ABSTRACT
On 18 June 1583, the first modem life insurance policy was written for a one-year period on the life of William Gibbons, ‘citizen and salter of London’, by a group of underwriters at the Old Drury Pothouse tavern.1 This document, perhaps partly a drunken joke, still represents a specifically modem response to the desire for security: the individual life-span had become material for financial calculation - although lip service was still being paid to divine providence. This ambiguity is evident in the contract itself: the underwriters ‘do assure by these presents that the said William Gybbons [...] shall by God’s grace continue in this his natural life for and during the space of twelve months’; the agreed sum will be paid to the citizen’s descendants ‘if it happen (as God defend) the said William Gibbons to die or decease of this present world’. The contract ends with the pious, and perhaps not wholly disinterested wish: ‘God send the said William Gibbons health and longlife.’2
