It is now more than a quarter of a century since the proprietor of a penny weekly offered to pay £1,000 to the next of kin of anyone fatally injured in a railway accident, if a copy of his periodical was found on the victim's body. For many years there was no extension of this
anyone who could prove that they offer gel that it was extended to were regular subscribers to the paper, whether they had a copy of it on them at the time of the accident or not. Rival periodicals adopted the same device, and after several years a popular daily paper adopted it, but restricted payments to those people who had taken the trouble to fill in a coupon and send it to the newspaper office.
Then the great war came and caused a paper shortage, and instead of trying to increase their circulations the popular newspaper were hard put to it to reduce them without damaging their goodwill, and appealed to buyers to share their copy with friends. Now the war is over the old rivalries have broken out again, and as the police come down very sharply on any form of competition for prizes with an element of chance in it, the distracted editors have turned to the many forms of insurance for attractions to tempt the sporting instincts of their readers, and steal a march over their rivals for popular favour.
The £1,000 has been gradually increased to £3,500, or £7,000, if both the reader and his wife are killed, and it has been extended to every kind of vehicle—trams, buses, taxi-cabs, char-a-bancs, and steamers.
Then a scheme of disablement benefits was introduced ensuring the payment of weekly sums for a long period to subscribers injured in accidents of the same kind. Competition became more keen, and accidents in the street, on the football field, and in private vehicles were included. The next move was revolutionary, although it did not largely increase the liability of the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.