by Ashly Graham
The most respected syndicates were conspicuous by their absence from a slip, and the most difficult question a broker could be asked, by underwriters who looked to others to guide them in their decisions, was why so-and-so was not on it. The assumption was that he had turned the thing down, or had been holding out for a higher rate, or that he considered it a certain loss-maker. Another tell-tale sign of difficulty in the placement was if weak syndicates were in an unduly prominent position.
Underwriters who were nonetheless prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, or were less than gung-ho about the deal on offer, might express their caution by writing a small or “watching” line, otherwise known as “giving the thing a tickle”. This earned them the right to see the renewal twelve months later, and assess from the updated information and loss experience whether or not they had been right to be wary. If not, they might increase their line; if so, they would come off altogether and admonish themselves for not heeding their instinct.
Underwriters were devious: if they did not wish to be seen by the rest of the market to have supported a contract, they would pencil their participations in minuscule writing in the bottom corner of the last panel of the slip; or scribble a promised line on a piece of paper for collection at the end, when all the other lines were down and no one would know that they were on board. Or they would offer a line “to finish”, which meant that they only got to see the risk again if the market consensus was that it was “a go” and the broker needed their support to complete his order.
Brokers were treated to numerous displays of histrionics. Underwriters would hum and ha and suck their pencils, haruspicate, scry, and consult everything from actuarial tables to crystal balls and astrolabes in their attempts to pick winners, come up with rates, or determine whether those that they were being offered were adequate. Those who blustered did not always write the biggest lines, and there was the occasional mouse who could roar when he felt moved to do so. In a market where billions of dollars...the majority of business was American...of the world’s most volatile risks were traded, most underwriters enjoyed their jobs and the sociability of their environment, and did not have trouble sleeping at night. In the midst of discussing the biggest contracts they would trade gossip with the brokers, tell dirty jokes, make luncheon arrangements, shoot rubber bands at their neighbours and look innocently away, and shoot paper darts at the checkerboard soundproofing panels in the ceiling in an attempt to make them stick in the holes.
Brokers’ pranks were common: childish things like nailing a fish to the bottom of another underwriter’s desk drawer and seeing how long it took him to trace the smell; and telling another in an underwriter’s queue ahead of him that he was being called from the rostrum, in order that he might steal his place.
Although most brokers stood as they went through their spiels, sometimes they would sit on a flap that could be raised from the bench at the underwriter’s side. This afforded the risk-taker the opportunity to nudge, with a squelch of his buttocks, the supplicant onto the floor when he had had enough of him. Underwriters, unlike entry boys, were not usually thin on account of their long and extravagant lunches. But in general brokers preferred to stand: in addition to whatever advantage height over their marks afforded them in their negotiations, many underwriters wore infrequently dry-cleaned suits redolent of British Rail and fried food, bathed irregularly and did not often change their shirts, and were not on speaking terms with their toothbrushes.
Because the rents at Lloyd’s were so high, about a hundred pounds per square foot, every inch of the Floor for all its haphazard nature was used efficiently. In the absence of the round files of waste-paper baskets (and there were no computers) everyone threw their rubbish on the marble floors, so that by the end of the day the brokers were surfing waves of pink blotting-paper torn from oblong blocks, which the waiters distributed to each box for underwriters to blot their inked lines with; and discarded white scraps of paper from the little rectangular wads, punched at one corner, that they hung on loops of string on hooks at the boxes for them to make their jottings on.
When the market closed by informal consent, for all but negotiations that were already in progress, at four-thirty precisely smoking was permitted. The moment that the second hands of the Room’s clocks moved to the upright there was a rasping of matches, a flickering of lighters, and exhalations of relief and smoke that rose in a pall to the ceiling.
The trading floors were inaccessible by outsiders and tourists unless some market-affiliated person, having applied for and received permission, were to shepherd them for a few minutes to the section of balcony rail, known as the Gallery, outside the Nelson Room. It was from here that the most comprehensive view over both floors was to be commanded. Even brokers’ clients and Lloyd’s Names—the aristocrats, gentry, farmers and celebrities who came up for the day, with accents ranging from upper-class to shire, muddy boots, and ignorant questions about how their families’ livelihoods and wealth were being hazarded—could only enter the Room when accompanied to the Gallery by their brokers and managing agents.
Under no circumstances were clients or Names permitted to roam the floor, whether accompanied or not, for fear that they would be horrified, not unreasonably, by some of the business that was being accepted on their behalves, and the unconventional and quirky manner in which much of it was transacted.
As they took in the maelstrom of trading activity, their escorts would not fail to point out to the visitors in their charge Lloyd’s’ star attraction: the most renowned and successful underwriter of his time, William Goldsack, Esquire, where he sat downstairs at his box being paid court to by broker after broker in quick succession, from a queue that stretched around the room like the coils of a snake. Goldsack wrote a great deal of business very fast and made so much money for his syndicate that it was said he spat krugerrands.
The Nelson Room, which was located at a corner of the upper, non-marine floor, was a shrine to Vice Admiral of the White [Squadron of the Fleet] The Right Honourable Horatio, Lord Viscount Nelson, Knight of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Baron Nelson of the Nile, Commander in Chief of his Majesty’s Ships and Vessels in the Mediterranean, Duke of Bronte in the nobility of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of St Ferdinand and of Merit, Knight of the Imperial Ottoman Order of the Crescent, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of St Joachim.
Everyone connected with Lloyd’s of London basked in the reflected glory of the Admiral’s extraordinary successes on behalf of the nation. In the Nelson Room, arrayed in glass cases was a collection of the great man’s household silver, letters, and wartime memorabilia; and a fork with a sharp-edged tine such as a one-armed man might find useful to cut his food if Lady Hamilton was not around to do it for him before she peeled him a grape.
The luncheon hour, or rather hours, because it often stretched well into the afternoon, within the Lloyd’s community was a sacrosanct time of day, and respected as an institutional art form. Amongst the broking fraternity—there was no competition between those from the different brokerage houses at lunchtime, except in the race to get to the bars: everyone knew each other at least by sight, and many of them were friends—a John Bull-ish love of boarding-school fare, and plenty of it, was accompanied by a Nordic capacity for alcohol.
The starting gun for these marathons went off at one o’clock, and the course took between two and three hours to complete, if one were feeling athletic, unless one decided to dawdle and take the whole afternoon over it. The brokers’ gargantuan appetites were funded by expense accounts, not company canteen luncheon vouchers, on which they bogusly entertained underwriters who, at the time, were most likely eating cold Cornish pasties out of plastic wrappers at their desks, and allegedly visiting clients who were drinking, or would be in some hours owing to the time differences, bottled water in Baltimore.
Frequently the company executive responsible for signing these creative expense account documents, which were
apparently exempted from the market motto of Utmost Good Faith, was perplexed to discover that the same underwriter had been taken to lunch at six restaurants by (different of) his employees on the same day; and that instead of the transatlantic conference call he had scheduled for later that afternoon with a corporate client in Texas, the executive might more logically have asked the man, when his lavish luncheon entertainment was concluded, to stagger over to his office.
When at one o’clock the market shut down, gaggles of brokers streamed out of Lloyd’s into the public houses in Leadenhall Market, and the plentiful wine bars and restaurants. Many crammed into the small flagstoned yard, Castle Court, between Simpson’s Tavern—which was not related to the snooty establishment on the Strand—and the George and Vulture, known as the G&V, where they would down pints of draught bitter pulled by Olive, who kept bar downstairs at Simpson’s. Olive was a diminutive and spherical blonde who daily, unaided, kept a hundred individuals continuously supplied with drink, while abusing them in a voice that could strip paint, and pouring forth along with the beer, in a Mancusian screech that rose above the din like a descant, invective that would make a sailor blush.
After quenching their thirst with two or three pints, the brokers and their phantom guests would take the next drink and get in line for either of the two lunch rooms, upstairs or down, where they wolfed their scoff at an open-seating arrangement of bare wooden tables and benches. Others who were in no hurry to eat would remain drinking in the yard and wait for a table to become available at the G&V next door; here conditions were marginally more civilized, there were tablecloths, and one could arrange with the harassed but ever-friendly manager, Mr Hall, to come and summon one from Simpson’s when a table became vacant.
A standard meal began with whitebait, or shrimps in a thrombotic pot of yellow butter. Hard following was rump or fillet steak accompanied by chips, sausages, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, kidneys, fried or braised onions, and bubble and squeak. This too too solid flesh (was Hamlet a vegetarian?), and trimmings were washed down with bottles of Choix du Roi red wine (pronounced Choyderoy and known as The Red Infuriator). For dessert there was jam roly-poly and custard, followed by a drenching of Sandeman’s port to anaesthetize the stomach so that it should not be overawed by the momentous digestive task ahead of it; and if that did not do the job, a few glasses of Gilka or Wolfschmidt kümmel, which was imbibed to the pious refrain of “O kümmel ye faithful”.
It was not that Arbella disdained Simpson’s and the George and Vulture, but she did not eat any more for lunch than she did for breakfast, meaning nothing. Shortly after one o’clock she could be viewed at the Jamaica Wine House, or Jampot as it was known, which was the ancient drinking establishment hard by on St Michael’s Alley. There she would stand amidst her encircling admirers, either outside in good weather or inside at one of the up-ended barrels that served as tables around the sawdust floor. Leaning on one leg and dangling a long-necked bottle of cold Becks, her other arm, with elbow resting on her other wrist, held a negligent cigarette between her slender fingers.
Arbella, as one of very few women in the market, and the only female “placing”, rather than claims, broker, was not allowed to buy drinks by the Hooray Henrys who cultivated her, or tried to, and who paid net account for everything to show that they could. The banknotes folded in their silver money-clips still smelled of money and the ink was scarcely dry; it was as if the Royal Mint had to work overtime to keep them supplied with enough of them. Arbella did not have an expense account, being too junior; and neither did the Hooray Henrys because they did not speak American or any other language, had nothing in common with underwriters, knew nothing about the business they were in, and were no more interested in eating at lunchtime than Arbella because they all had dinner parties to go to.
At the dog-leg in the alley where they passed each other by, the Estuary English speakers from Simpson’s and the G&V, and the baying élite from the Jampot, did not even glance at each other. At the former they listened to what was said, because there was always something to be learned to their potential advantage, or disadvantage to be warned to avoid. At the latter they heard only themselves and echoes of themselves, the privileged young men and women who were too thick to get a job on their own, especially one that required letters after their names, and only worked at Lloyd’s because Daddy was a “Name”, or Member of an underwriting syndicate—which meant that he had money to burn to the extent of being declared an arsonist. Only Arbella’s father was not a Name: so far as he was concerned Lloyd’s of London was an upmarket gambling den.
Detachedly regarding the company, Arbella was an island of calm amongst the flushed tonsil-flaring fatties in red-silk-lined Savile Row suits, monogrammed striped or solid-coloured Jermyn Street shirts with French cuffs and gold links, and colourful braces. From time to time she would incline her head, or raise a corner of her mouth in a glimmer of acknowledgement. Her slow gaze missed nothing as she stood breathing smoke and accidie, and the ghosts of Pepys and Dickens hung out of the windows of the dark-timbered stories above to wave and pay her compliments.
Chapter Three
Upstairs, underwriters shoot sterling-
silver cuffs, and smirk as they listen
To wide-boys peddling slips with lips
Detailing second-hand information, gleaned
In the utmost good faith from Newfoundland.
Downstairs, they swear and roll their rs,
Opinionating as to the odds of guaranteeing
Proud ships afoam with spume and walrus spit.
Quill pens swirl ink round well-worn stamps,
Attracted by a decent-looking price...
Or just a hunch in mid afternoon, when,
Decanted from the restaurant with a list
To starboard from the port the emboldened
Sailor throws wife and caution to the winds.
*
The Act of Parliament that had given the Corporation of Lloyd’s the power of self-regulation granted autonomy not to an insurance company, but a motley collection of individuals who did things “each for his own part and not one for another”, and who guarded their secrets as zealously as freemasons.
These days it was the non-marine underwriters who considered themselves the arbiters of how things ought to be done. They were proud to have evolved from Lloyd’s’ maritime origins into dry Darwinian sophistication. The world was their oyster, they maintained, ignoring that the briny bivalves were strangers to their element except when served in multiples of six for lunch at Wheeler’s or Sweetings restaurants, and when their pearls were hung around their wives’ necks.
The common distinction, and it was a common one, made by non-mariners as to the difference between what constituted marine and non-marine business was that if a seagull could shit on it, it belonged downstairs. They mocked their wet counterparts for spending their days poring over bills of lading issued to Turkmenistani rug merchants, and cargo lists of spices being exported from the Azores to satisfy world demand for curried goat. They maintained that sailors were men who still navigated by the stars instead of satellites, and only came onshore to careen barnacles from the wooden hulls of their vessels.
Occasionally a dry-bones would appear on the ground floor dressed in a pirate’s costume, complete with cocked hat, wig with tarred pigtails and eye-patch, wearing a cutlass and carrying a stuffed parrot on his shoulder. He would hobble about on a crutch with one leg tied behind him, and a pipe filled with ship’s corded plug tobacco clenched between his teeth that he removed to spit and swear timber-shivering oaths.
The mariners ignored the insults: they were the gentlemen of the market, and considered those upstairs to be as beneath them in character as they were in physical location, publicity hounds who were celebrated for insuring the actress, dancer, and singer Betty Grable’s legs (the issuance of which policy had prompted jokes about invoking the Inspection Clause, and claiming rights of salvage in the event of loss).
&n
bsp; On the ground floor, traditions were upheld. Many marine underwriters still wrote their lines with quill pens; and every day a waiter would solemnly enter with a goose feather in old-fashioned script, in a tome on a lectern, the marine market’s total-losses. Non-marine underwriters were envious of the old ship-insuring Lloyd’s that had inspired a 1936 box office hit for 20th Century Fox in Tyrone Power’s first starring role. Making a film about the Vauxhall car awarded to the winner at a hole-in-one competition did not have the same filmic potential as the Napoleonic wars.
The more colourful characters in the market had nicknames. It was advisable not to be too close or down-wind of the Ginger Germ, who was a rotund little man with orange hair. And it did not do to get into a queue behind the Suitcase, a lugubrious grey-suited individual who needed a trunk, instead of the customary leather slipcase with button strap, to tote his immense portfolio of small-time business around the Room.
The Suitcase argued the merits of his business, despite the exiguous premium each contract afforded, exhaustively and took every rejection as a personal affront. His arrival was enough to shut an underwriter down to other business for the day. If a broker tipped off an underwriter that the Suitcase was headed in his direction, he would leg it to The Lamb in Leadenhall Market, and buy that broker a drink the next time he met him in a bar.