---
title: "Life Assurance Act 1774"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "concept"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Life Assurance Act 1774"
aliases: ["14 Geo. 3 c. 48","the Gambling Act"]
first_seen: "2026-10-09T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["insurable interest","wagering policies",[["entity-amicable-society-for-a-perpetual-assurance-office|Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office"]],"actuarial history",[["entity-geoffrey-clark|Geoffrey Clark"]]]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


An Act of the Parliament of Great Britain (14 Geo. 3 c. 48) that ended decades of life-insurance policies written as pure wagers, voiding any policy made "by way of gaming or wagering" where the beneficiary had no insurable interest in the life or event insured. It excluded marine insurance, ran to four sections, and is the statutory close of a cultural practice — insuring strangers' and public figures' lives as bets — that English life assurance had tolerated since at least the early 1700s ([[claim-life-assurance-act-1774-voided-policies-without-insurable-interest]]).

Matters to this vault as the legal resolution the [[entity-amicable-society-for-a-perpetual-assurance-office|Amicable Society]] cluster had not previously connected to: its own 1711 policy resale and loan-collateral advertising both predate the Act by roughly six decades and both sit on its legal side, since neither involved insuring a life the holder had no stake in.

## References

- [[claim-life-assurance-act-1774-voided-policies-without-insurable-interest]]
- [[observation-dodson-1711-amicable-cosine-pairing-is-embedding-false-friend]]