perceptions of the hazard.
