Читать книгу The Fatal Cup: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and the strange deaths of his relations - John Price Williams - Страница 64

surgeon friend in Turnham Green, Dr. Thomas Graham, examined her and declared her “an excellent life” for insuring.

The records of Helen’s insurances are well-documented. The original company policy papers have long since disappeared though some scanty board minutes survive. The evidence itself comes from two trials in the Court of the Exchequer which took place in 1835, which show clearly the extent of the desperate fraud - and how unlikely it was to succeed.

The cases were brought to try to force the insurance companies to pay up and were reported extensively in the Times, Morning Post, Morning Chronicle1 and other newspapers, from which these accounts are drawn.

The audacious scheme, which was to involve eight different insurance companies, began within days of Helen’s 21st birthday. She was taken on a bewildering round of London life assurance offices by Wainewright and Eliza. In all, Helen made 15 visits to insurance offices between March and October 1830. In almost all of them it was Eliza who accompanied her and did a lot of the talking.

In the 18th century there had been very few life assurance companies in London, but by the 1830s the number had grown substantially and there was stiff competition for premiums. The Alliance, for instance, one of the offices on the grand tour, had been founded only six years previously.

The first call was at the Palladium on March 23rd 1830; it had also been founded for only six years,

1. Issues of June 30, 1835 and December 4, 1835.

THE FATAL CUP

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