The same method of friendly society, I conceive, would be a very proper
proposal for widows.
We have abundance of women, who have been bred well and lived well,
ruined in a few years, and perhaps left young with a houseful of children
and nothing to support them, which falls generally upon the wives of the
inferior clergy, or of shopkeepers and artificers.
They marry wives with perhaps £300 to £1,000 portion, and can settle no
jointure upon them. Either they are extravagant and idle, and waste it;
or trade decays; or losses or a thousand contingencies happen to bring a
tradesman to poverty, and he breaks. The poor young woman, it may be,
has three or four children, and is driven to a thousand shifts, while he
lies in the Mint or Friars under the dilemma of a statute of bankruptcy;
but if he dies, then she is absolutely undone, unless she has friends to
go to.
Suppose an office to be erected, to be called an office of insurance for
widows, upon the following conditions:
Two thousand women, or their husbands for them, enter their names into a
register to be kept for that purpose, with the names, age, and trade of
their husbands, with the place of their abode, paying at the time of
their entering 5s. down with 1s. 4d. per quarter, which is to the setting
up and support of an office with clerks and all proper officers for the
same; for there is no maintaining such without charge. They receive
every one of them a certificate sealed by the secretary of the office,
and signed by the governors, for the articles hereafter mentioned:
If any one of the women become a widow at any time after six months from
the date of her subscription, upon due notice given, and claim made at
the office in form as shall be directed, she shall receive within six
mouths after such claim made the sum of £500 in money without any
deductions, saving some small fees to the officers, which the trustees
must settle, that they may be known.
In consideration of this, every woman so subscribing obliges herself to
pay, as often as any member of the society becomes a widow, the due
proportion or share, allotted to her to pay towards the £500 for the said
widow, provided her share does not exceed the sum of 5s.
No seamen’s or soldiers’ wives to be accepted into such a proposal as
this, on the account before mentioned, because the contingencies of their
lives are not equal to others—unless they will admit this general
exception, supposing they do not die out of the kingdom.
It might also be an exception that if the widow that claimed had really,
_bonâ fide_, left her by her husband to her own use, clear of all debts
and legacies, £2,000, she should have no claim, the intent being to aid
the poor, not add to the rich. But there lie a great many objections
against such an article, as—