These talks will explore how ordinary Dubliners engaged with systems of savings and commercial

speculation in the nineteenth century.

Speakers:

Dr Andrew McDiarmid

Adam Kane (PhD candidate at UCD)

These short talks examine histories of investment and mutual finance in nineteenth-century Ireland through archival discoveries drawn from the Charles Haliday Collection at the Royal Irish Academy and the Digital Archive of Irish Tontines (DAIT). Bringing together research on Irish tontines and women investors, the event explores how ordinary Dubliners engaged with systems of savings, welfare, and commercial speculation in ways that have often been overlooked in the historical record.

The first paper investigates Irish tontines: collective financial schemes in which benefits accrued to surviving subscribers over time. Using pamphlets, rulebooks, and subscriber lists, it shows how tontines operated not only as investment vehicles but also as mechanisms for burial provision, mutual aid, temperance activism, and community organisation. Particular attention is given to Dublin-based schemes and to the importance of the Haliday Collection as a source of evidence following the destruction of so many records in the Public Records Office fire of 1922.

The second paper focuses on Irish women as investors. Although women’s financial activities are often difficult to trace, shareholder records from companies such as the Dublin and Drogheda Railway Company and the Irish Mining Company reveal that women played a modest but meaningful role in Ireland’s investment culture. Preserved within the Haliday Collection, these records suggest that women were particularly drawn to infrastructural and income-generating ventures that appeared to offer steady and secure returns.

Together, the papers demonstrate how fragmentary archival evidence can illuminate overlooked dimensions of Dublin’s social and economic history.

Dr Andrew McDiarmid

Dr Andrew McDiarmid is an SFI-IRC Pathway Fellow in the School of History at University College Dublin. He specialises in the financial and cultural impact of the tontine in Britain and Ireland, money in Early Modern Britain, and the Scottish and English Financial Revolutions. Dr McDiarmid has authored two monographs: The Tontine: A History (Routledge, 2024), and Credit, Currency, and Capital: The Scottish Financial Revolution, 1690-1727 (Routledge, 2023). He is currently writing his third, The Origins of the Royal Bank of Scotland: A History, due for publication in summer 2027.

Adam Kane (PhD Candidate, UCD).

Adam's work examines Irish women's investment practices from 1820-1900. He is interested in the types of investments favoured by Irish women and how these were affected by factors such as social class, religion, and marital status. Through extensive archival research, this work enhances our understanding of Irish women's economic agency and illuminates the intersections of gender, class, and finance in nineteenth-century Ireland.

Image: The Friendly Brothers of Saint Andrew Tontine Society, instituted January, 1848, RIA HP 2036/20

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Eolas faoi Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann

Is cumann léannta neamhspleách, uile-oileáin é Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann, a bunaíodh sa bhliain 1785. Tacaíonn an tAcadamh le scoláireacht agus taighde sna heolaíochtaí, sna daonnachtaí agus sna heolaíochtaí sóisialta. Tá tuairim is 680 comhalta tofa ann agus 80 ball foirne, agus déanann siad ionadaíocht ar son na hÉireann go hidirnáisiúnta, cuireann siad comhairle shaineolach ar fáil don rialtas, déanann siad taighde, déanann siad deontais taighde a riaradh, eagraíonn siad comhdhálacha agus léachtaí poiblí, cuireann siad leabhair agus irisí acadúla i gcló, agus déanann siad cúram de leabharlann taighde.

About the Royal Irish Academy

The Royal Irish Academy, established in 1785, is an all-island, independent learned society and academic body that champions research by supporting and promoting scholarship in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. Its elected membership of approximately 680 individuals and 80 staff represent Ireland internationally, provide expert advice to government, carry out research, administer research grants, organise conferences and public lectures, publish academic books and journals, and maintain a research library.

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