A NOVEL INSURANCE COMPANY.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2451, 13 February 1882, Page 3

A NOVEL INSURANCE COMPANY.

Within the last three or four days a number of circulars have been freely issued (says tho “ Age ” of a recent date), purporting to be copies of the prospectus of the Victoria Marriage Insurance Company Limited. The inducements held out to subscribers are that upon payment of an admittance fee of 10s they may become members, and that in the event of their marriage they will be entitled to the receipt of a sum of £2OO. It is given out that the society is established for the purpose of encouraging marriages, by affording to poor people opportunities and inducements for joining in the bonds of wedlock with gain to themselves and without fear of succumbing to those pecuniary obstacles which stand in tho way of wculd-be benedicts of limited means. According to the document which is before us, the number of members ia to be limited to 1000. A subscription fee of 10s, as already stated, will be required from each of these, and upon the occasion of any member’s marriage a call of 5j will bo made upon each unmarried member, in order to meet the payment of £2OO accruing, due to the particular member who has had the temerity to enter the matrimonial state. A certificate of marriege is to be forwarded to the manager of the company within seven days after the ceremony, and within sixty days after proof of the same the married member will receive his £2OO. A member after his marriage is relieved from all further liability, but until he is married he is required to pay a call of 5s on the occasion of every marriage of his fellow members. So the game goes on, with the additional inducement, in order, wo suspect, to attract non-marrying subjects, that members of six years’ standing, and unmarried, will receive £IOO on application to the manager at bin office. All this, of course, looks very well, but in the absence of any provisional directors, or the name of any secretary or manager holding a responsible position, the project must be looked upon with some suspicion. The office of tho company is at No. 5 Eastern Arcade, and was, when a reporter from this journal called there, in charge of a pleasant-looking gentleman with a dark beard, who in the absence of the manager expressed himself prepared to afford all information. Ne person of ordinary common sense or judgment will be likely to be led away by tho pamphlet in question, but it is very probable that through tho representations of the canvassers (who, we are informed, are females) some unsuspecting people may bo induced to lend a willing ear to the arguments placed before them as reasons for enrolling themselves as members. As a matter of fact about forty persons, so we are told, have by payment already qualified themselves as such. We do not say that the project is a swindle, but we are at liberty to regard the prospectus as savoring very much of tho Montague Tigg The only name appearing on the prospectus is that of J- Lewis, hot-air printer, 201 Elizabeth street, Melbourne, A number of “ press opinions ” also appear in the circular, but the several journals from which they are extracted are not quoted. The last line of the prospectus is perhaps the best. “Application by letter, containing admittance fee and address, will be attended to.”