The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian Britain

The Foundations of Empirical Social Research

Bibliographic Data

ID3422306
AuthorsB R Mitchell (0000-0003-0096-0733), Michael J Cullen (0000-0002-4755-4276)
Year1976
Volume29
Issue4
Pages692
Publication date1976-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Economic History Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2595370
OpenAlexW2048566884
LanguageEN
Citations received17

The author's purpose is to examine the statistical movement, especially in the 1830s and 1840s until its demise in 1852, in order to find out how it organized itself, to assess its achievements and to discover a distinctive philosophy, if it had one.Most, but not all, of the social statisticians of the time are included here and their activities are introduced by a survey of British social statistics from 1660 to 1830.The remainder of the book is divided into two parts: government departments and social statistics, 1832-1852; the statistical societies of London, Manchester, and of other provincial towns such as Glasgow, Bristol, Belfast and Leeds.In the first part there are sections on William Farr and the General Register Office, the health of the armed forces (pp. 45-52)and on Edwin Chadwick and sanitary statistics (pp.53-64).The author believes that the collectors of statistics were applying their special skill primarily to improve the state of society by reform, having first identified the main problems.Often, however, their surveys led to conclusions already formed and to preconceived theories.It seems that their statistics were only a part of a general campaign aimed at reforms.Unfortunately they demonstrated considerable nalvety and ignorance of the society that they wished to change, and dissipated their energies on too wide a programme, or neglected obvious research areas.Whether these men, can, in fact, be grouped together as a movement, however, is not entirely proven here.Nevertheless Dr. Cullen provides detailed information on a topic which until now has been inadequately investigated, and he presents it with extensive documentation and a bibliography of primary sources.His excellent book will be of central interest to many historians of medicine, mainly to those dealing with public health and medicine in the first half of the nineteenth century

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