insurance stamp

    • marijana said:
    Hi,

    what is an insurance stamp (I found it in a book from 1929)?

    Thanks!

    Marijana
    Click to expand...

    In some countries an insurance stamp (a small document certifying that the car is currently insured) has to be affixed to the windscreen for all, particularly police officers, to see. I have one on my car here in France.
     
    You need to give us more context.
    What kind of insurance would it relate to?
    Could it be life insurance, social insurance, health insurance?
    What country?
    Without the context, we are guessing.
     
    marijana said:
    Do you think that it is also true for the year 1929?
    Click to expand...

    I wondered about that. There used to be stamped soft metal tags which companies made to put on buildings, to show that the house was insured. You used to find them in the UK. I wonder if that is what is meant. Do you have more context? Was it on a car? on a building?
     
    I can not give you more context. This is the sentence:

    New laws are made to compel people to do things they never dreamt of doing before (buying insurance stamps, for instance). :)

    This is all. It is written by Bernard Shaw in 1929.
     
    I think we are getting near this one: here's an account of some land girls in 1942 - the full reference is at the end.

    Then it was down to earth with a bump from near perfect conditions to the reality of the usual farm conditions of those days when I was sent to one near Potters Bar in Middlesex and had ‘digs’ with a family on a new housing estate nearby. After paying the stipulated ‘digs’ money and insurance stamp - you were left with the princely sum of 6 shillings per week.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/01/a3878201.shtml


    Here's something from Hansard, much more recent, 2005.

    That method of going to people's homes to ask them personal questions epitomises this Government's Big Brother obsession. Their need to micro-manage and control everything has hit pensioners the hardest. Pensioners have to go through the indignity of means-testing, filling out a long and complicated form, to claim back what they have spent years putting in. It is, after all, their money—they have contributed to their national insurance stamp for years—and they should get a decent pension as an automatic right.

    http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo060117/halltext/60117h04.htm

    Shaw was interested in social issues. The insurance stamp is a certificate that you have paid ever so much to national insurance, and thereby bought a right to a certain level of pension. I'm pretty confident this is what it must be. The two contexts suggest no other obvious explanation.
     
    Thank you for the additional context Marijana.

    Before the introduction of more modern recording methods, employees' contributions to the UK National Insurance scheme took the form of small stamps, similar to postage stamps, purchased each week and stuck onto a card. National Insurance was set up in 1912 to provide cover in the event of illness or unemployment.
     
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