204 L McFall
in designing letterhead graphics (Perman 2019). This reputational work was
circulated and repeated in an extended range of print and other materials.
By the time the flagrantly fraudulent Independent West Middlesex Fire
and Life Assurance Company collapsed in 1840, print was one of several
surfaces used to display corporate identity. The West Middlesex was a
company that capitalised on the speculative bubble provoked at the time
by the proliferation of new, joint-stock, and especially insurance companies (Taylor 2011; Alborn 2002). The West Middlesex provided the model
for both Thackeray’s Independent West Diddlesex Fire and Life Assurance
Company in Samuel Titmarsh and Dickens’ Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested
Loan and Life Assurance Company in Martin Chuzzlewit (Pugsley 1991). It
is Dickens’ caricature though that offers the most detailed glimpse of the
form insurance branding might have taken.
The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company
started into existence one morning, not an infant institution but a
grown-up company running along at a great pace, and doing business
right and left: with a ‘branch’ in a first floor over a tailor’s at the Westend of the town, and main offices in a new street in the City, comprising
the upper part of a spacious house resplendent in stucco and plateglass, with wire blinds in all the windows, and ‘Anglo-Bengalee’ worked
into the pattern of every one of them …. Within, the offices were newly
plastered, newly painted, newly papered, newly countered, newly floorclothed, newly tabled, newly chaired, newly fitted up in every way, with
goods that were substantial and expensive, and designed (like the company) to last. Business! Look at the green ledgers with red backs, like
strong cricket balls beaten flat, the court guides directories, day-books,
almanacks, letter-boxes, weighing machines for letters, rows of firebuckets for dashing out a conflagration in its first spark, and saving the
immense wealth in notes and bonds belonging to the company; look at
the iron safes, the clock, the office seal – in its capacious self, security for
anything. Solidity! Look at the massive blocks of marble in the chimneypieces and the gorgeous parapet on the top of the house! Publicity! Why,
Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company is
painted on the very coal scuttles. It is repeated at every turn until the
eyes are dazzled with it and the head is giddy ….
(Dickens 1994, pp. 418–419)
This is a caricature of course but Dickens’ description captures an environment in which branding on all sorts of surfaces had taken off. This accelerated even further when companies began to design their own offices. The
Anglo-Bengalee may have been housed in a building ‘resplendent in stucco
and plate-glass’ but it was not designed specifically for insurance. As the
century progressed insurance offices, followed banks, to become among
the earliest organisations to design and build their own premises. These
in designing letterhead graphics (Perman 2019). This reputational work was
circulated and repeated in an extended range of print and other materials.
By the time the flagrantly fraudulent Independent West Middlesex Fire
and Life Assurance Company collapsed in 1840, print was one of several
surfaces used to display corporate identity. The West Middlesex was a
company that capitalised on the speculative bubble provoked at the time
by the proliferation of new, joint-stock, and especially insurance companies (Taylor 2011; Alborn 2002). The West Middlesex provided the model
for both Thackeray’s Independent West Diddlesex Fire and Life Assurance
Company in Samuel Titmarsh and Dickens’ Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested
Loan and Life Assurance Company in Martin Chuzzlewit (Pugsley 1991). It
is Dickens’ caricature though that offers the most detailed glimpse of the
form insurance branding might have taken.
The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company
started into existence one morning, not an infant institution but a
grown-up company running along at a great pace, and doing business
right and left: with a ‘branch’ in a first floor over a tailor’s at the Westend of the town, and main offices in a new street in the City, comprising
the upper part of a spacious house resplendent in stucco and plateglass, with wire blinds in all the windows, and ‘Anglo-Bengalee’ worked
into the pattern of every one of them …. Within, the offices were newly
plastered, newly painted, newly papered, newly countered, newly floorclothed, newly tabled, newly chaired, newly fitted up in every way, with
goods that were substantial and expensive, and designed (like the company) to last. Business! Look at the green ledgers with red backs, like
strong cricket balls beaten flat, the court guides directories, day-books,
almanacks, letter-boxes, weighing machines for letters, rows of firebuckets for dashing out a conflagration in its first spark, and saving the
immense wealth in notes and bonds belonging to the company; look at
the iron safes, the clock, the office seal – in its capacious self, security for
anything. Solidity! Look at the massive blocks of marble in the chimneypieces and the gorgeous parapet on the top of the house! Publicity! Why,
Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company is
painted on the very coal scuttles. It is repeated at every turn until the
eyes are dazzled with it and the head is giddy ….
(Dickens 1994, pp. 418–419)
This is a caricature of course but Dickens’ description captures an environment in which branding on all sorts of surfaces had taken off. This accelerated even further when companies began to design their own offices. The
Anglo-Bengalee may have been housed in a building ‘resplendent in stucco
and plate-glass’ but it was not designed specifically for insurance. As the
century progressed insurance offices, followed banks, to become among
the earliest organisations to design and build their own premises. These