Foreign News: Lloyd’s

Lloyd’s Subscription Rooms, more generally known as “Lloyd’s,” famed marine and general insurance company, acquired an acre of land in the heart of the City (London) and intends to build itself a new house at the estimated cost of $5,220,000. When the new building is completed, the present offices of “the Royal Exchange Building, at the corner of Threadneedle and Cornhill Streets, where the company has been for 149 years, will be vacated.

As a marine insurance firm, Lloyd’s calls for considerable admiration. During the present year it has kept track of 15,000 ships and published the fate and whereabouts of every one of them in Lloyd’s List, the official bulletin. But as a general insurance firm Lloyd’s is even more famous. In Britain it insures anything from the weather to eggs hatching in incubators. To Americans it is famous for having insured against Harry K. Thaw’s conviction, for having insured a baseball team against losing a World’s Series, for having issued policies to business men against the election of Henry Ford as President. It was even reported that U. S. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels had insured the U. S. Navy against destruction by gunfire.

About 1670 Edward Lloyd kept a coffee house in Tower Street which catered to seafaring men. He decided to start a little ‘bulletin called Lloyd’s News, parent of the present Lloyd’s List, in which he chronicled the goings and comings of sailing craft in the Port of London. This proved an immense success and in 1692 he moved his coffee house to more spacious quarters in Lombard Street and expanded the bulletin to include general information. Parliament became annoyed because Edward Lloyd, so it is said, knew more than it; the paper was suppressed. In 1726, Edward Lloyd’s descendants started Lloyd’s List, which confined itself entirely to shipping news. In 1774 an association of underwriters took control of the bulletin and established their headquarters in the Royal Exchange, where “Lloyd’s” has flourished ever since.