Talk: Investing in 19th Century Ireland

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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Investing in Dublin: Tontines, Women, and Financial Life in 19th C Ireland​

These talks will explore how ordinary Dubliners engaged with systems of savings and commercial
speculation in the nineteenth century.

Event Details​

Date: 7 October 2026, 13:00 – 14:00 Venue: Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson St, Dublin, D2
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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.
 
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