Carter v Boehm: facts and context

There is a curious irony in the lawsuit Carter v Boehm. The final decision of the Court of King’s Bench, delivered by Chief Justice Mansfield at Easter 1766, famously articulated the principle of uberrima fides (utmost good faith), which became the standard benchmark for disclosure in modern insurance contracts. Yet the insurance policy and claim from which this ruling derived was anything other than standard, and certainly outside the normal scope of anything covered by the British property insurance industry as it had developed by the middle of the eighteenth century. It is not the purpose of this article to explore the legal points about Carter v Boehm or the ramifications of the decision for modern insurance law.1 However, to understand the ruling, and Mansfield’s comments on the scope and nature of liability and disclosure in insurance contracts, it helps to know the facts and context surrounding the case and the nature of the risk that was insured

Escaping from the State? Historical Paths to Public and Private Insurance

The history of insurance has been characterized in most countries by the coexistence of a wide range of organizational forms. The reasons for this plethora of vehicles remain unclear, as does the impact of this diversity on the development of insurance around the world. Drawing on the latest research, this paper examines, first, the different functions of the state in relation to insurance in a wide range of national markets from the early modern period to the present century; second, the path-dependent effects that determined the historical distribution of public and private forms of insurance; and third, the relation between public and private insurance and its impact on market development

The industrial suburbs of Leeds in the nineteenth century : Community consciousness among the social classes

The changing relationship between community and class has been a subject generally neglected by historians. Marxist social theory provides little framework for the examination of the significance of community in capitalist society. This study of the industrial suburbs of Leeds indicates the importance of community consciousness, both as a force moulding class relations in Victorian society, and as a cognizance itself shaped by class relations. It is argued in chapter two that the relatively monolithic culture of the clothing villages was, by the 1830's, cracking under the pressures of factory capitalism. Suburban attitudes towards community institutions and traditions became permeated and modified by class interests. Chapter three shows how deference and paternalism were fashioned in the factory politics of the 1820's and 1830's, while suburban autonomy came to be threatened by municipal centralization. Chapter five examines the changing role of patronage in suburban religion and education, and analyses petty-bourgeois perceptions of community. However there was much continuity as well as change. Chapter two argues that several characteristics of clothier culture survived industrialization. Chapter three shows how national political divisions were often subsumed by local loyalties. The long tradition of labour radicalism was partly preserved by the mid-Victorian labour aristocracy. It is argued in chapter four that their labour consciousness was firmly rooted in the local community. Petty-bourgeois community sentiment, examined in chapter five, developed from the traditions of sectarianism and localism. Deference and paternalism revived after 1848 and remained important throughout the century. However there was never a factory culture in Leeds suburbs to match that of Lancashire. In chapter six it is argued that few of the institutions of social control, constructed by patronage from the 1830's, ever gained popular acceptance. There were other 'community institutions', from dame schools to friendly societies, which were of greater importance to the fabric of out-township life. It is concluded that community consciousness was preserved by the working class both in the sense of place and of past. As class conflict developed in the industrial suburbs, so the struggle to appropriate local traditions, the sense of history, of 'milieu', and of community itself, became part of this conflict

Insuring the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Copyright © 2019 The Economic History Association. One important, but overlooked, risk mitigation device that facilitated the growth of the slave trade in the eighteenth century was the increasing availability of insurance for ships and their human cargoes. In this article we explore, for the first time, the relative cost of insurance for British slave traders, the underlying processes by which this key aspect of the business of slavery was conducted, and the factors behind price and other changes over time. Comparisons are also drawn with the transatlantic slave trades of other nations. As well as analyzing the business of underwriting slave voyages, we have two other objectives. First, we explore the meaning of slave insurance from the perspective of those directly involved in the trade. Was it about insuring lives or goods? Second, we provide new estimates of the importance of the slave trade to U.K. marine insurance. Did the former drive the growth of the latter, as Joseph Inikori has claimed

Organizational Choice in UK Marine Insurance

From the eighteenth century British marine insurance developed via a wide range of organizational forms, including individual and syndicated underwriters, mutual associations, chartered corporations, unchartered stock companies, and protection and indemnity clubs. At times the issue of what was the best vehicle to deliver marine insurance became a hotly debated topic. This chapter explores why these different organizational forms emerged and what were the relative advantages and disadvantages that explain their subsequent performance. It points to the importance of historical contingency, such as specific financial and political circumstances, to the search to control asymmetric information problems, to the role of specialization, local knowledge, and niche markets, and to the entrepreneurial qualities of individual managers and promoters

Control of article use in SAE and AAE-speaking children

Designing a test battery for language that is appropriate across dialects is difficult. Many of theitems traditionally studied to assess the sophistication of preschoolers’ speech include inflections such astense and plurality that behave differently across dialects, resulting in the mis-assignment of clinical statusto normal speakers of dialects such as African American English. One strategy towards solution of thisdilemma has been to choose items that involve tests of linguistic knowledge that have no established dialectdifferences. Recent work on articles in English suggests there is promise in this area, since a) there are no established dialect differences in the use of definite and indefinite articles between AAE andSAE.b) SLI children, on the other hand, show significant difficulties using articles appropriately (Ramos, 1999) Given those two premises, it is clear that the article items may be responded to in the same way by childrenregardless of dialect but dependent on their clinical status. The purpose of this study was to establish abaseline with normally-developing children and confirm that there are no dialect differences for 3-7 yearolds.Previous studies of article use have been fraught with methodological difficulties, and considerablevariation depending on the methods and materials. Our analysis of the inadequacies of earlier experimentson this topic (see Cziko 1986) led us to design the task so that no objects relevant to the elicitation werepresent during the experiment. That is, we modified a recent procedure by Schafer and de Villiers (2000),which gets around the materials problem by using none! In effect, the children are asked questions that theyanswer “out of their heads”, a procedure that might also lessen the disadvantage of children who are lessused to test-type book materials. The purpose of the study was to elicit from children noun phrasescontaining the articles a and the under conditions that controlled for the maximum number ofextralinguistic contributions to familiarity and uniqueness

Gender, Sexual Orientation, Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Factors Influence How Wildland Firefighters Communicate their Work Experiences

As Climates Change, Natural Resource Professionals Are Often Working on the Frontlines of Intensifying Environmental Disasters, Acting in Both Scientific and Emergency Response Roles. One Subset of This Group, Wildland Firefighters Often Engage in Multifaceted Careers that Incorporate Elements of Resource Planning, Conservation Management, Community Disaster Relief, and Operational Management. Despite These STEM Roles and Nearly Half (48%) of Them Having Earned at Least a bachelor\u27s degree, usually in a STEM Field, Wildland Firefighters Are Almost Exclusively Lumped with Emergency Responders in the Scientific Literature. We Surveyed 708 Wildland Firefighters with 9 Open Response Questions as Part of a Larger Survey Asking About Experiences and Attitudes in the United States Federal Workplace. from their Responses and Voluntarily Provided Demographic Data, We Extracted Information About Response Length, Use of Hedges, Tag Questions and Imperatives, Use of Personal Language, Use of Expletives and Derogatory Language, Use of Apologetic Language, and the Types of Responses Provided. We Then Analyzed Whether Certain Demographic and Socioeconomic Factors Were Statistical Predictors of Language Use in Wildland Firefighter Survey Responses with the Goal of Ultimately Providing a Framework for Differentiating and Identifying Factors that May Influence Employee Retention, Attitudes, Morale, and Experiences among Wildland Firefighter Sub-Demographics. We Found that Different Demographic Groups Varied in their Responses to Questions: Minority Groups Used Fewer Words and Were More Likely to Relate Personal Experiences Than Majority Groups

A protocol for isolation and culturing of mouse primary postmitotic photoreceptors and isolation of extracellular vesicles

Here, we present a protocol for isolating and culturing mouse photoreceptors in a minimal, chemically-defined medium free from serum. We describe steps for retina dissection, enzymatic dissociation, photoreceptor enrichment, cell culture, extracellular vesicles (EVs) enrichment, and EV ultrastructural analysis. This protocol, which has been verified for cultured cells derived from multiple murine strains, allows for the study of several aspects of photoreceptor biology, including EV isolation, and cell-cell interactions such as nanotubes (NTs)

A new on-axis multimode spectrometer for the macromolecular crystallography beamlines of the Swiss Light Source

Complementary techniques greatly aid the interpretation of macromolecule structures to yield functional information, and can also help to track radiation-induced changes. A new on-axis spectrometer being integrated into the macromolecular crystallography beamlines of the Swiss Light Source is presented

Constraining the provenance of the Stonehenge ‘Altar Stone’:Evidence from automated mineralogy and U–Pb zircon age dating

The Altar Stone at Stonehenge is a greenish sandstone thought to be of Late Silurian-Devonian (‘Old Red Sandstone’) age. It is classed as one of the bluestone lithologies which are considered to be exotic to the Salisbury Plain environ, most of which are derived from the Mynydd Preseli, in west Wales. However, no Old Red Sandstone rocks crop out in the Preseli; instead a source in the Lower Old Red Sandstone Cosheston Subgroup at Mill Bay to the south of the Preseli, has been proposed. More recently, on the basis of detailed petrography, a source for the Altar Stone much further to the east, towards the Wales-England border, has been suggested. Quantitative analyses presented here compare mineralogical data from proposed Stonehenge Altar Stone debris with samples from Milford Haven at Mill Bay, as well as with a second sandstone type found at Stonehenge which is Lower Palaeozoic in age. The Altar Stone samples have contrasting modal mineralogies to the other two sandstone types, especially in relation to the percentages of its calcite, kaolinite and barite cements. Further differences between the Altar Stone sandstone and the Cosheston Subgroup sandstone are seen when their contained zircons are compared, showing differing morphologies and U-Pb age dates having contrasting populations. These data confirm that Mill Bay is not the source of the Altar Stone with the abundance of kaolinite in the Altar Stone sample suggesting a source further east, towards the Wales-England border. The disassociation of the Altar Stone and Milford Haven undermines the hypothesis that the bluestones, including the Altar Stone, were transported from west Wales by sea up the Bristol Channel and adds further credence to a totally land-based route, possibly along a natural routeway leading from west Wales to the Severn estuary and beyond. This route may well have been significant in prehistory, raising the possibility that the Altar Stone was added en route to the assemblage of Preseli bluestones taken to Stonehenge around or shortly before 3000 BC. Recent strontium isotope analysis of human and animal bones from Stonehenge, dating to the beginning of its first construction stage around 3000 BC, are consistent with the suggestion of connectivity between this western region of Britain and Salisbury Plain.This study appears to be the first application of quantitative automated mineralogy in the provenancing of archaeological lithic material and highlights the potential value of automated mineralogy in archaeological provenancing investigations, especially when combined with complementary techniques, in the present case zircon age dating