Summary

Cep opens the third Chapter with a lengthy history about the life insurance industry. She discusses the burning of London and how this led to Barebone’s “fire-marks” which provided insurance against larger fire risks (30). Afterwards, Barebone created life insurance, and this eventually caused a religious conflict. As Cep explains, life insurance went against the practices of “devout Christians” who were not supposed to concern themselves with “the details of their deaths” (31). People eventually got around this by seeing geological disasters as not “divine punishments” and using life insurance as a way to “provide for one’s family” (33). In America, the Civil War provided the same fuel for life insurance that geological disasters did for Europe.

In America, however, life insurance, Cep explains was “large, lawless and lucrative for undertakes” (35). Murder was one way to win...