Insurance Companies.—­Their name is legion, their agents are a multitude, and a list of their officers would fill a book.  You can insure your own life, or your wife’s, or your children’s or anybody else’s, in whose existence you may have a beneficial interest, and there are a hundred officers ready to receive the premiums.  If you are journeying, the Railway Passengers’ Accident Co. will be glad to guarantee your family a solatium in case you and your train come to grief, and though it is not more than one in half-a-million that meets with an accident on the line, the penny for a ticket, when at the booking office, will be well expended.  Do you employ clerks, there are several Guarantee Societies who will secure you against loss by defalcation.  Shopkeepers and others will do well to insure their glass against breakage, and all and everyone should pay into a “General Accident” Association, for broken limbs, like broken glass, cannot be foreseen or prevented.  It is not likely that any of [**] will be “drawn” for a militiaman in these piping times of peace, but that the system of insurance was applied here in the last century against the chances of being drawn in the ballot, is evidenced by the following carefully-preserved and curious receipt:—­

“Received of Matthew Boulton, tagmaker, Snow Hill, three shillings and sixpence, for which sum I solemnly engage, if he should be chosen by lot to serve in the militia for this parish, at the first meeting for that purpose, to procure a substitute that shall be approved of.

  “HENRY BROOKES, Sergt.

  “Birmingham, Jan. 11, 1762.”

The local manufacture of Insurance Societies has not been on a large scale, almost the only ones being the “Birmingham Workman’s Mutual,” the “British Workman,” and the “Wesleyan and General.”  The late Act of Parliament, by which in certain cases, employers are pecuniarily liable for accidents to their workpeople, has brought into existence several new Associations, prominent among which is the comprehensive “Employers’ Liability and Workpeople’s Provident and Accident Insurance Society, Limited,” whose offices are at 33, Newhall Street.

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Interesting Odds and Ends.

A fair was held here on Good Friday, 1793.

A fight of lion with dogs took place at Warwick, September 4, 1824.

The Orsim bombs used in Paris, January 15, 1858, were made here.

In 1771 meetings of the inhabitants, were called by the tolling of a bell.

A large assembly of Radicals visited Christ Church, November 21, 1819, but not for prayer.

A “flying railway” (the Centrifugal) was exhibited at the Circus in
Bradford Street, October 31, 1842.

The doors of Moor Street prison were thrown open, September 3, 1842, there, not being then one person in confinement.

March 2, 1877, a bull got loose in New Street Station, and ran through the tunnel to Banbury Street, where he leaped over the parapet and was made into beef.