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haunt me throughout my life on significant and lesser significant occasions. It was quite often that I would get a Hotel room with the number 4.
Also the number 11 stood out, when it comes to it. I decided to give more attention to numerology, as numbers were messages! I was aware of the relationship of words and numbers. There was the Gematria of the ancient world, a literary device whereby numerical values were assigned to words, as there were no signs for numbers in the ancient world; in each language the letter of the alphabet stood for numeric values and then there were the symbolic numbers, codified by Greek Philosophers and Hebrew Kabbalist as sacred numbers, in the text of the Gospels - I once read. To my knowledge I was at the time the only German, who was admitted to the Lloyd’s Underwriting room as a Lloyd’s broker. Apart from me there was an Italian and a Dutchman, and a handful of Americans. Only two female brokers had access to the „room," following the footsteps of Mrs Liliana Archibald, who was the first female broker at Lloyd’s. A woman that moved from a career as a history lecturer at the University of New Zealand to join her stepfather’s credit insurance brokerage, specializing in export credit insurance and then joined a firm of Lloyd's Brokers, of which she later became a director. The name of the firm was ADAM BROTHERS and her physiognomy befitted that name - when thinking of the TV series "ADAMS FAMILY". That however was a big decision for the stuff committee of Lloyd's – a woman in the sanctum - but at least Skirts were prohibited, they had to wear trouser suits in order not to distract the male underwriters. The suffragettes had not made it to the City of London. Jews too were scarcely to be found among the brokers, at least not among the active ones, although there were famous historic exceptions, such as Carl Flesch, a Violinist and Insurance Broker at Lloyd's as early as in the 30 ties and looking further back to two Sephardi Jews, Joshua Mendes Da Costa (1741–1801) and Lewis Mendes (1716–1790), one of the first Merchants of the City of London, were among the original founders of the "new Lloyds".
oOo
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