Geoffrey Clark

Historian, author of Betting on Lives: The Culture of Life Insurance in England, 1695–1775 (Manchester University Press, 1999) — described by secondary sources in this vault's Amicable Society cluster as the standard modern academic account of early English life-insurance culture. Was named — in a general further-reading list rather than an inline citation — behind the vault's former claim that the Amicable Society's dividend fund was split proportional to shares held. That claim is now refuted by a direct read of Walford 1885, which states the fund was divided equally by the number of deaths (claim-amicable-society-1706-fixed-dividend-fund-divided-equally-per-death). Clark remains directly unread; as of 2026-07-25 no kept claim rests on him, and whether Betting on Lives actually supports the shares-proportional reading is untested — it may equally have been misattributed by the secondary that named it (claim-tontine-coffee-house-dividend-proportional-claim-has-no-citation).

References

• claim-amicable-society-1706-charged-flat-premium-not-graded-by-age
• claim-amicable-society-1706-fixed-dividend-fund-divided-equally-per-death