A new exhibition at Aviva details some of the bizarre insurance payouts made over the years.

Bites by ferrets and fish, blows to the eye from catapults, slips on orange peel and mixing up poison and sleeping medicine.

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For those who bemoan the modern world’s ‘compensation culture’, a new exhibition shows there’s nothing new in outlandish insurance claims – it was the same story in Victorian East Anglia. Documents unearthed in Aviva’s Norwich archives reveal an amazing catalogue of accident claims dating back to the 19th century.

The adage that where there’s pain, there’s a claim was as true in Victorian East Anglia as it is today, if a trawl through the records of Aviva, formerly Norwich Union, are anything to go by. Discarded orange peel – not banana skins – errant horses, and simple general clumsiness are revealed as some of the major hazards of the day.

East Anglian claims include a shipbuilder from Great Yarmouth who swallowed a fishbone and pocketed a payout of £1,000 in 1901, a farmer from Sudbury who received a payout of £132 when he was bitten by a rat in 1887 and a merchant from Essex who injured his eye from throwing rice at a wedding in 1892, receiving £50 compensation.

Anna Stone, archivist at Aviva, has spent months poring over the documents for an exhibition in the insurer’s General Insurance headquarters in Norwich.

She said: “It has certainly proved to be interesting reading material and I have to say I do have some personal favourites from across the country that stand out for their sheer peculiarity – like the vicar who fell while playing a game of leap frog, or the gentleman who missed a dog while trying to kick it and struck a sofa instead, injuring his big toe!

“Sport injuries are also commonplace, with slips during fencing, blows from hockey sticks and golfers rupturing legs getting out of bunkers – not to mention the clerk who received £36 for an injury caused by a blow from a fellow bather’s heel sustained while diving.”

Other examples of calamitous claims from Victorian England which are held in the archives of the Aviva offices in Norwich:

A corn merchant from Peterborough, wheel of trap came off, thrown out, injured knee – £70 paid in 1879

An architect from Newmarket who slipped at tennis – £46 and 10 shillings, 1907

A farmer from Clare involved in a “collision on the railway” – £229 and 10 shillings, 1907

A grocer from Lancashire slipped while playing blind man’s buff – £15, 1878

A tailor from Launceston, Cornwall, missed his chair when going to sit down – £58, 1887

A merchant from Glasgow injured while jumping out of bed to catch his wife who had fainted – £42, 1895

An innkeeper of Handsworth, Birmingham, took poisonous potion in mistake for a sleeping medicine – £1,000, in 1878.

Rob Townend, director of property claims at Aviva, said: “These amazing records just go to show that as far back as 1860, people still looked to insurance to help them in their hour of need – when they were faced with unforeseen and unfortunate events in their lives and, of course, that is still true today. Obviously insurance claims change as lifestyles change, but some incidents appear to be as common back then as they are today.

“Even in prim and proper Victorian times people were still tripping up kerbs, falling on ice and slipping on cobbled streets, albeit back then discarded orange peel appeared to be the major culprit. The supposedly more traditional slipping hazard, the banana skin, makes just one appearance in our archives, back in 1904.

“And of course clumsiness is a human trait rather than a historic one – we have found a boot maker from Hampshire who injured himself slipping on soap and upsetting a saucepan and a merchant from Solihull who fell down the stairs after getting his foot caught in his pyjamas.”

But the personal accident policies weren’t just for the man in the street, in 1896 the Aviva company, Accident Insurance Ltd, acquired its most well-known customer – 21-year-old Winston Churchill, an officer in the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars.

By 1958 he was the longest-standing customer on the company’s personal accident books and records show that the man regarded as one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers, never made a claim.

The exhibition, at Marble Hall in Surrey Street, is open to the public.

Have you been successful with a bizarre insurance claim? Call Evening News reporter Dan Grimmer on 01603 772375 or email dan.grimmer@archant.co.uk