The Pery Square Building History - The People's Museum of Limerick

The History of the Pery Square Tontine Scheme

The People’s Museum has its home in an old Georgian townhouse which was built in the 1830s. The Pery Square Tontine Company was a company which built these six houses along Pery Square as part of a Tontine Scheme. Tontine Schemes were quite popular with property development back in the 18th and 19th centuries and traditionally were a winner-takes-all affair. Many of these schemes in the past led to the deaths of those involved as greed would’ve driven certain members involved to murder the others in order to claim whatever prize was to be won. In the case of the Pery Square Tontine Company, each of the houses along Per Square were rented out at 89 shares at £120 per share. Each of these shareholders would then be required to nominate an inheritor so that when they passed away, their inheritor would then gain their shares and the winner was to be the last living majority shareholder. The outright winner, or last living inheritor, was to be granted all 6 houses on Pery Square.

The Life and Death Lottery:

The Pery Square Tontine Scheme became known as the Life and Death Lottery, and to nominate somebody as your inheritor would be putting their lives at great risk, as once the original shareholder and nominee were taken out of the picture, the shares of everyone else would rise in value. This was a great inspiration to many murder-mystery novels at the time. So in 1913 the Life and Death Lottery as it was known was eventually won outright by Ms Sophia Vanderkiste, who was in her 70’s when she was declared the winner. Her father nominated her as his inheritor without even telling her so one morning in 1913 she awoke a very wealthy lady as she had acquired the shares of No.1, 2 and 3 Pery Square with a further 3 gentlemen having the shares for the remaining 3 houses. Thus ended the Pery Square Tontine Scheme and since then Tontines have been completely outlawed in Ireland.

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