Michael D.Heath-Caldwell M.Arch.

1960 - 1961 - 1962

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Rev. Capt C.H.Heath-Caldwell DSO RN aged 71/72

Violet M.Heath-Caldwell (ne Palmer) aged 74/75

Patricia M.C.Heath-Caldwell aged 40/41

Diana Charlton - (Danny) - (ne Heath-Caldwell) aged 39/40

Rosalind Attwood - (Ros) - (ne Heath-Caldwell) aged 35/36

J.A. Heath-Caldwell (NZ) aged 30/31

D.A.Heath-Caldwell (NZ) (ne Jones) aged 25/26

Vice Admiral Alexander Palmer ADC, DSO, OBE, RN. aged 80/81

Irving Palmer OBE, RN.

Lady Genesta Hamilton (ne Heath) aged 61/62

Madeline Marion de Salis (ne Heath) aged 68/69

Rosamond Heath (Posy) aged 67/68

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Monday 10 April 1961
Evening News (London)

First of a new series by John Marshall - adapted from the book by John Circuitt
He Made a Million taking risks.
Secrets of Lloyds

Many men of courage, initiative and imagination have played their part in the building of the City of London's mighty reputation all over the world.

But few stand out as the giants of their day, the men whose names are inevitably and indissolubly attached to one particular facet of City life.

Such was Cuthbert Eden Heath, the Colossus of Lloyds, who transformed its activities and opened up a vast range of insurance bringing new prosperity to the City.

Heath, when the centenary of his birth was celebrated last year, was described as "father of the modern Lloyd's." Yet he only entered the insurance world by chance. His father, Sir Leopold Heath,was an admiral. 

Modest.

Cuthbert wanted to join brother Herbert in the Navy, but he was rejected through slight deafness. So he turned to business. It was a modest beginning, but from it he became a dominant figure for many years founder, chairman and inventive genius of the biggest firm of non-marine insurance brokers in the world. 

He died at almost 80, a millionaire. 

It was in 1906 the C.E. Heath and Co., Insurance brokers, took on the staff a junior clerk named John Circuitt. His father was joint General Manager of Lloyds Bank and Heath was a customer. 
Fabulous.

Now, more than half a century after that meeting and 21 years after Heath's death, young Circuitt has written about those adventurous pioneering years.

Circuitt describes him as one of the biggest men in every sense, he ever met. He was well above six feet, broad and massive with hands "which resembled outsize bunches of bananas." 
He weighed more than 18 stone, yet he was not fat, and indeed rode to hounds with the Surrey Union.

Everything about him was outsize, his head, his jowl, his heavy down-drooping yet immaculate moustache, his stiff collar, quite four inches deep, his pearl tiepin.
He never used a carriage or a car to go to his office but travelled by tube, walking to the nearest station from his home, first in Portman Square, later Alford House, Piccadilly. 
A Failure.

That London house cost him £100,000 to build and another £100,000 to furnish. He also owned Anstie Grange at Holmwood, Surrey, a villa in the South of France, and a 120 ton yacht.
He frequently visited Monte Carlo and Cannes where he would talk French with a pugnaciously English accent somewhat like that of Sir Winston Churchill. He might accompany friends to the Casino but he never gambled. 

After hunting his two chief recreations were fishing and shooting. One year he went to Canada to shoot moose. He told Circuitt afterwards in his own nonchalant way that he took one shot, missed - and returned to England. Failure was anathema to him. 

Yet he was a self-effacing man who never sought honours and never received them except for an O.B.E. There was nothing of the tycoon about him. 

One day, after Heath had become a mighty power in the insurance world, Sir Walter Hargreaves, a member of the Committee of Lloyd's, strolled into his office to discuss a big contract. He wanted something in writing and asked Heath if his secretary could come in for a minute. "Certainly," said Heath, and called through the hatch to the company secretary. "No Heath, my dear fellow." said Sir Walter. "I meant your personal secretary, just to take this down." 

"My private secretary?" replied Heath in a tone of amazement "I haven't got one. I don't write a letter a week." 

So Circuitt's secretary took the letter and Sir Walter left, muttering "Incredible!" 
Heath would sit in his modest office, alone, without a secretary, records, or even a typewriter. 
When he wanted to write a business letter, which was rarely, he wrote it in his own hand and left it on his desk with the envelope. A clerk would then copy it and post the original.

Sometimes he would lunch alone at the City Club in Board Street. Other days he would remain in his office, sit back in his chair with his big hands behind his head - and think.

After the "think" which usually produced a brilliant departure in insurance he would order cold meat, cheese and stout.

School Tie
He always wore a top hat except on Friday when he wore a bowler, his umbrella was always unrolled, and the collar of his overcoat was half up and half turned down. 

He arrived at his office when he wished and went to the underwriting "box" at Lloyds only when his deputy was away or when he was bored. 

All sorts of people saw him in that office and he was a target for the unscrupulous, shrewd as he was - because he could not resist titles and so-called "breeding." 

Circuit, who became his "watchdog" and eventually moved into the office with him, modestly asserts that he was chosen because he wore a top hat and could wear an old school tie. 
In his idler moments "the Guv-nor" as he was always known at the office would confide in young Circuitt. Casually he would describe how he effected the first burglary policy. It was typical of his extraordinary way of doing momentous business. One day in 1887 a broker who was insuring the contents of his house against fire asked him "more or less as a joke" whether he would insure him against burglary as well.

The guv'nor clasped his head for just a moment, then said "Why not?" and promptly did so. 
Some months passed before the news leaked out: then, evening newspaper headlines proclaimed that it was now possible to insure against burglary. Rates then, by the way, varied from 1s.6d to 5s per centum.

In just such an apparently casual way Heath extended this cover to ordinary loss. A relation had insured her jewellery with him against burglary. She found one piece was missing but she could not prove it was stolen. 

Cuthbert Heath pondered, then told her that though he was not officially liable ther was no reason why she should not in future insure against common or garden loss - at a higher rate, say 10s. each £100.

That, he would recall, was the start of "all-risks" insurance which today brings in huge sums in premiums. 

Similarly unspectacularly, he gave reinsurance facilities to a British company for its fire risks in the United States - which started the Anglo-American insurance connection - so strong today.
Heath also introduced a new type of fire cover. It was possible only to insure business premises and contents. Heath decided that it a shop was, in fact, burnt out, the shop-keeper should be paid for loss of his profits during rebuilding and restocking. 

He was regarded as crazily encouraging arson but he took the view that, by and large, the public were honest and they were entitled to insure against such contingencies at a suitable premium.
Tribute

Mr.D.E.W. Gibb, in his book "Lloyds of London," put Cuthbert Eden Heath first in their "roll of honour" and paid this tribute:

"Every time a non-marine risk is written at Lloyd's, every time a loss of profits risk or burglary risk is accepted by a company, every time a company or the British Government insures a mechant against his bad debts, then the underwriting genius of Heath is recognised." 

John Circuitt, during his long association with Cuthbert Heath - he rose to be one of his directors and himself a "personality" among the brokers inside and outside Lloyd's - was concerned with many unusual insurance transactions. But none was more strange and dramatic than that which followed the theft of the fabulous Max Mayer pearl necklace. The story of his own hazardous part in its recovery has never been told before. It will start tomorrow. 

So tomorrow - Secret of the greatest pearl robbery, Part 1 - "Plot and Counterplot." 

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Thursday 20 April 1961
Evening News (London)

The Riddle of the Flying Golf Party
Fifty years ago, when flying machines were new -fangled contraptions, aviation insurance was cautiously introduced. It is a common fallacy, according to Mr.John Circuitt, that there was little or no aviation insurance before World War I.

Actually, as Mr.Circuitt well remembers, the first policies were issued in 1910. They were concerned more with Thirdy Party than with the pilot or his machine. Some, in fact, were Third Party only.

For forced landings were frequent occurrences, jeopardising cattle, sheep and growing crops - which were often damaged more by the rushing, gaping sightseers than the plane itself.
What it amounted to in many instances was this - if your whirling propeller killed a cow you were covered, but if it killed your mechanic, you were not.

The hazards were formidable and the aircraft owner had to be ready to face heavy loss. Insurance conditions were so onerous that no claim could be made for any accident outside the United Kingdom.

Or for an accident while the machine was in a "shed" or "store," or for an accident occurring during the night (between one hour after sunset and one hour before sunrise) or for an accident while the aeroplane was being flown over a city or town with a population exceeding 5,000. 

In 1912 Cuthbert Heath was approached by a well-known broker on behalf of a client who was flying in military exercises on Salisbury Plain. He was asked whether he would insure the aircraft. Heath demurred but eventually agreed to cover him "as and from the first flight," intending to exclude preliminary trial flights. 

This ambiguous phrase recoiled on him. A great gale blew up during the trials; the pilot crashed and was killed. Mr.Heath pointed out that he had not intended to cover trial flights. 
However, he paid up, but declined to handle any more aviation insurance. This meant that it was virtually unobtainable until 1919. Then air insurance became one of the major developments at Lloyd's. Aircraft construction had so improved that it was now thought practicable to insure machines, passengers, even goods.

Big losses initially were envisaged so a powerful group involving 28 companies was formed. The "guv'nor,"  otherwise Heath, a chairman of one of these companies, the Excess was the inspiration behind the scheme.

A few years later, in 1930 there occurred a tragic air crash which caused Lloyd's underwriters considerable anxiety and, incidentally, directed attention to the rigid observance of safety regulations.

A Junker single-engined aircraft flew a distinguished party home from a gold and gaming weekend at Le Touquet. On board was the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, Viscoutess Ednam, Sir Edward Ward Bt., and Mrs Henry Loeffler. The plane mysteriously crashed among the cherry orchards of Meopham in Kent on its way to Croydon. All the occupants, including the crew of two, were killed.

The were flung from the plane when it crashed and their belongings  - suitcases, clothes, golf clubs and jewellery were scattered over a wide area. Some of the jewellery was of high value and, naturally, insured. It was not possible to get permission for a search on the spot and it would have been indelicate, to say the least of it, to cross-examine bereaved relatives about claims.
Eventually, some pearls belonging to Lady Ednam and Mrs. Loeffier were found, but not one of the valuable brooches and rings the visitors were known to have been wearing. It will never be known what happened to them. They may have been trodden into the ground by search parties. Or they may have been picked up by unscrupulous people who pocketed the. The claims, though not to be compared with those of later years, were formidable. 

More fortunate were the underwriters concerned in the Prestwick air disaster six years ago. A B.O.A.C. Stratocruiser bound for New York on Christmas Day caught fire on the runway and 28 passengers lost their lives: only one survived, wit seven of the crew.
Some time later it was established that a registered postal packet containing diamonds valued at £800,000 had been on board. A well-known firm of assessors was called in and the most remarkable salvage operation in air history was carried out. This took months. First huge quantities of soil had to be moved from the scene of the fire to a hangar, where it was minutely sieved. Many stones were recovered in this way. But even more unlikely was the recovery, by chemical treatment, of diamonds which had become fused to parts of the charred liner.
The loss to Lloyds was dramatically reduced. 

Now, in the jet age, the premium for personal accident cover and material damage indemnity does not necessarily go to the same place. For more companies and underwriteers are willing to take the passenger's premium but leave severely alone the costly aircraft. Mr.Circuitt sounds this warning: "My opinion, after making many enqiries, is that very shortly, even if no more than average casualties occur, it will be impossible without practical assistance from the various governments for the insurance world to cover more than a fraction of jet aircraft and their attendant requirements.
Tomorrow - The Lloyd's that Heath transformed.

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Sunday 2 September 1961
The Sphere

Profit at Lloyds

Lloyds underwriters recently reported their largest profits for five years. Lloyds account, which runs on a three-year basis, showed that for 1958 the underwriters earned £14,000,000, against £10,000,000 in 1957, and the largest total since £16,000,000 reported for 1954. - - Over recent years a number of insurance broking firms have become public companies, so that investors can buy shares which do benefit from Lloyd's firms, so that these banks' earnings will also gain indirectly from Lloyd's profits.

One of these broking companies recently made public is Excess Insurance, whose shares were marketed on the London Stock Exchange in 1958. Against the original dealing price of 35s. these 10s. shares touched nearly £5 earlier this year - a reflection of investors' assessment of growth possibilities. Excess Insurance's investment income is rather larger than average at Lloyd's, reaching £355,000 last year against a transfer of just over £1,000,000 from underwriting accounts. Profits suffered a mild setback in 1958, falling from £122,000 to £97,000 net but have since recovered strongly, reaching £168,000 in 1960. Speaking earlier this year Mr.C.T.Gould, the chairman, reported that the unclosed years (1959 and 1960) showed a further increase in premium income combined with an improved claim ratio. 
Reporting to share-holders before the Chancellor's request, Mr.Gould added that the board hoped to pay at least a 27½ per cent dividend, the same rate as before the one-for-five free share issue.

1962
 

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