Insuring Biofinance: Alcohol, Risk and the Limits of Life

Life insurance and alcohol share a long and complex history; in Britain in the early nineteenth century friendly societies met in, and were strongly associated with public houses, for instance. This may not seem all that remarkable given the significant role that spaces of sociality have played in the history of finance – take for example the origins of Lloyds global marine insurance market in Edward Lloyd's coffee house in London in the late 1600s or the part played by the Tontines coffee house in the establishment of the New York stock exchange. But for an industry whose purpose is to protect and safeguard life, the public house might now seem an odd choice of meeting place, because alcohol was redefined as a harmful rather than healthy substance over the course of the nineteenth century.