Proceedings of the deputation to the Local Government Board advocating a quinquennial census of the United Kingdom.

  • Royal Statistical Society (Great Britain)
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Proceedings of the deputation to the Local Government Board advocating a quinquennial census of the United Kingdom. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    that Institute, and I have been asked to address you to-day, on behalf of the Institute, as one who has given some attention to the subject of census reform, and has read a paper before that body on the matter. “ We, as Actuaries, have to deal with problems depending on birth-rates, death-rates, and marriage-rates. If the Statistical Society may be likened to a general physician we are specialists dealing with this branch of the subject in particular. We therefore feel it is of the greatest importance that the population statistics upon which we often have to depend, in the last resort, shall be as accurate as circumstances permit. It is true that actuaries have their sectional tables of mortality prepared from other sources under their own control; but, after all, the population statistics, which we obtain from the decennial census, represent the national mortality, and to these must often be referred all the sectional experience which we prepare from our own observation. For these reasons, I desire to associate myself with the arguments and the appeal which Sir Francis Sharp Powell and Major Craigie have to-day addressed to you. I will not repeat what they have so forcibly said, but I have not heard any objection made to the quinquennial census, except on the ground of expense. The people who are to be enumerated have never appealed against it, or applied to Parliament that they should not be enumerated more than once in ten years; and it therefore seems to me that the sole objections are internal and rest upon official convenience and national expense. As regards the advantages of a revised census, it is surely not unreasonable that the system which was introduced in 1801, when the population of England and Wales was 8,000,000 and the decennial increment 1,250,000, should have become clumsy and ineffective after a hundred years, when the population has risen to 32,000,000 and the decennial increment to 3,500,000. AYe think it not unreasonable to ask you to bear in mind these greatly increased figures in considering this change which we recommend. “ On one point, to which no speaker has hitherto referred, I would ask permission to say a word. We are of opinion that greater frequency in census enumerations would lead to greater accuracy in the results. We believe that if there were quinquennial censuses, people who, for illustration, may be in the habit of returning their ages at the same figure—no matter whether they are giving them in 1840, or 1850, or 1860—would perhaps depart from that practice, and would get into the habit of returning their particulars with greater accuracy. If I may use a homely illustra- tion, just as to get a shy horse past a formidable obstacle, you have to lead him frequently by it, so we think the population of this country would, by quinquennial censuses, become more used to the process, and be induced to give to the population statistics a greater accuracy than they now possess. “ This question has been agitated by the Royal Statistical Society and other bodies for more than fifty years, and we, of the Institute of Actuaries, do earnestly beg that you will use 3Tour great influence in favour of this modest and much needed reform.”