Category: Domestic History

Posted on

18th Century London — Obtaining Fire Insurance for Your Home and Protecting Against Fire.

And now for another installment from John Trusler’s The London Adviser and Guide: Containing every Instruction and Information Useful and Necessary to Persons Living in London and Coming to Reside There, 1786.  

This post could possibly be the most boring post in the history of blogs, as Trusler explores the different insurance plans offered.  I would advise reading a few of the policies and then skip  down to the more interesting sections on preventing fire, as well as the city’s preventive measures and responses to fire.

I’ve tried to break up the tedium of the information with images from London: being an Accurate History and Description of the British metropolis and Its Neighbourhood : to Thirty Miles Extent, from an Actual Perambulation, 1809

Let’s dive in…

_________________________________________________________

Insurance Offices from Fire

19. When your house is furnished, the next precaution to be taken is, to insure it from fire: this may be done at several public insurance-offices, and at a very small annual premium. The landlord generally insures the buildings,

Continue reading “18th Century London — Obtaining Fire Insurance for Your Home and Protecting Against Fire.”

Posted on

How to Lease a Home in 18th Century London

Today I’m going to begin the first of what will be an ongoing, long and possibly unfinished project– to make an easy-to-read version of the  late 1700s book The London Adviser and Guide by John Trusler.  I think the extended title says it all: 

THE London Adviser and Guide: Containing every Instruction and Information Useful and Necessary to Persons Living in London and coming to reside there; In order to enable them to enjoy Security and Tranquility, and conduct their Domestic Affairs with Prudence and Economy* Together with an Abstract Of all those Laws which regard their protection against the Frauds, Impositions, Insults and Accidents to which they are there liable. Useful also to Foreigners.

* Note, This Work treats fully of every Thing on the above Subjects that can be thought of. 

 

So, let’s get started with the fine print details of leasing a home in London.

Houses and lodgings in London are let either furnished or unfurnished, and their prices are according to their size, their situation, and their manner of sitting up. In the central part of London and Westminster, such as the neighbourhood of St. James’s, Charing-Cross, the squares, -Covent-Garden, the theatres, St. Paul’s Churchyard, Cheapside, the Royal Exchange, &c. they are high rented; in more distant parts they are cheaper, and in by-streets, courts, lanes, alleys, and such obscure places, cheaper still.

Continue reading “How to Lease a Home in 18th Century London”