---
title: "Cornelius Walford"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Cornelius Walford"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-07-23T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: [[["entity-amicable-society-for-a-perpetual-assurance-office|Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office"]],[["entity-geoffrey-clark|Geoffrey Clark"]],"actuarial history","Journal of the Institute of Actuaries"]
---


Nineteenth-century English insurance historian, author of "History of Life Assurance in the United Kingdom" (*Journal of the Institute of Actuaries*, vol. 25, 1885) — the scholarly reference most secondary accounts of the Amicable Society's founding-era mechanics trace back to, including the Tontine Coffee-House source this vault's Amicable Society cluster relies on. The JSTOR copy is paywalled (stable/41135809, HTTP 403), but the essay is serialized and freely hosted throughout by the [[entity-institute-and-faculty-of-actuaries|Institute and Faculty of Actuaries]]: vol. 25 pp. 114–133, 207–216, 257–276, 433–437 and vol. 26 pp. 1–24, 121–132, 302–315, 436–465 ("Concluded"), under the URL pattern `actuaries.org.uk/system/files/documents/pdf/NNNN-NNNN.pdf`. The first installment was read 2026-07-24 and ends "(To be continued.)" before reaching the Amicable Society's 1706 founding; the **continuation, pp. 207–216, was located and read 2026-07-25** and covers the Society's founding and dividend mechanics directly. Walford is accordingly a source read in the original rather than a citation trail — Tier 2, corrected from Tier 1 on 2026-07-25: a named expert writing in the field's own journal in 1885 about a society founded in 1706 stands in a secondary relationship to the founding-era facts, however near-contemporary he was with its 1866 merger and whatever records access he had. His statement that the annual fund was "equally divided by the number of deaths" refutes the shares-proportional rule the vault previously carried ([[claim-amicable-society-1706-fixed-dividend-fund-divided-equally-per-death]]), and his account of the admission-age cap tightening from 55 to 45 resolves a contest left open across four OCR passes ([[claim-amicable-society-1706-rules-capped-admission-age-at-55]]).

## References

- [[claim-amicable-society-1706-charged-flat-premium-not-graded-by-age]]
- [[claim-amicable-society-1706-fixed-dividend-fund-divided-equally-per-death]]
- [[claim-walford-1885-essay-freely-hosted-installment-predates-amicable-society-1706]]
- [[claim-amicable-society-1706-rules-capped-admission-age-at-55]]
- [[claim-amicable-society-adopted-age-graded-premiums-only-in-1807]]
- [[claim-pensam-1811-amicable-experience-first-assured-lives-mortality-data]]
- [[claim-amicable-registrar-hartley-absconded-with-6500-in-1713]]
- [[claim-1711-amicable-policy-sale-possibly-first-life-policy-sale-on-record]]
- [[claim-premature-negative-finding-amicable-dividend-was-an-unlocated-installment]]
- [[moc-early-life-assurance-and-the-age-rating-lag]]