1 Introduction

Through the work of many talented scholars, it is clear that rather than being a financial curio, the tontine was an omnipresent funding tool that existed in regions across the globe for centuries. The literature has highlighted the diverse applications of the scheme. Studies by Moshe Milevsky (2015), David Weir (1989), Robert Jennings and Andrew Trout (1983), and Yikang Li and Casey Rothschild (2020) have been essential in expanding our knowledge of government tontines in Britain, Ireland, and France. David Green (2019) has explored the use of tontines to fund civic improvements in Georgian Britain, providing an important addition to the historiography. Likewise, a very robust piece of unpublished work on the 1775 Freemasons’ Tontine in London by Diane Clements (2018) has also been a welcome addition to the literature. As have local studies undertaken by James McMahon (1999) and Sandy Whitnell (2019) on the Pery Square Tontine in Limerick and the Tontine Hotel in Peebles. Kent McKeever’s excellent work has, meanwhile, straddled public and private schemes and greatly added to our understanding of the tontine (McKeever 2009, 2018). While the work of Phillip Hellwege (2018a, 2018b), as both writer and editor, has been hugely important in drawing our attention to the global proliferation of tontines and tontine-type schemes, and their uses. In addition, work carried out by Michael Mullan (2021) on the development of Irish American associationalism in late-nineteenth-century Philadelphia has had the added benefit of providing a wealth of important information on mutual aid tontine societies in Ireland. Andrew McDiarmid’s research into these Irish mutual aid tontines and into private Scottish tontines directed at building and infrastructure projects has also contributed to the knowledge in this space (McDiarmid 2024, 2023a).

The literature on the topic is therefore well-developed. We understand how historic public and private tontines operated, the types of projects they were used to fund, and where and when they were popular. In addition, we have studies of specific tontines, including analysis of adverse selection and comparative mortality in tontine nominees, and we have frameworks for operating modern tontines (Li & Rothschild 2020; Jennings & Trout 1983; Gautier 1951; Milevsky 2022). Where there is more work to be done, however, is in fully understanding the cultural impact of the tontine.

As a revenue-raising tool of governments and as a capital-raising tool of private groups, the tontine in Britain and Ireland had an impact that went far beyond those individuals who were financially involved as organisers, subscribers, and nominees. From the first English government scheme of 1693 until the middle of the nineteenth century, the tontine supported a profusion of costs, including armies, private homes, public meeting rooms, coffeehouses, churches, theatres, and hotels (McDiarmid 2023a; Green 2019). It was an important funding instrument, and by providing spaces for the sharing of news and ideas, and for performance and education, the tontine had a significant impact on the social lives of communities and on wider British and Irish societies.

Quite apart from its financial applications, the concept of the tontine also passed into popular culture. The earliest example appears to be French playwright and novelist, Alain-René Lesage’s 1709 play La Tontine (Morlock 2004). Later in the eighteenth century, this was echoed in Britain and Ireland, with Anglo-Irish playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheriden, using the scheme as a put-down in his 1777 comedy of manners, The School for Scandal; and English periodical, The Sporting Magazine, publishing the rules of a tontine-based card game in 1797 (Webster 1917; Unknown 1797). This continued to develop during the nineteenth century, as the tontine was covered extensively in the British and Irish press and utilised as a plot device in literary works (Smart 1881; Stevenson & Osbourne 1889).

With our growing awareness of the tontine’s ubiquity, we can postulate that the cultural impact of the scheme was significant. The scope of this article is confined to one aspect of this impact; the tontine’s contribution to the public sphere in Ireland and Scotland between 1772 and 1850. These years have been chosen as the earliest attempt to establish a tontine in either country appears to have been in Edinburgh in 1772, and by 1850 the fashion of establishing private tontines directed at building and infrastructure projects was in decline. It is a comparative study of tontine development in both countries, with a particular focus on tontine-funded spaces and public debate around the scheme. The article recognises that while there were differences in the types of tontines established in each country—Ireland operated government tontines and mutual aid tontines, Scotland did not; both had private schemes largely directed at building costs and investment—there were still similarities in how tontines were operated and how funds were used.

Tontines in both countries, with the exception of Irish mutual aid tontines, catered mainly for the wealthier members of society. The subscription price was usually a significant sum, and while Irish government tontines often drew a sizeable percentage of subscriptions from outside the country, local schemes in Ireland and Scotland were largely supported by the professional classes, including bankers and lawyers; local elites; politicians; and the mercantile community (Jennings & Trout 1983; McDiarmid 2023a). The involvement of these groups in both countries determined the kinds of projects funded via tontine, with investment often directed at venues for conducting business and sharing news, and for socialising and entertainment.

The contribution made by the tontine to the public sphere in each country was distinct. In Scotland, this was mainly through the provision of tontine-funded spaces—coffeerooms, assembly and sale rooms, hotels, and taverns—which brought people together and allowed for news to be shared and topics to be debated. In Ireland, these spaces were far less prevalent but still represented important local venues where they did exist. The contribution there was less about physical space, and more about the tontine’s influence on public discourse, particularly that carried out in newspapers, and to a lesser extent in pamphlets. This debate was far more significant in Ireland than in Scotland and provided the Irish with a greater awareness of the tontine than that of the Scots.

Finally, as an example of the tontine’s cultural impact in Ireland, this article will compare the mutual aid tontines of Ireland and the ‘dividing’ Friendly Societies of Scotland. These were popular schemes during the nineteenth century and were in effect the same financial instrument; a short-term insurance policy, with the benefit of an annual division of excess funds between surviving members who had not drawn down from the fund during the year. While these were sold and known popularly as tontines in Ireland, there is no record of a Scottish ‘dividing’ society ever being referred to as a tontine. It is argued that this was a result of the public debate which had occurred in Ireland from the 1770s onwards around the tontine. This provided mutual aid scheme organisers and the wider Irish public with an awareness of the tontine concept. When it, therefore, came to naming these Irish mutual aid instruments with a benefit of survivorship, the obvious choice was to call it a ‘tontine’.

2 A brief note on methodology

As a historian writing for an insurance audience, it felt appropriate to briefly discuss the source methodology which underpins this article.

Historical study of the tontine in Britain and Ireland can be challenging. While records linked to government-operated schemes in England and Ireland exist in the British National Archives at Kew, sourcing information about private tontines is more difficult. Regional and local archives often hold records relating to private schemes, but these are usually limited. One may find a mention in a private letter which alerts them to the existence of a particular tontine, but usually without specific details. Newspapers have proven to be an excellent resource for identifying the existence of private tontines and their proliferation, but again drilling down into the particulars is often not possible.

For the work focussing on Scotland, archival work was mainly undertaken in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Searches were also undertaken in national and local newspapers archives. The local nature of private tontines meant that they drew interest from local press, with coverage including details of the proposed project, and if one is lucky subscription costs and rates of return. This information then allowed for a return to archives for a more targeted search to uncover further information. This was sometimes, but not always, successful.

In Ireland, while a similar approach was undertaken, there were additional challenges. A lack of archival material linked to Irish tontines has stymied work in this field in the past. Hellwege (2018a), for example, had intended to include a chapter on Ireland in his edited collection dedicated to the legal history and future of the tontine. Yet as preliminary research was unable to ‘trace any legal discussion of tontines’ in the country, this was dropped. This is not an isolated problem, with Campbell (1992) highlighting the dearth of information in the tontine and benefit society records of the National Archives of Ireland and in the Registry of Friendly Societies. The reason for this can be traced back to June 30, 1922, when, after days of fighting at the commencement of the Irish Civil War, an explosion rocked the Public Records Office of Ireland. In the blast, seven centuries of Irish documented history, including detailed records of Irish tontines, were lost (Murtagh & Scarth 2023). This is perhaps one reason why the historiography of the tontine in Ireland has been weighted towards the government tontines of the 1770s, with their associated records housed in London (National Debt Office: Irish Tontines, 1773–1777).

While some Irish archival records have been used for this article, and parliamentary reports on friendly society-operated tontines (largely limited to subscriber numbers and subscriptions paid), newspaper archives have been used extensively. Conducting a keyword search for ‘tontine’ in the Irish Newspaper Archives database between 1750 and 1850 returned 1375 hits from across the island. The Irish Times and the Weekly Irish Times Archive, meanwhile, return 491 results for the same search over 1859–1899. As already stated, there are limitations to the information that can be sourced in this manner and in many cases provided specific information about tontines may not be possible. For the purposes of this article, however, newspaper archives demonstrate the scale of tontine organisation across the country and a public engaged with the concept.

3 Tontine development, the press, and the public sphere

Separated by just 12 miles at their closest point, the development of the tontine in Ireland and Scotland was, like the cultures of the two countries, similar but distinct. Between the late-eighteenth and the early-twentieth centuries, the scheme existed in Ireland as both a public and private financial instrument. The Irish government established three very successful tontines during the 1770s; private groups organised a handful of schemes directed at building costs, investment funds, and private debt between the 1790s and 1820s; and a mutual aid model directed at the country’s working classes and poor developed from the 1830s onwards (McDiarmid 2024). Scotland, meanwhile, was never the site of a government tontine, and while Scottish friendly societies did operate mutual aid schemes, there is no record of these being referred to as tontines. From the 1770s until 1850s, the country did, however, embrace private tontines directed at supporting the costs of building works and (less commonly) into investment funds to a far greater degree than can be seen in Ireland. In Scotland, at least 40 private tontines, largely directed at building costs, existed or were proposed between 1772 and 1850, compared to 17 in Ireland during roughly the same period. It is likely that there were more in Scotland, with these numbers having increased from 27 private tontines in McDiarmid (2023a).

While the first attempts at establishing a tontine in Scotland and Ireland appeared within a year of one another, these were very different schemes. The earliest attempt at a Scottish tontine appears to have been in Edinburgh in 1772. This was a proposal from the Edinburgh Corporation, to raise £20,000, through the sale of 800 shares priced at £25 each, for the ‘common good’ via tontine. The interest from the total sum was to be ‘shared among survivors yearly, till the whole subscribers die out’, after which the ‘principal sum [was] to fall into the town’s revenue’ (Finns Leinster Journal 1772; Aberdeen Press and Journal 1772). Information on this tontine is elusive, with only newspaper reports on the proposal being located so far. It is unclear whether the scheme went into operation.

A far more certain tontine by comparison was the Irish government scheme of 1773. It was the first of three fully subscribed tontines (the others followed in 1775 and 1777) operated by the Irish Government which raised a total of IR£740,000; at this time, the Irish £ traded almost at parity with £ sterling (Li & Rothschild 2020). It was a scheme which piqued the national interest, as the Irish press closely followed the tontine bill’s passage through parliament in 1773, along with any amendments made during the following year. Those parliamentarians with misgivings around the tontine did not mince their words, with the representative for County Mayo, Sir Charles Bingham, dismissing it as a ‘French or Italian scheme, fitter to raise supplies for Madame Barre, than for a free government’ (Freemans Journal 1773). Here, Bingham was referring to Madame du Barré, a mistress of Louis XV, executed in 1793, and may have been displaying a dislike for French absolutism as much as the concept of the tontine. When parliamentarians were clearer on their objections to the tontine, these were usually linked to concerns over the taxes which would be used to pay the annuities; the scheme’s similarity to a lottery, a ‘last resort of a weak government’; or the novelty of the tontine in Ireland (Freemans Journal 1773).

Following the bill’s passing, newspapers then reported on concerns as to whether the tontine would draw enough public interest and if all subscriptions would be filled, and, if they were not, would the scheme be transferred into a lottery? (Finns Leinster Journal 1774a; Freemans Journal 1774). The Irish press in 1773 and 1774 presented all the pros and cons of the tontine to its readership; as it also did for the government tontines of 1775 and 1777 (Finns Leinster Journal 1775c; 1775d; 1775e; 1775f; 1775g; Freemans Journal 1775f; 1778).

By the mid-1770s, the tontine was becoming a cultural touchstone in Ireland, as news stories associated with the scheme and more oblique references to it made their way into print. Adverts for new Irish tontine societies were carried, which detailed the specifics of the schemes and where subscriptions could be bought (Belfast Newsletter 1791; Finns Leinster Journal 1775a). The scheme was used to call into question the character of parliamentarians depending on how they had voted on the tontine bills (Freemans Journal 1775c; 1775d). News on new English tontines was reported (Finns Leinster Journal 1775b). The scheme even made its way into a report on the unsanitary conditions in late-eighteenth-century Dublin theatres, which predicted that crowded houses would lead to higher mortality rates and ultimately to increased tontine annuities (Freemans Journal 1775a). And there were opinion pieces with competing views of the scheme. Where one writer viewed the tontine as an ‘oppression’, and another warned that it, with the Stamp Tax and other financial burdens placed on the Irish, formed a ‘phalanx against liberty and property’, yet another viewed the tontine as useful revenue-raising tool in times of need (Freemans Journal 1775d; 1775e; 1775f).

News about the tontine, direct and tangential, was not restricted to what occurred in Ireland. Newspapers provided statistics on the British National Debt, which included the tontines operating in England, and kept their readers informed of the current annuity amounts (Belfast Newsletter 1790). Advertisements were regularly carried for meetings taking place at tontine hotels in Scotland and England (Finns Leinster Journal 1796, 1835; Belfast Newsletter 1835a, 1847). Sales in Scottish tontine auction rooms were advertised (Belfast Newsletter 1835a, 1878; Freemans Journal 1858). A consortium’s intention to purchase the Inner Hebridean, Isle of Islay, with funds raised via tontine was picked up by the Irish press in 1849 (Anglo-Celt 1849; McDiarmid 2023a). There was even the story of a Benedictine monk, who in the early months of the French Revolution had fallen foul of Louis XVI and was imprisoned indefinitely. In response he offered to ‘give up a tontine of 200 livres’, as well as ‘two years of his annuity’, on the condition he be freed to retire to the Abbey of Valance in the province of Poitou (Belfast Newsletter 1789). His fate is unknown.

Interestingly, while Irish newspapers carried debates and stories linked to the tontine, they do not appear to have provided much of an explanation as to what the thing actually was. Government tontines would often be referred to by their official name of ‘annuities’, and there were also references to ‘benefit of survivorship’, but other than this there appears to be an assumption that the general readership understood how the concept worked (Freemans Journal 1775b). Evidence that there was an awareness of the scheme in the country can be supported by the inclusion of several news stories related to the tontine in the Irish press in the decade or so prior to the commencement of the inaugural Irish government tontine. Schemes in France, Austria, England, and Scotland were regularly reported to Irish readers (Belfast Newsletter 1762, 1769; Freemans Journal 1765; Finns Leinster Journal 1772). The Belfast Newsletter, for instance, reported on the progress of a French Government tontine in 1762; issues around low take-up of subscriptions affecting the English tontine of 1765; and East India Company plans to establish a tontine in 1769. These detailed how tontines were being operated, the sums which were being raised, and often other specifics of the schemes. The country’s investing class, through news publications, could therefore not have failed to be aware of the tontine. Indeed, letters pages in the Irish press also demonstrated a section of its readership fully engaged with the tontine and finance more widely. Authored under noms de plume such as ‘Numscull’ and ‘Plain Truth’, readers’ letters provided analysis of the financial aspects of the scheme and show a good understanding of the tontine (Freemans Journal 1765a; 1765b).

Irish pamphlets also contributed to the public awareness of the tontine. Often these were produced as brochures for prospective customers, such as in the case of one which proposed to fund the construction of a new street in central Dublin in 1838 (RIA 1838). In other cases, they provided rules, regulations, and subscriber lists for newly established tontines; these included the Cork Coffeehouse Tontine of 1793 and the Tontine Buildings in Ennis, Co. Clare, of 1836 (RIA 1794, 1836a). Pamphlets also advertised and provided the rules of mutual aid tontines from a range of organisers. These included an all-female tontine in Dublin (the Marchioness Wellesley Female Tontine Society); a host of sickness and burial schemes offered by religious groups; and rules and regulations for ‘temperance tontines’, which were designed to maintain their members’ sobriety (RIA 1838a, 1843, 1848; McDiarmid 2024). In addition, there was a very interesting pamphlet published in 1774, which produced ‘tontine tables’ based on the government tontine of 1773. The 31-page booklet provided in-depth analysis of the scheme and supplied subscribers with an overview of what they should expect in return for this investment. The take-away message was that they should be cautious (Mathematician, 1774).

Scottish newspapers also regularly carried advertisements and news stories linked to the tontine. These included notices for new English tontines, reports from existing Irish and English government schemes, and notice of subscriber meetings for private tontines (Aberdeen Journal. 1799a; 1799b; Caledonian Mercury. 1800c). Advertisements for, and news stories about, new Scottish tontines can also be found across the first half of the nineteenth century in publications from across the country. These included a theatre in Glasgow (1802); investment tontines in Aberdeen (1819) and in Stirlingshire (1841); property purchases in Paisley (1833); a tontine directed at ‘paying off the creditors of the city of Edinburgh’ (1836); and bold attempts to buy the Geanies Estate in Tarbet, north-west Scotland (1832), and the Isle of Islay (1849), via tontine (Aberdeen Journal 1802, 1819; Caledonian Mercury 1832, 1836, 1849; The Scotsman 1841, 1833; Glasgow Courier 1845; Glasgow Chronicle 1844). Later, the Aberdeen Journal (1890) advertised employment opportunities linked to tontines;

Gents wanted, on remunerative terms, by Life Assurance Society, doing large Tontine Business at Dundee, Aberdeen, and Northern Districts of Scotland

The sense of public debate around the tontine, as existed in Ireland, was, however, less marked.

The reason for this difference, it is hypothesised, was due to the lack of a government tontine in Scotland. In Ireland, a significant part of the initial public debate had been due to the government tontines of the 1770s. In Scotland, there was no analogous scheme to pique public interest and drive column inches. Why this was the case is a matter that requires some attention.

It would not have been surprising if in the years after the first English tontine of 1693, the Scottish government had followed suit and established its own scheme. There was, after all, comparable development of financial ideas in both countries during the early 1690s, with a growth in joint-stock companies and the establishment of the Bank of England and the Bank of Scotland occurring less than a year apart (McDiarmid 2023b). But, between 1693 and 1707, the year in which the Anglo-Scots Union brought Scotland and England together under one parliament, Scottish representatives at Edinburgh did not formally discuss establishing a public tontine.

There are several possible reasons as to why a government tontine was not established in Scotland. Firstly, the tontines operated by England and France in the late-seventeenth century had been met with limited success, with the governments of both countries pulling in a fraction of the sums they had intended (Weir 1989). This could hardly have made the scheme appealing to the Scots. Secondly, Scotland in the early 1690s was a ‘financially confident’ nation (Watt 2007). Many Scots had done well from the revolution of 1688–89, and during the first half of the 1690s, the country witnessed something of a business boom, with forty-seven joint-stock companies in operation. These included new small to medium factories producing various goods, as well as the large joint-stock offerings of the Bank of Scotland—which issued a significant amount of circulating paper notes into the economy during the second half of the decade—and the Company of Scotland; the group behind the attempt to establish a Scottish colony on the Isthmus of Darien, in South America (Marshall 1992; McDiarmid 2021; Saville 1996). Scottish attention was therefore not on establishing a tontine, but on business and colonisation. Thirdly, as some readers may know, the attempt on Darien was an abject failure. Poor planning, mismanagement, disease, colonist in-fighting, a lack of support from the crown, and the presence of the Spanish all combined to derail Scotland’s grand project. The financial fall-out was so severe, that Scottish parliamentarians were too burned by the experience to undertake any new financial risks, the tontine included (McDiarmid 2022). And finally, in the years which followed the Union, the new British Government showed little interest in the financial fortunes of Scotland; a situation only altered in the aftermath of the Jacobite uprising in 1715, and after a series of riots linked to food, anti-enclosure and the Malt Tax in the first half of the 1720s (McDiarmid 2021). A government tontine in Scotland was therefore not considered by either pre- or post-Union governments.

Where the tontine was embraced in Scotland was as a capital-raising instrument organised by private groups during the years 1780 to 1850. The scheme was used across Scotland, from Greenock and Ardrossan in the lowland west, to Cupar and Dundee in the east, and from the border’s town of Peebles to Inverness in the north. There was also, as one might expect, a concentration of schemes in the large urban centres of Glasgow and Edinburgh. The spaces built across Scotland via tontine included hotels, taverns, auction rooms, assembly rooms, and public baths; members only clubs and coffeerooms; entertainment spaces such as theatres and concert halls; and private dwellings (McDiarmid 2023a). Tontine-funded buildings became important spaces for bringing people together to share news, discuss national and local matters, to conduct political meetings, and for entertainment.

Advertisements carried in Scottish newspapers demonstrate the importance of these spaces and the type of business being carried out in them. Creditors meetings were held in tontine hotels. Sales of land, ships, coal, and wine among other commodities took place in the Glasgow Tontine Sale-Room, in tontine taverns in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and in Greenock’s Tontine Hotel (Caledonian Mercury 1800, 1820). And local dignitaries used the spaces for official business; such as when the Lord Provost of Glasgow entertained the Duke of Hamilton and bequeathed him with the freedom of the city in Glasgow’s Tontine Tavern in 1800 (Caledonian Mercury 1800a; 1800b; 1800d; 1800e; 1820).

For Scotland’s merchant classes, tontine spaces were somewhere to conduct business, make connections, and get the latest news. The Tontine Buildings in Glasgow were an excellent example of this. Established in 1782, initially as an Exchange, the building, which was developed to include a coffee-room, assembly rooms, a tavern and lodgings, largely drew its subscriptions from the merchant class (McDiarmid 2023a). Situated in Glasgow’s Trongate area, ‘the intellectual centre’ of the city (Benchimol 2018), the buildings brought together merchants, academics, journalists and other people of influence. The interior coffee-room was really a newsroom, and allowed for commerce, academia, and print culture to intermingle. Here, members could view advertisements, consult shipping lists, and access British and European newspapers, periodicals, and pamphlets.

The influence of this commingling on the public sphere was significant, most notably in determining the content of weekly publication the Glasgow Advertiser; later the Glasgow Herald, and today the ‘oldest English-speaking national newspaper in the world’ (Terry 2005). When the first issue of the paper emerged in January 1783, it did so in a format that echoed the information that had hitherto been available in the Tontine Buildings’ coffee-room. It provided advertisements for commercial endeavours, news from the London papers, and a ‘tontine list’ which provided information on the latest ships to arrive and depart from the Clyde port. The list went on to be circulated across Scottish newspapers, becoming ubiquitous in print between the late-eighteenth- and early-twentieth centuries.

The significance of tontine-funded buildings in Scotland as important spaces was mirrored in Ireland, but to a far lesser extent. In Scotland, at least 17 such venues were built between the 1780s and 1830s, while in Ireland, the majority of Irish private capital-raising tontines were directed at building private homes, with only two directed at meeting spaces being identified across a similar timespan. These were a coffeehouse in Cork and assembly rooms in Armagh.

Established in 1793, the Cork Coffeehouse was likely the earliest Irish tontine used to fund building work. The scheme raised £3500 through the sale of 140 shares at £25 each, and, in addition to the coffeehouse, provided space for shops, apartments, and ‘three dwelling houses’. 116 individuals purchased the 140 shares, with 61 subscribers designated as merchants. Bankers, lawyers, and insurance brokers can also be found on the subscriber list, as can local elites; even Cork’s mayor invested (Copy of deed… 1794).

Situated on Castle Street, where one would also find the city’s Exchange, along with banks, booksellers, and various taverns, the coffeehouse was an important local venue. It, like Ireland’s other coffeehouses, existed within a network composed of printers, publishers, and pamphleteers, acting as a reading room which facilitated the exchange of news and encouraged public debate (Livesey 2009). Aside from being where the most up-to-date news from London and Europe could be read, the Cork Tontine Coffeehouse was a venue for political meetings; it was used as the site for military courts; and it was where Corkonians could sign local and national petitions, such as 1812 petition for Protestants in favour of Catholic emancipation (New Cork Evening Post, 1793; Freemans Journal 1810; Cork Morning Intelligencer, 21 Jan 1812). As was the case across much of the Atlantic World, sites like this became central to the development of the public sphere in Ireland (Brown 2016).

A year after the Cork Coffeehouse tontine had been established, a scheme to fund the building of assembly rooms in the northern town of Armagh commenced. The result was a three-story building on English Street, which, like the coffeehouse in Cork, became an important venue for Armagh’s upper society. Dances and social gatherings took place at the new Tontine Assembly Rooms, with members required to pay a quarterly subscription of 5s.5d; a sum which limited participation from the wider community (Quinn 2017). This policy changed in the 1820s, when, due to a decline in the venue’s fortunes, new trustees took over the rooms and placed a focus on making it accessible to all. It became the venue for community meetings; including the local arm of the London Hibernian Society, temperance groups, and religious groups looking to fundraise (Belfast Newsletter 1832, 1840; Drogheda Argus and Leinster Journal 1836). By 1840, the rooms had been augmented with ‘a suite of apartments …, a public news-room, and a savings bank’ (Lewis 1837). The building regularly hosted the Armagh Musical Society and local suppers, as well as visiting shows and public talks; ranging from magicians and ventriloquists to poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde (Rogers 1861; Quinn 2017; Belfast Newsletter 1835b).

In Ireland and Scotland, funding the costs of building projects via tontine was a practice that did not survive beyond 1850. Tontines still existed of course, as annuities from Irish government schemes and private schemes continued to be paid, but new offerings of this sort ended. Public debate around the tontine in Ireland also abated from early in the nineteenth century. As the century progressed, however, advertisements for a novel form of tontine, developed as a mutual aid insurance scheme, began to emerge in the Irish press.

4 When is a tontine not a tontine? A short note on nineteenth-century Irish mutual aid tontines and Scottish ‘dividing’ societies

Within the concept of the public sphere and wider cultural notions of the tontine, there is a comparison to be made between the nineteenth-century Irish mutual aid tontines and the ‘dividing’ societies which existed concurrently in Scotland.

In Ireland, mutual aid tontines were small local schemes which packaged the tontine as a yearlong financial instrument incorporating a short-term insurance policy. These usually provided subscribers with a sickness benefit and/or burial costs, or access to a benevolent fund when required, and at Christmas each year divided any residual funds among subscribers who had not drawn down on the policy during the year (McDiarmid 2024). These existed within a wider network of sickness and burial groups which were common across Ireland, with the Register of Friendly Societies identifying 414 of these societies in existence between 1806 and 1844 (Campbell 1992). These were not always tontines, but at least 92 registered mutual aid schemes specified ‘tontine’ in their names across the years 1833–1877 (Report of Registrar 1870, 1878). It is likely that many more schemes existed that did not specify ‘tontine’ in their title, or which did not undertake the formal registration process (Campbell 1992). The mutual aid tontine proved to be incredibly popular in Ireland and represented a significant break from the traditional long-term nature of a tontine. They also signified a shift in intended customer base from previous tontines, and rather than being for the wealthier members of society were directed at the working classes and poor of Ireland.

It should be noted that this form of tontine also existed outside of Ireland. This was mainly in areas of England with high Irish immigration, particularly around Liverpool, where the schemes occurred as a result of the transplantation of Irish communities and support structures into England (McDiarmid 2024). It is also possible to locate Welsh tontine societies (their origin is presently unclear), although these emerged six decades later than they did in Ireland. The use of the term ‘tontine’ to describe these mutual aid offerings therefore occurred earliest in Ireland.

In Scotland, ‘dividing’ Friendly Societies functioned in effectively the same manner as Irish mutual aid tontines. In exchange for a weekly subscription, they provided members with a sickness benefit and/or burial costs, before dividing any residual funds once a year between its members. These existed alongside other offerings from Friendly Societies which did not follow the dividing principle, but instead accumulated funds year-on-year. Of the two forms of society, those which offered their members the yearly division were the more popular (Reports from Commissioners 1874).

To give an example of how dividing societies worked, a society in Haddington in the Scottish Borders set a weekly subscription at 2 shillings (hereafter s), for which members could expect in return, 5s for the first 13 weeks of sickness, 3s for the subsequent 13 weeks, and 2s for the next 26 weeks. At the end of the year, the member could no longer claim for the same ailment, unless they were free of it for six months and it returned (Reports from Commissioners 1874). Not all schemes followed the same conventions. The Tradeston Sick and Funeral Society in Glasgow, for example, which had a membership of 500 and had been active for 30 years by 1874, paid a sickness benefit for a year and a half, after which the member was paid a final payment of £4 and their membership ceased. Regardless of the society’s terms, however, for those members of any dividing society who did not claim a benefit during the year, they were paid an annuity from the division of any residual funds held by the society. It was also common for two dividing societies to exist in the same area, often with overlapping memberships, which divided at different times of the year (Reports from Commissioners 1874).

The Irish mutual aid tontine and the dividing friendly societies in Scotland were effectively the same financial instrument. Both were a short-term insurance policy, with the benefit of an annual division of excess funds. Yet, while these schemes ran contemporaneously in Ireland and Scotland, there is no example of a Scottish dividing society ever being sold as, or referred to as, a tontine. The question, therefore, is why was the scheme packaged by Irish organisers, and known popularly by Irish citizens, as a tontine in Ireland and not in Scotland?

The hypothesis as to why this was the case is that the history of the tontine in Ireland supplied organisers of mutual aid schemes, and the wider public, with a cultural awareness for this form of financial instrument. The schemes of the 1770s were the most successful government tontines operated in Britain and Ireland. As detailed in this article, the concept of the tontine as a financial instrument, a source of political division, and as a source of public interest began to migrate into Irish popular culture at this time. Progress of the tontine bills’ movement through parliament was widely covered in the Irish press across the decade. Members of the public wrote to newspapers with their views; pamphleteers commented on the schemes; and playwrights remarked on it in their work. When it came to identifying the short-term, mutual aid instruments with a benefit of survivorship as ‘tontines’, the step was therefore logical for Irish organisers and subscribers, and signified a cultural touchstone which did not exist in Scotland.

5 Conclusion

Perhaps the most significant difference between Irish and Scottish tontine development was the lack of a government administered scheme in Scotland. As this article has demonstrated, the tontines initiated in the 1770s by the Irish government were topics of significant public debate. Irish newspapers shared stories directly and indirectly linked to the tontine, while pamphleteers advertised new schemes and offered opinions on government tontines. News stories on the progress of the tontine bills passing through parliament were common; Irish readers were kept abreast of debates and amendments; and through opinion pieces they were advised of the pros and cons of the tontine. Through the Irish press and, to a lesser extent, pamphleteers, the tontine as a concept and the word itself became common parlance during the eighteenth- and nineteenth centuries. The popular debate in Ireland around the tontine was therefore far more developed than it was in Scotland.

The legacy of this public debate and awareness of the tontine in Ireland, was such, that when mutual aid schemes with a yearly annuity payment developed in the nineteenth century, they were packaged as ‘tontines’. These were short-term insurance instruments directed at the working classes and poor, but when they emerged, it was the benefit of survivorship aspect of the scheme that organisers recognised. Irish organisers and subscribers knew the tontine concept, and these sickness and burial schemes with a yearly division of surplus funds became incredibly popular. This contrasts sharply with Scotland, where the public debate was less well developed, and when an identical scheme was offered by ‘dividing’ societies, it was never designated or marketed as a tontine.

Private groups in Scotland did, however, enthusiastically embrace the tontine as a capital-raising tool. These schemes, as was also the case in Ireland, catered mainly for wealthier members of society; the professional classes; local elites; politicians; and the mercantile community. When these groups became involved as organisers of private tontines, their needs and wants determined the kind of projects funded via the scheme. Investment was often directed at venues for conducting business, sharing news, socialising, and entertainment. These spaces were far more prevalent in Scotland and brought together the aforementioned groups in a setting which allowed them to hear and debate the latest news, to conduct business, watch performances, and to educate and be educated.

As we become ever more financially aware of the tontine, it becomes more apparent that the scheme had an impact beyond the financial sphere. Unfortunately, the narrative at the centre of this article, one which recognises the tontine as an instrument which provided for the communities where it was established and which went some way to developing social spaces and the public sphere in Ireland and Scotland, is practically unknown among those members of the public who are aware of the scheme. For many the tontine is viewed with a wariness, often verging on moral panic. This is perhaps an understandable view, for the tontine is a financial instrument shrouded in myth. Novels by writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Agatha Christie (even an episode of The Simpsons) have perpetuated a narrative in which tontine subscribers were so motivated by their greed that they were driven to murder in order to increase their share of the profits. There is, however, no evidence that this was the case. There were certainly instances of false identities and fraud, crimes which still contravened tontine rules and the law, but which are undeniably less heinous than murder. Recent press coverage has done little to assuage concerns around the tontine, with the Washington Post stating ‘It’s sleazy, it’s totally illegal, and yet it could become the future of retirement’ (Guo 2015). And for many (not all) there is something about benefiting from the deaths of others which sends our moral compasses into a spin. These attitudes may pose a challenge to establishing modern tontines, requiring scheme organisers to really think carefully about how these are marketed.