By Phil Egan for the Sarnia Journal
On a cold January day in 1866, a calamitous fire had struck Sarnia’s downtown core. As consecutive buildings caught fire on Front Street, citizens rushed into the buildings, hauling out rescued goods and property and placing it into a growing pile of goods in the centre of the road. The temptation had proven too strong for some of the town’s seedier elements, who used the general confusion to help themselves, carrying away property.
That evening, the town hired a team of special constables to guard the mass of material rescued from the burned shops that was now lying in the middle of Front Street, but massive losses by theft had, unfortunately, 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 discuss the losses with their insurance companies, a rumour began to circulate suggesting that the insurance companies were attempting to cut their losses. They would cover claims relating to goods destroyed by fire for those who had purchased fire coverage, the rumour claimed, but would not cover losses for goods rescued from the flames and subsequently stolen by vandals from Front Street.
The Observer criticized the insurance companied for attempting to drive hard bargains with the bereft merchants.
At least one insurance company, the Niagara Mutual, hurried to defend its corporate 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.”
Despite this seemingly altruistic stance, the insurance company couldn’t help taking one notable swipe at the claims made by the merchants, saying in a letter to the Observer 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 that you’re trying to cheat us.
(Sigh) Some things never change.