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Notes on the Early History of Tontines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2016

Frederick Hendriks Esq.
Frederick Hendriks Esq.*
Affiliation:
Globe Insurance Company
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Extract

In the third of my papers entitled “Contributions to the History of Insurance and of the Theory of Life Contingencies” after treating upon the earliest examples which, after a somewhat tedious search, I could find of tontine associations practically carried out—examples confined, as it will be recollected, to some comparatively small projects of the Dutch municipalities of Kampen, Middelburg, and Groningen, employed for raising capital sums, by the grant of tontine life annuities, in 1670 and 1671—the circumstance was mentioned, that the credit of the invention was properly accorded to the Italians, or more particularly to the Italian Tonti, whose name has been so effectually incorporated into several languages through the word “tontine.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Institute of Actuaries , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , July 1862 , pp. 205 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 1863

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References

page 205 note * Vide Assurance Magazine and Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, vol. iii., pp. 93-120, and particularl y § 29, p. 111, and Note, p. 116.

page 206 note * “On the Statistics of the British Land Tax Assessment,” vide Journal of the Society, vol. xx.

page 207 note * The identification, by Houghton, of Petty's labours with Graunt's, where he observes that “Major Graunt, or rather that learned and ingenious virtuoso, Sir William Petty, in his admirable Observations of the Bills of Mortality of London, &c… This great man saith,” &c., may appear to lend some colour to the early origin of the question which Mr. Hodge and Professor De Morgan discussed in this Journal, as to which of the two (Graunt or Petty) was the real author of the celebrated Observations; but I am inclined to the same conclusions as Professor De Morgan, that Graunt was the man, and that Sir William Petty may have very materially assisted him.

page 208 note * “Last day of August, 1665. I humbly supplicate your Excellency to obtain for me, from the king, the justice for which I have appealed to His Majesty, against a bookseller who has had the effrontery to cause to be printed the account of the present conduct of the court of France, which I composed last year, and which His Majesty had commanded me, for certain reasons, through M. Le Tellier, not to have printed. I hope for this favour through the goodness of your Excellency.” (Vol. Verts, C.)

page 209 note * “Bastille, 4th March, 1675. I return you a million thanks for the aid of 600 livres that your Excellency has obtained for me from the king, which have been used in procuring for me clothes and linen, as also in giving like articles to my two sons, who are confined in this place with me. I hope also that your Excellency will procure for me from His Majesty, when the good God shall inspire him to do so, the 1,600 livres which I ow e to the people of this castle, who have furnished me, for seven years, with the things which were necessary for me and likewise for my sons; and nevertheless, Mon -seigneur, I implore you, in the name of God and by the memory of the late Monseigneur the Cardinal Mazarin, to continue to me your bounty for the subsistence of my daughter, who has the charge of the rest of my family, which is reduced to the last stage of distress.” (Vol. Verts, C.)

page 213 note * M. Depping states that this has reference to the organisation of a grand India Company, a project upon which Tonti does not give further explanation.