John Finlaison

John Finlaison, eldest son of Donald Finlayson and Isabella Sutherland, was born in Thurso, Caithness on 27 August 1783.

At the age of fifteen he was removed from school and apprenticed to Mr Donald Robeson, a writer [solicitor] in the town of Thurso, Scotland.

He held this appointment as factor for about twelve months and in August 1804, proceeded to Edinburgh in Scotland where he obtained a clerkship in the office of Mr Glen, a writer to the Signet.

To prevent the possibility of opposition from relatives, they informed no one of their marriage intentions and John received the offer of an appointment under the board of naval revision, which enabled him to marry her at once.

John was shortly thereafter promoted to be first clerk to the commission, and filled that office till the board closed its labours in August 1808.

The accounts had seldom been less than eighteen months in arrears, but by Finlaison's system they were produced, checked, and audited in three weeks, when the saving made in Deptford yard only in the first year, 1809, was 60,000l.

This plan met with such universal approval that it was adopted by France, Austria, and Russia, and its inventor received as a reward the order of the Fleur-de-lys from Louis XVIII in 1815 (Baron Charles Dupin, Voyages dans la Grande-Bretagne, 1821, pt.

In 1815 Dr. Barry O'Meara, physician to Napoleon Bonaparte at St. Helena, commenced a correspondence with Finlaison, his private friend, on the subject of the emperor's daily life.

Having as librarian found many valuable state papers relating to the American war, he was in 1813 induced to attempt the completion of Redhead Yorke's 'Naval History,’ which was intended to form a part of Campbell's 'Lives of the Admirals.'

[2] Before the close of 1819 he furnished the chancellor of the exchequer with a statement of the age of each individual in the receipt of naval half-pay or pensions, fourteen thousand persons, thence deducing the decrement of life among them.

The measure consequently suggested by him was finally established by negotiations with the Bank of England in 1823 for its acceptance of the charge for public pensions in consideration of the 'dead weight' annuity.

All the calculations were made by him, and it was plainly stated in the House of Commons that in the whole establishment of the Bank of England there was not one person capable of computing the new annuity at the fractional rate of interest agreed upon.

On 1 January 1822, he was removed from the admiralty to the treasury, and appointed actuary and principal accountant of the cheque department of the national debt office, the duties of which position he performed for twenty-nine years.

For many years after he had sought to impress on the government the loss which the country was sustaining by the use of erroneous tables, he was treated with neglect and contempt, and it was only by the accidental production of one of his letters before Lord Althorpe's committee of finance in March 1828 that the matter was brought forward.

The immediate suspension of the life annuity system took place, and, remodelled upon the basis of Finlaison's tables, it was resumed in November 1829 with a saving in five years of 390,000l.

On the passing of the General Registration Act in 1837, his opinion was taken on the details of the working of the scheme, and he was the first witness called before the parliamentary committee on church leases in the following year.

He was unexpectedly seized with congestion of the lungs, and in the 77th year of his age after a brief illness, died at his residence in Notting Hill, London, on 13 April 1860, John is buried in St Nicholas' Church, Loughton.