The Amicable Society's 1706 rules screened membership by a coarse age band — admission capped at the top by 55 years — rather than individually rating risk

The Amicable Society's 1706 founding account states an eligibility window rather than a graded scale: reconstructed across two independent OCR passes over the primary pamphlet, "None to be admitted a Member under [Ten/Twelve — OCR ambiguous], or above Fifty five Years of Age." The upper bound read consistently as "Fifty five" in both passes; the lower bound did not, and is marked [unverified-quant — needs primary] pending a clean transcription of the document (the archive.org PDF endpoint returned an error this session; only OCR text was usable). Together with claim-amicable-society-1706-charged-flat-premium-not-graded-by-age, this is the shape of the Society's pricing mechanism: coarse eligibility screening at the door, flat pricing once admitted — age mattered only as a pass/fail gate, never as a rating input.

This creates an open tension worth flagging rather than resolving: the vault's existing claim-dodson-refused-amicable-society-over-age-45 has Dodson turned away for being "over 45" in the 1750s, decades after this 1706 rule set an upper cap of 55. Both figures are independently sourced — this note's primary pamphlet versus the existing claim's Tier-4 Wikipedia — so this is not a simple case of picking a winner. It may mean the cap tightened between 1706 and the 1750s, that one figure is a transcription or OCR error, or that the "45" itself is imprecise. Not resolved here; recorded as an open lead rather than asserted either way, and not routed to a new question, since no kept claim rests on settling it — worth revisiting only if a source ever states the rule changed.

Audit addendum (2026-07-24, cross-model): the balance described above has shifted. The Tier-2 secondary that corroborates this cluster's premium arithmetic — Tontine Coffee-House, citing Walford (1885), Clark (1999/1997), and Brand (1775) — states the Society's members were "all between the ages of 12 and 45." That puts a named secondary tradition, not just the Dodson claim's Tier-4 Wikipedia, behind the 45 side; and in a degraded long-s typeface, the OCR's "Fifty fwe" could itself be a misread of "Forty five." The upper bound is now recorded as contested — primary-OCR 55 versus secondary-tradition 45 — and this note's title figure should not be treated as settled until a clean transcription of the pamphlet resolves it. The Tontine reading also supports "Twelve" over "Ten" for the lower bound, matching the certificate-template read.

Verification addendum (2026-07-24, dedicated session): the pamphlet's certificate-of-age form — a distinct passage from the main eligibility clause, and less OCR-degraded — reads cleanly: "being full Twelve Years of Age or more, and under Fifty Five." This settles the lower bound at Twelve. It does not settle the upper bound: "Fifty Five" is now the fourth convergent primary-side reading, still standing against the Tier-2 secondary tradition's "Forty five." The gap named above is narrower by one number but not closed.

Resolution addendum (2026-07-25, Walford read directly). The contest is over, and neither side was wrong. Walford's 1885 history gives the sequence explicitly: "At a later period, the age of membership was limited to between 12 and 55 years of age," and then, describing the Society's position by around 1770, "The extreme age for admittance had been reduced to 45." Both figures are genuine; they are the same rule at two different dates. The pamphlet's "Fifty Five" is the earlier regime, the secondary tradition's "Forty five" the later one, and the tightening hypothesis this note floated in its second paragraph — "it may mean the cap tightened between 1706 and the 1750s" — is the correct reading. That also dissolves the tension with claim-dodson-refused-amicable-society-over-age-45: Dodson, turned away in the 1750s for being over 45, was refused under the reduced cap, not in contradiction of the 1706 one.

One genuine discrepancy survives, in the opposite direction from the one this note was worried about. Walford states that "There was no limitation of age for membership in the first instance; but the Court had the power of rejection," which conflicts with the 1706 pamphlet's own certificate-of-age form ("being full Twelve Years of Age or more, and under Fifty Five"). The pamphlet is the primary and is explicit, so the 12–55 band stands for 1706; Walford's "first instance" most plausibly refers to the Society's pre-charter subscription period in 1705, before the Queen Anne charter authorized business from 25 March 1706. Recorded rather than resolved — no kept claim rests on it.