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Tontines, annuities and civic improvements in Georgian Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2019

DAVID R. GREEN Open the ORCID record for DAVID R. GREEN [Opens in a new window]
DAVID R. GREEN*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, King's College London, Bush House (North East Wing), 40 Aldwych, London WC2B 4BG
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract:

Civic improvement in Georgian Britain required significant amounts of capital. Tontines were an important means of financing projects. This article provides new evidence based largely on local newspapers that demonstrates their local and national importance for mutual assurance and building. Shifts in profitability depended on the price of Consols and this explains why building tontines increased in importance. Tontines were used to fund new leisure spaces, workhouses, prisons, bridges, streets and other improvements. Their popularity waned in the later nineteenth century but until then they were an important means of funding civic improvements.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , November 2019 , pp. 649 - 694
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

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22 It is likely, for example, that several of the subscription schemes described in Grady, Georgian Public Buildings, were tontines, although not specifically identified as such. I am grateful to Tim Hitchcock for pointing me to this reference.

23 See Appendix 1 for a full listing.

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45 Information was missing for one tontine.

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48 Gloucester Journal, 25 Mar. 1793. See also, for example, Newcastle Courant, 5 Jan. 1793; Chester Chronicle, 11 Jan. 1793; Northampton Mercury, 12 Jan. 1793; Oxford Journal, 9 Feb. 1793; Manchester Mercury, 7 May 1793.

49 Stamford Mercury, 5 Apr. 1793. Silberling's figures show a fall from £90.04 in 1792 to £75.70 in 1793. See Silberling, N.J., ‘British financial experience 1790–1830’, Review of Economics and Statistics, 1 (1919), 289Google Scholar.

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61 Ipswich Journal, 21 Nov. 1795.

62 Hereford Journal, 14 Sep. 1796.

63 Manchester Mercury, 15 Jan. 1799; Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 21 Oct. 1799.

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70 Grady, Georgian Public Buildings, 75.

71 See Temin and Voth, Prometheus Shackled, 30, 83–7.

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77 Hull Advertiser and Exchange, 13, 27 Sep. 1794; Caledonian Mercury, 9 Jul. 1796; Manchester Mercury, 1 Nov. 1796.

78 Manchester Mercury, 17 Oct. 1797.

79 Morning Chronicle, 18 Mar. 1825.

80 See London Borough of Richmond, Richmond Archives, Richmond Bridge Commissioners, minute book, 1773–1886.

81 House of Commons Journal, vol. 72 (1817), 75; ibid., vol. 73 (1818), 57, 62. See also Bainbridge, J., A Plan for the Disposal of Thirty Thousand Pounds, Secured by Way of Mortgage. . .upon the Tolls Arising from the Cast Iron Bridge and Ferry Boats, across the River Wear, near Sunderland . . . by Way of Tontine, etc. (Newcastle, 1809)Google Scholar; York Herald, 20 May 1809; Brockie, W., ‘Wearmouth bridge lottery’, Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend, 3 (1889), 254–5Google Scholar. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/3717006?accountid=11862.

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86 Westminster City Archives, T/IV/40 St Marylebone Vestry Bonds.

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99 Grady, Georgian Public Buildings, 69. In the West Riding of Yorkshire, a back to back house at this time would have cost around £50 and therefore subscribing this amount represented a very significant investment.

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101 In Glasgow, the father's occupation was used where information for sons and daughters was missing.

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120 An even more extreme criticism was that tontine schemes created an incitement to murder, thereby providing the plot for several nineteenth-century thrillers – including The Wrong Box, a second-rate novel co-written by Robert Louis Stevenson – though there was no evidence that this situation ever arose.

121 Webster, ‘The Public Works Loan Board’, 892, 896.

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127 PP, Second Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into Friendly and Benefit Building Societies. Part I. Report of the Commissioners on Benefit Building Societies. With Reports of Assistant Commissioners, 1872, XXVI, q. 2409.

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