Vital statistics : a memorial volume of selections from the reports and writings of William Farr / edited for the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain by Noel A. Humphreys.

  • Farr, William, 1807-1883.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vital statistics : a memorial volume of selections from the reports and writings of William Farr / edited for the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain by Noel A. Humphreys. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    interested in the more technical aspect of the subject, and especially in the infinite variety of formulaj dealing Avith different branches of life insurance, must, however, be referred to the work itself, the introduction to which has been, not inapproi)riatcly, described as a very elegant treatise. Only those officially connected with Dr, Farr in the General Register Office, and who worked on this laborious volume (of more than 700 pages) under his superintendence, had the means of fully realising the unremitting attention ho gave to every detail of the work, or the intense and unvarying interest h.c maintained in every successive process. It is not easy to forget the expression of his countenance, beaming with pleasure and triumph, almost childlike in its unaffected simplicity, when (during the progress of the Life Table, No. 3,) he reached the office one morning with a small page or two of MS., containing one of tliose formulas which had taken him all the night to work out. Before quitting the subject of Dr, Farr's Life Tables, reference should be made to his Healthy Disti'ict Life Table, which was contributed in 1859 to the Royal Society, in a paper On the Construction of Life Tables, illustrated by a new Life Table of the Healthy Districts of England. This is not the place to speak of the value of this Life Table as a standard of actually attained healthiness in England. Extracts from this paper find place in the Life Table Part of this volume, where will also be found reference to other life-table work of Dr. Farr's, published from time to time in the Registrar General's Reports. In or about the year 1846, Dr. Farr moved from Stoke Newiugton to Melina Place, St. John's Wood, where a large circle of friends enjoyed his society and hospitality. Here he resided until 1860, when he Avent to live at Bickley, in Kent. During these years his official salary rose slowly, until in 1855, on the urgent representations of Major Graham, who had been appointed Registrar General in 1842, in succession to Mr. Lister, the Treasury granted him, in consideration of his eminent services in connexion with moi'tality and census statistics, a special allowance of 200Z. per annum, which raised his salary as Superintendent of the Statistical Department of the General Register Office to 800/. We may here state, that at subsequent periods his salary was finally raised, in 1874 ,to 1,100/., of which 300Z. was in the form of special allowance for exceptional services. It may be remarked that his salary would probably, at this last-mentioned change, have been further increased except for the fact that the salary of the Registrar General, as Chief of the Office, did not exceed 1,200/. In 1852 was pubHshed his celebrated Report upon « The Mortality of Cholera in England, 1848-49. .This undoubtedly added much, not only to our knowledge of the causation and methods for prevention of cholera, but also to the reputation of the author. Considerable extracts from this Report are given in the following pages, as also from his special Beports upon the subsequent cholera epidemics in 1853-1 and 1865-6, in