Digital Archive of Irish Tontines

Description

Name: Irish Tontine 1775
Amount raised: IR£175,000
Cost: £100 per share
Status: Operational

Ireland's three government tontines (1773, 1775, 1777) used a three-class age structure that separated nominees into groups of 0-19, 20-39, and 40+ years old. Despite an 80-year gap since the first English tontine (1693), Irish awareness of the scheme was high due to extensive newspaper coverage of international tontines, creating an informed investing class. When Irish Attorney General Philip Tisdale proposed the first Irish tontine in 1773 to address government funding deficits, he faced parliamentary resistance from critics who dismissed it as a foreign or lottery-like scheme unsuitable for a free government. However, all three tontines were ultimately successful, being fully subscribed and raising a combined IR£740,000 for government coffers. Shares were priced at £100 each, with annuities in the 1773 tontine also capped at £100 in order to limit government commitments; this provision was dropped for subsequent schemes. While popular and effective as fundraising tools, tontines proved expensive for the government, leading to their discontinuation after 1777, though annuity obligations continued until the death of the last nominee in 1870.

Note: By the 1770s the Irish Pound traded almost at parity with the pound sterling.

Source: British National Archives, NDO 3/32, Printed Lists of the whole of the Nominees in these Tontines (1773/1775) whether payable in London or Dublin (please note only the lists from 1775 are included here).

Reproduced with permission from the British National Archives. Please appropriately cite any sources used.