SMALLPOX AND ACCIDENT INSURANCE.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 11687, 21 February 1902, Page 4

SMALLPOX AND ACCIDENT INSURANCE.

It is not) often (says the London "Daily Xevrs") that humour can be extracted from the prevalence of an epidemic like small-pox, now so rife in" the metropolis. But taere are people who will have their joke at whatever cost; and some ot the.-e are making light of a new difficulty with ■which certain accident insurance companies ara confronted as the result of claims being made in respect of the insured having contracted the maladv.

The companies have so far resisted all such claims, and point to the absence of small-pox from their list of "accidents.'' Meanwhile, as the demands are beicg strongly pressed, the companies managers are discussing among themselves the best means of solving an awkward problem. Muck correspondence lias already passed on the subject, but nothing ap« preaching general agreement has yet besn reached. One gentleman, who is inclined to pay on the policies, points ont. for instance, that- he introduced a clause in 1883 covering "all zymotic diseases.'' The first office to operate in that special direction, however, was a corporation which was founded in 1889. Apart from these - progressive' movements, it has transpired in the course of the managerial deliberations thai) a life company in 1831 issued policies against "paralysis, blindness, insanity, and every other affliction, bodily and mental," at rates that were considered moderate. "Fortunately," remarked an official to oar correspondent, "the London companies have not yet had the experience of some American accident concerns, upon whom so many claims were made last year in respect of clothes destroyed by falling cans of paint as to provoke a director to declare that the majority of the claimants appeared to spend xttoch of their time under ladders on which painters were xrorking. But."he added, "now that the •question of small-pox has been raised as an accident, there is no foreseeing what may happen in the near future, especially in view of the increasing severity of the competition for jmw business."