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. 

Kent McKeever was the Former Director of the Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Columbia Law School, Columbia University, from 1994–2019. He published extensively in financial and legal history with a focus on tontines, annuities and eighteenth to nineteenth century public finance.