1781 and 1796. The Tontine Coffee House on Wall Street in New York City, built in 1792, was the first home of the New York Stock Exchange. The first Freemasons' Hall, London. Subscribers were able to nominate someone other than themselves as the person on whose life the share was staked. On the subscriber's death they could leave their share to that person, or to anyone else. The scheme raised £5,000, but cost £21,750 in interest over its 87-year life. The Tontine Hotel, Greenock, Inverclyde, Scotland, was built in 1803. The Cleveland Tontine hotel, near Ingleby Arncliffe, North Yorkshire, originally a coaching inn on the Yarm to Thirsk turnpike road, was financed using a tontine in 1804. The Theatre Royal, Bath, was erected in 1805, funded through a tontine, with the Prince Regent and his brother Prince Frederick among the subscribers. Tontine pensions in the US: 1868–1906 Tontines became associated with life insurance in the United States in 1868 when Henry Baldwin Hyde of the Equitable Life Assurance Society introduced them as a means of selling more life insurance and meeting the demands of competition. Over the next four decades, the Equitable and its imitators sold approximately 9 million policies – two-thirds of the nation's outstanding insurance contracts. During the Panic of 1873 many life insurance companies went out of business as deteriorating financial conditions created solvency problems: those that survived had all offered tontines. However, the contracts included an obligation to maintain monthly payments, and as a result spawned large numbers of policy owners whose life savings were wiped out by a single missed payment. The profits produced by the tontines' deferred payout structures proved tempting for the issuers – especially the profligate James Hyde. As the funds in the investment account accumulated, they found their way into directors' and agents' pockets, and also into the hands of judges and legislators, who reciprocated with prejudicial judgments and laws. Finally, in 1905, the Armstrong Investigation was set up to enquire into the selling of tontines. It resulted in the banning of the continued sale of any tontines which contained toxic clauses for consumers. In essence, these toxic versions of tontine pensions were effectively (though not literally) outlawed in response to corrupt insurance company management. When Equitable Life Assurance was establishing its business in Australia in the 1880s, an actuary of the Australian Mutual Provident Society criticised tontine insurance, calling it