Phil Egan

On a cold January day in 1866 a calamitous fire struck Sarnia’s downtown core.

As consecutive buildings on Front Street caught fire citizens rushed in, hauling out rescued goods and property and placing it in a growing pile in the centre of the road.

But the temptation proved too strong for some of the town’s seedier elements, who used the general confusion to help themselves and spirit away property.

That evening, the town hired a team of special constables to guard the mass of material rescued from burned shops and heaped on Front Street. But massive losses by theft had, apparently, already been added to the huge fire losses.

The Observer, editorializing in the days after the great fire, lamented the behaviour of some of its more wonton citizenry: “It is humiliating to think that human beings are to be found in any community so wicked as to seize the opportunity of a fire for the purpose of plundering the property which others are at the very time labouring so seriously to save; yet we have too much reason to believe there was as large an amount of this kind of robbery perpetrated at the fire on Monday as there usually is in larger places; or probably more in proportion for the simple reason that proper precautions to prevent it could not be taken under the circumstances.”

As merchants began to report their losses a rumour began to circulate that the insurance companies were trying to cut their own losses. They would cover claims relating to goods destroyed by fire for those who had purchased fire coverage, the rumour claimed, but wouldn’t pay out on the items rescued and subsequently stolen.

The newspaper criticized the insurers for attempting to drive hard bargains with bereft merchants.

At least one insurance company, the Niagara Mutual, rushed to defend its honour. Using such an excuse to refuse to honour a claim was “contrary to the principles that have guided the Niagara Mutual in its settlement of claims for the past twenty-five years,” it said.

Despite this seemingly altruistic stance, the company couldn’t resist taking a swipe at the merchant claims, stating in a letter to the editor: “When an unascertained loss has been sustained, the imagination of the sufferer is generally very lively in the direction of his own interest, which is, after all, only human nature.”

In other words, we’ll pay your claim but we still believe it’s likely you’re trying to cheat us.

Some things, it seems, never change.