Act in Respect to Insurances on Lives for the Benefit of Married Women, An.
[Finance]. An Act in Respect to Insurances on Lives for the Benefit of Married Women. New York: Mutual Life Insurance Company, circa 1840.
8vo.; one large sheet of onion bond, folded to make four pages measuring approximately 10 1/2” wide x 16” tall; each “page” folded again, both horizontally and vertically, for mailing and for purposes of text alignment; the printed text running horizontally (and in some cases vertically) across each page’s numerous sub-panels; some light wear to edges, one small closed tear.
An application for life insurance issued by the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York at 44 Wall Street circa 1840. On the lower part of the front panel appears the text of a piece of recently enacted legislation, the “Act in respect to Insurances on Lives for the benefit of Married Women. Passed April 1st, 1840.” This provision, dedicated to redressing the inequity in gender-biased inheritance laws, decreed in part:
1. ..It shall be lawful for any married woman, by herself, and in her name....to cause to be insured, for her sole use, the life of her husband; and in case of her surviving her husband, the sum or net amount of the insurance...shall be payable to her, to and for her own use, free from the claims of representatives of her husband...
An early, and extremely uncommon, example of a financial document which specifically addresses the female consumer.
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