Full Description
This book offers a comprehensive and authoritative survey of the tontine, an innovative financial instrument conceived and implemented in various settings throughout Georgian and early Victorian Britain.
The book draws on meticulous historical research including archival sources, account books and newspaper texts to present a coherent analysis of the origins and development of tontines in the United Kingdom. It shows how tontines differed from other forms of financing and offered an innovative approach to funding large infrastructure projects, with new dynamics in shareholding and investing, as well as introducing the concept of private development of public infrastructure. The book presents multiple case studies from the period and compares different types of tontines, such as government-run tontines and private holdings companies, and discusses the failures and challenges as well as successes of this new financial tool. The book will be an excellent reference work for scholars in financial and legal history, as well as social historians and those working on urban histories.
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Early Tontines in the West Country.- Chapter 3: The Richmond Bridge Tontine.- Chapter 4: The Society for Annuities Increasing to Survivors, 1770.-Chapter 5: The Ipswich Universal Tontine.- Chapter 6: The Covent Garden Theatre Life Tontine.- Chapter 7: The Government Tontines, Part One 1693, 1757, 1765 and the Irish ones of the 1770s.- Chapter 8: The Government Tontine of 1789.- Chapter 9: Small-Sum, Short Term Tontines.- Chapter 10: Failures.- Chapter 11: Miscellaneous schemes.- Chapter 12: The Breadth of Tontines.- Chapter 13: The Nineteenth Century.- Chapter 14: Aftermarket for tontine shares.- Chapter 15: Conclusion.
