Abstract
This essay is about the “limb” in the familiar phrase “life and limb,” and about the early modern history of what it’s worth. In his Essay Upon Projects (1697) Daniel Defoe proposes a form of insurance “by Contribution” or by “Friendly-Societies,” in which compensation for bodily harms suffered by members is supplied from a fund to which all members have contributed (Defoe 48–52).1 Unlike Seamen in the king’s service, who for their injuries were compensated with “Smart Money … proportioned to their Hurt,” those in the Merchant Service received nothing if injured on the job. This problem Defoe proposes to remedy by instituting “an Office of Ensurance for Seaman,” so that if any were injured at sea they would “receive from the said Office the following Sums of Money, either in Pension for Life, or Ready Money, as he pleas’d” [the first column is ready money]:
Although Defoe also provides that should a subscriber die, his wife would receive a payment of £50, compensation to dependants in case of death is not his primary concern; he disapproves of life insurance as such, apparently on grounds of providentialism, and he’s primarily interested in the monetary value not of a human life but of parts of the body.
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© 2003 Linda Woodbridge
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Wilson, L. (2003). Monetary Compensation for Injuries to the Body, A.D. 602–1697. In: Woodbridge, L. (eds) Money and the Age of Shakespeare: Essays in New Economic Criticism. Early Modern Cultural Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982469_2
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