Oooooh, nice. I’ll plug that with my next mortality post.
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Interesting indeed!
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Here ya go:
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Thanks meep!
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TIL what free coloured means.
So I’m seeing this term in one of my books, I really wasn’t clear on what that means. A specific type of colour? Maybe it meant some variation of ‘white’? I mean, I don’t even know if there’s different adjectives for the term ‘coloured’.
OK, so it turns out, it means free vs. slave. Never even crossed my mind. But, they collected stats for:
- whites
- free coloured
- free mulatto
- slave coloured
- slave mulatto
I mean, it makes sense that they would collect this info? Still pretty bizarre.
And I’m considering going in a slightly different direction. I’ve still got a ton of books to scan, but a lot of them are ones I find less interesting - info on specific companies from back when, sales stuff, best reports, that kind of fairly dry stuff.
I think I want to buy a bunch of books on mortality stats, scan those, and put together some sort of funky calculator that shows how you might have died if it was 200 years ago. There’s all sorts of weird ways to die that I don’t think are even around anymore. I think a lot of stuff went away with penicillin.
Scratching my head too. Was someone trying to sell slave insurance?
Data was from the US census, so maybe not entirely insurance related.
I assume so. Ignoring the obvious human rights problems with slavery, slaves were an expensive asset and insuring against one’s untimely death would be financially prudent. I believe it was not uncommon to take out a mortgage on a slave. So it seems logical that they would have been insurable.
Obviously not for the obscenely rich, but for folks who wanted slaves but struggled with the price tag.
None of that should be interpreted as any sort of acceptance of the practice, mind you. But if you start with the premise that it’s a thing that happened, the rest follows.
Ok. In which year was this US census?
Here you go… New York Life was among the insurers who sold slave insurance. Also Aetna and US Life (part of AIG).
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Thanks a lot.
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1850
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I started going down the rabbit hole on that. Looks like in 2010 or so, there’s was some investigations by the gov’t in california to track down companies that had sold slave’s insurance, and I guess to start paying reperations?
I’m not sure that insuring the lives of slaves, given that slavery is acceptable and commonplace at the time, is any more reprehensible that the basic idea of life insurance. Like, they’re insuring slaves, so making money on trading in people. Which doesn’t seem that far away from…families who are insuring wage earner’s income with life insurance. Still trafficking on death. Not sure in this case the slave part is really relevant.
This seems like something I don’t want to think about too much.
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The only thing I can think of is if there’s a moral hazard aspect.
The slave cost $X when healthy. He’s sick. Doctors & medicine will cost $0.3X and the policy pays $0.75X.
If the policy doesn’t exist obviously you pay the doctor. But if the policy does exist now you just let the slave die and buy another one.
That said, I don’t know how realistic it is that the medical costs back then would be that high.
Probably more thought than I want to put into it.
Well, at the time it would been more like Property Insurance. So CAS would be more involved than SOA.
Yes, I’m being facetious.
Wondering what clauses would be in for a slaveowner (or overseer) causing the death of the insured slave.
I just bought a book from abebooks. 40 usd with 35 shipping.
Seller messaged me saying the book is over 4lbs so they have to send it priority international, and that’s another 25 bucks.
That’s horsepucks right? 60usd to mail a book to Canada?
Need a mule for smuggling purposes.
I just looked up usps rates. Looks like $60 is about right for a 5lb book.
Damn.