THE STORY OF LLOYD’S.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16744, 27 May 1922, Page 4

THE STORY OF LLOYD’S.

WORLD’S LARGEST MARINE INSURANCE OFFICE.

FOUNDED BY A RUSSIAN. “The Story of a Lloyd’s” is a booklet, modest in size, based simply upon a lecture delivered in last November by Mr Sidney Boulton, then chairman of Lloyd’s (writes WAV. in “ »lohn o London's Weekly ”). An interesting ceremony is in prospect. The Trustees of the Royal Exchange are to receive a duplicate of the picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence of John Julius Angerstein, the real founder of Lloyd’s as we know it to-day. The original of the portrait i» in the National Gallery. A ROMANTIC ORIGIN. It is a remarkable thing that we owe two such great, yet entirely different, institutions as Lloyd’s and the National Gallery to a Russian. To be sure, Julius Angerstein came to London at the age of fifteen, but he was of Russian birth. A very curious story is told. 1 cannot say whether on sound authority, by Duchess d’Abrantes in her biography of Catherine 11. of Russia. It was thus translated in the “ Ladies’ Magazine ” of January, 1836. and afterwards quoted by a correspondent of “ Notes and Queries ” : Suoh was the degeneracy of those days that she (the Empress Elizabeth) was the mother of several illegitimate children, who were taken privately from the palace. One of these, the son of a very handsome Englishman, a Russian merchant resident at St Petersburg, was noted in England for his great munificence and noble person, and as a princely patron of the fine arts. His name will long be remembered rs the founder of a gallery of paintings. The story goes that, when a babe, this gentleman was let down in a basket from a window in the Empress's

palace at St -Petersburg, and endowed by his imperial mother with a fortune of 100,000 roubles of ggjd. This fortune was well employed by his father, who brought the princely boy up as a merchant, and, when of age, he made in this country such a prudent and benevolent use of his vast means that his name will he placed in our annals as the rival, in good deeds, of the Oreshams and Herriots. He died full of years and honours in England in 1813. His daughter. the beautiful Jul in A , married a Russian prince ; and his son follows the steps of his father in England. This strange story is not incorporated in the account of Angerstein in the “ Dictionary of National Biography,” and it certainly inquires one correction ; Angerstein died, not in 1813, hut 1 n 1823. The centenary of his death will occur on January 22 next. If the account of him given in “ The Georgian Era ” is correct, the name of his father, the “ very handsome Englishman,” was Andrew Thompson. “ JULIANS.” From these and other sources of infomation, it appears that young Angerstein was trained in his father’s London counting-house, and that ho quickly showed that he was a born man of busi ness. Later it became evident that he had also an intellect which enabled hi.n to mix in the best sort of society. At the age of twenty-one he became an underwriter at Lloyd’s, which meant then, as it does now. that he was

business man of great acumen and learning. It is said that “ policies sanctioned by his subscription speedily acquired so great an authority that for some years they were, by way of distinction. colled “Julians.” Turning now to Mr Sidney Boulton's interesting paper, we rind ourselves in the vear 1774. A FAMOUS COFFEE-HOUSE. In that year “ Lloyds '' found it sell cramped and somewhat chaotic in the narrow limits of its old habitat or frequenting place, Lloyd's Coffee House Here we may ask, Why ‘ .Lloyd’s” ? Who was Lloyd ? Very little is known about him. Edward Lloyd was one ol the first London coffee-house founders. He began in Tower Street somewhere about the year 1688, and then removed to the corner ot Abehurch Lane, in Lombard Street. A few years later he issued “ Lloyd’s Nows.” The place became a business centre and an informal club. “ LLOYD S.” Lloyd died in 1712, eight years before the foundation of the first Marine Insurance Company. Mr Boulton is fully justified in remarking that “ the name of this humble Coffee Man is more often on the lips of men than any other name in the commercial world. It hagathered around it traditions and asso- j ciations that have made it of worldwide fame. . . . It must have some | st range fascination about it. It has , been appropriated by shipping and in- ! aurance companies ail over the world, without any other ostensible reason ! than that of its natural charm” In, lhorfc, the world would no more thin'i ot speaking disrespectfully of Lloyd's than of the Equator. It was in 1720 the year of the South Sea Bubble, that Lloyd’s proper quarters in Lombard Street were found to be too small, an i a building scheme was proposed. This came to nothing. Hut Julius Angerstein came to something. It was on liis initiative that the business was transI ferred to the second of the three Royal a Exchanges. Indeed, he drove it there Bby the bold expedient of taking vacant ■rooms in the Exchange and fating the ■committee with the fact. The years ■1774 to 1824, another exact half-cen-were the Angerstein Age of Many of the members were and Angerstein tire most of all. W A MAN OF MANY PARTS. Such was the d< stinj the basket! His activities took a wide range. He was a pioneer, ii not the actual founder, .of our lifeboat system. He financed the Veterinary College. 1 should imagine that he was one of the first men of wealth and spirit to offer a large reward for the apprehension of a great criminal. He offered it for in formation that would lead to the arrest of that eighteenth century forerunner of “ Jack the Ripper ” known as “ The Monster ; ’ (and by his real, name, which was Renwick Williams), who. however, could be charged only with dastardly attacks on women, not murder. Into his fine house at No. ICO. Pall Mall, on the site of the Reform Club, Angerstein gathered a collection of great paintings, which, after his death, were purchased by the Government for £57 000 and became the nucleus of the National Gallery. Angerstein’s house was, in fact, the National Gallery until 1837. His pictures were thirty-eight in number, and included such splendid works as Biombo’s “ Raising of Lazarus, ** Rembrandt’s “ Woman Taken in Adultery, ** Hegarth’s “ Marriage a la Mode ” (now in the Tate Gallery) and four Claudes. I must add that Mr Boulton narrates the later history of Lloyds, now the largest insurance institution in the world and the great school and training college for underwriters. He gives many interesting particulars and figures concerning its work, and his booklet iadmirably illustrated.