A Local Act for Social Insurance in the Eighteenth Century

¹ Journals of the House of Commons, 32, p. 127.

² George Fursdon of Cadbury, Devonshire, Sheriff of Devonshire in 1752, who appears to have been one of the originators of the scheme.

³ Quoted in A Plan for rendering the Poor independent on Public Contributions: founded on the Basis of the Friendly Societies called Clubs, by the Rev. John Acland, 1786.

⁴ See Jephson, Henry, The Platform, Vol. I, pp. 167–172.

⁵ MS. records at Exeter Castle, for details of which I am indebted to Mr. H. A. Davis, the Clerk of the Peace.

⁶ 8 & 9 Geo. 3, c. 82. No copies of the Bill appear to survive, and the only copy of the Act which I have discovered is the original manuscript in the House of Lords.

⁷ Journals of the House of Commons, 34, p. 10.

⁸ Journals of the House of Commons, 34, p. 22.

⁹ A Plan for rendering the Poor independent on Public Contributions. I am indebted to Sir Richard Acland, Bart., M.P., for lending me a copy of his ancestor's pamphlet. There is no copy in the Bodleian Library and only an incomplete one in the Cambridge University Library.

¹⁰ Letter by Dr. Price appended to Acland's pamphlet.

¹¹ The Insufficiency of the Causes to which the Increase of our Poor and the Poor's Rates have been generally ascribed, 1788.

¹² Speech by Thomas Gilbert, Hansard, Dec. 10, 1787.

¹³ Francis Maseres was Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer. Charles Lamb remembered him in the early nineteenth century in the Inner Temple, still dressed in the costume of the reign of George II. His proposals were put forward in a book, Proposals for establishing Life Annuities in Parishes.

¹⁴ Maseres, The Principles of the Doctrine of Life Annuities, 1783.