The statistical big bang of 1911: Ideology, technological innovation and the production of medical statistics

Social History of Medicine

Volumn 9, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 409-426

  Higgs, Edward ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Censuses; Districts; Eugenics; Fertility; General Register Office; Information technology; Mortality; Registration

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; COMPUTER SYSTEM; FERTILITY; GOVERNMENT; HISTORY; POPULATION RESEARCH; PUBLIC HEALTH; STATISTICS; TECHNOLOGY; UNITED KINGDOM; VITAL STATISTICS;

CENSUSES; COMPUTER SYSTEMS; FERTILITY; GOVERNMENT AGENCIES; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; PUBLIC HEALTH; STATISTICS; TECHNOLOGY; VITAL STATISTICS;

EID: 0030324358     PISSN: 0951631X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/shm/9.3.409     Document Type: Article

References (111)

1. S. R. S. Szreter, 'The Genesis of the Registrar-General's Social Classification of Occupations', The British Journal of Sociology, XXXV (1984), 522-46;
2. Simon Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860-1940 (Cambridge, 1996).
3. 74th Annual Report of the Registrar General (ARRG) for 1911 (London, 1913), vii-xi.
4. John M. Eyler, Victorian Social Medicine. The Ideas and Methods of William Farr (London, 1979).
5. S. E. Finer, The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (London, 1952), p. 125;
6. Royston Lambert, Sir John Simon and English Social Administration 1816-1904 (London, 1963), pp. 262-3, 268, 320-1, 419.
7. Michael J. Cullen, The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian Britain. The Foundations of Empirical Social Research (Hassocks, 1975), pp. 29-43;
8. Simon Szreter, 'The GRO and the Public Health Movement in Britain 1837-1914', Social History of Medicine, 4 (1991), 435-63.
9. See, for example, Roger Davidson, Whitehall and the Labour Problem in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain (London, 1985);
10. Roger Davidson, 'Official Labour Statistics: a Historical Perspective', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 158 (1995), 165-73;
11. Donald A. MacKenzie, Statistics in Britain, 1865-1930: The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge (Edinburgh, 1981);
12. and the contributions to John Irvine, Ian Miles and Jeff Evans (eds.), Demystifying Social Statistics (London, 1989).
13. The latter is stressed by Davidson, Whitehall and the Labour Problem, pp. 180-205.
14. S. B. Saul, The Myth of the Great Depression (London, 1969).
15. Davidson, Whitehall and the Labour Problem, pp. 34-75.
16. Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: a Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Harmondsworth, 1984), pp. 239-349.
17. Report of the Interdepartmental Inquiry on Physical Deterioration, P.P., 1904, XXXII/Cd.2175/.
18. See, for example, B. Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social Imperial Thought 1895-1914 (London, 1960);
19. G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency. A Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899-1914 (London, 1971);
20. H. V. Emy, Liberals, Radicals and Social Politics (Cambridge, 1973);
21. M. Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford, 1978);
22. P. Weiler, The New Liberalism: Liberal Social Theory in Great Britain 1889-1914 (London, 1982).
23. G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency, ch.4;
24. G. R. Searle, Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914 (Leyden, 1976), pp. 45-66;
25. Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender, pp. 129-237.
26. See also Philip Abrams, The Origins of British Sociology 1834-1914 (London, 1968), pp. 66-100;
27. MacKenzie, Statistics in Britain, 1865-1930;
28. Greta Jones, Social Darwinism and English Political Thought (Brighton, 1980), pp. 99-120;
29. R. A. Soloway, Demography and Degeneration. Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth-century Britain (Chapel Hill, 1990);
30. Pauline M. H. Mazumdar, Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. The Eugenics Society, its Sources and its Critics in Britain (London, 1992).
31. For the debates around the politics of infant mortality see Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood. Child and Maternal Welfare in England, 1900-1939 (London, 1980), pp. 1-113;
32. Deborah Dwork, War is Good for Babies and other Young Children. A History of the Infant and Child Welfare Movement in England 1898-1918 (London, 1987).
33. Searle, Eugenics and Politics, pp. 25-30.
34. 42nd ARRG for 1879 (London, 1881), p. xxiii.
35. William Farr had said much the same a few years earlier: Supplement to the 35th Annual Report of the Registrar General. Letter to the Registrar General on the Mortality in the Registration Districts of England during the 10 years 1861-70, by Wm Farr (London, 1875), p. viii.
36. The relative increase in mortality due to cancer was also seen as evidence of 'impaired vitality' due to racial degeneration: Searle, Eugenics and Politics, p. 22.
37. Szreter, 'The GRO and the Public Health Movement in Britain', pp. 459-62;
38. Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender, pp. 238-82.
39. For the broader context of this struggle see Dorothy Porter, '"Enemies of the Race": Biologism, Environmentalism, and Public Health in Edwardian England', Victorian Studies, XXXIV (Winter, 1991), 159-78.
40. Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender, pp. 67-282.
41. Office of Population Censuses and Surveys & General Register Office, Edinburgh, Guide to Census Reports, Great Britain 1801-1966 (London, 1977), pp. 23-4.
42. Public Record Office (PRO): General Register Office: Census Returns: Correspondence and Papers: RG 19: RG 19/48B Dept committee on the census of 1911 (Oct. 1909-Apr. 1911), p. 62.
43. Szreter, 'The Genesis of the Registrar-General's Social Classification', pp. 530-8;
44. Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender, pp. 262-71.
45. See Stevenson's letter of application for the post of superintendent of statistics, dated 25 March 1909: PRO: Treasury Board Papers (T 1): T 1/11014/8958. For further information on Stevenson, see Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender, p. 74, n. 20.
46. 50th ARRG for 1887 (London, 1888), pp. vii, x.
47. For the history of nineteenth-century insurance, see P. H. J. H. Gosden, The Friendly Societies in England 1815-75 (Manchester, 1961);
48. P. H. J. H. Gosden, Self-help. Voluntary Associations in Nineteenth-century Britain (London, 1973);
49. Robin Pearson, 'Thrift or Dissipation? The Business of Life Assurance in the Early Nineteenth Century', Economic History Review, 2nd series, XLIII, (1990), 236-54.
50. For the major business histories of insurance companies see Barry Supple, The Royal Exchange Assurance: A History of British Insurance 1720-1970 (Cambridge, 1970);
51. Clive Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance and the Development of British Insurance (Cambridge, 1985). The records of the Railway Clearing House can be found at the PRO in record classes RAIL 1080-RAIL 1097.
52. PRO: GRO: Letter Books (RG 29): RG 29/1, pp. 538-46; Michael Lindgren, Glory and Failure: The Difference Engines of Johann Muller, Charles Babbage and Edvard Scheutz (London, 1990), pp 211-18.
53. Edward Higgs, 'A Cuckoo in the Nest?: The Origins of Civil Registration and State Medical Statistics in Nineteenth-century England and Wales', Continuity and Change 11 (1996), 115-134.
54. English Life Tables: Tables of Lifetimes, Annuities, and Premiums, with an Introduction by William Farr (London, 1864).
55. Arithmometers were mechanical calculating machines, the precursors of modern calculators, first developed by Thomas de Colmar in the 1820s: Mary Croarken, Early Scientific Computing in Britain (Oxford, 1990), p. 12;
56. Andrew Warwick, 'The Laboratory of Theory or What's Exact about the Exact Sciences?', in M. Norton-Wise (ed), The Values of Precision (Chichester, 1995), pp. 328-9. The GRO purchased its first arithmometer in 1870: RG 29/2, pp. 111-12. Slide rules had been introduced by 1895: RG 29/3, p. 169.
57. T 1/6028B/12646.
58. RG 29/3, pp 78-81.
59. E. Higgs, 'The Struggle for the Occupational Census, 1841-1911', in R. M. MacLeod (ed.), Government and Expertise: Specialists, Administrators and Professionals, 1860-1914 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 83-4.
60. PRO: Local Government Board: Government Offices Correspondence and Papers (MH 19): MH 19/45, p. 22.
61. MH 19/45, p. 42. The Registrar General expressed similar views to the Treasury in a letter of 25 October 1910: PRO: Stationery Office: Files of Correspondence, Series 1 (STAT 12): STAT 12/10/9 Purchase of tabulating machines on behalf of Census Office.
62. W. R. Merriam, 'The Evolution of American Census-taking', Century Magazine (April 1903), 840-1;
63. Martin Campbell-Kelly, ICL: A Business and Technical History (Oxford, 1989), pp. 8-13.
64. Campbell-Kelly, ICL: A Business and Technical History, p. 11.
65. Bernard Mallett, 'The Organisation of Registration in its Bearings on Vital Statistics', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXXX (1917), 8.
66. RG 29/8, p. 69.
67. Maurice Wright, Treasury Control of the Civil Service 1854-1874 (Oxford, 1969), pp. 227-47.
68. This was certainly the intention of the Registrar General in 1911: RG 29/4, p. 192. The reorganisation came to fruition in the aftermath of the First World War: PRO: GRO Establishments and Accounts Division: Correspondence and Papers (RG 20): RG 20/6 Re-organisation of the Higher Establishment of the GRO, Min of Health and Treasury Correspondence, 1920-23.
69. Tora A. Bikson, 'Organizational Trends and Electronic Media: Work in Progress', American Archivist, 57 (1994), 48-68.
70. A distinction has to be made here, however, between the introduction of modern forms of information technology which remove work but leave those using machines with a greater skill base, and the introduction of mechanical tabulation which reduces the skill component of the work of those involved. This conforms to the distinction made in modern management theory between 'informating' and 'automating' processes: Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: the Future of Work and Power (London, 1988), pp. 9-11.
71. Report of the 1890 Treasury Committee on the Census, P.P., 1890, LVIII [C.-6071] App. 9;
72. Herman Hollerith, 'The Electrical Tabulating Machine', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 57 (1894), 678-82.
73. Edward Higgs, Making Sense of the Census (London, 1989), p. 105.
74. On Henniker's illness see a letter of the GRO's chief clerk to the Treasury of April 1899: RG 29/3, p. 226.
75. C. A. Everard Greene, The Beginnings. Reminiscences of C. A. Everard Green (British Tabulating Machine Company, London, c.1959), pp. 15-16.
76. Everard Greene, The Beginnings, pp. 14-15;
77. Campbell-Kelly, ICL: A Business and Technical History, pp. 28-31.
78. Mary Croarken, Early Scientific Computing in Britain (Oxford, 1990), p. 24.
79. The Dutch first used machine processing in the census of 1930, whilst the Germans were still in the process of experimenting with Hollerith machines during the First World War: Jan van den Ende, 'The Number Factory: Punched-card Machines at the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 16 (1994), 16, 18.
80. Campbell-Kelly, ICL: A Business and Technical History, p. 3.
81. PRO: Ministry of Health: Establishment and Organisation Files (MH 78): MH 78/114 GRO co-ordination of work with Ministry of Health and appointment of Registrar General: 'Note by Dr Stevenson' dated 25 Jan. 1920.
82. Alain Desrosieres, 'Official Statistics and Medicine in Nineteenth-century France: The SGF as a Case Study', Social History of Medicine, 4 (1991), p. 525.
83. Van den Ende, however, describes this machine as essentially a desk adding machine rather than a card processor: Van den Ende, 'The Number Factory', p. 17. Stationery Office files, on the other hand, indicate that the classicompteur was a card tabulator but that the sorting of the cards had to be done by hand, thus making it inferior to Hollerith-type machines: STAT 12/16/3, Various reports and proposals relating to purchase of sorting, punching and tabulating machines.
84. Campbell-Kelly, ICL: A Business and Technical History, p. 13.
85. Szreter, 'The GRO and the Public Health Movement in Britain 1837-1914', pp. 452-7.
86. During his control of the GRO, for example, the superintendent of statistic's Letter to the Registrar General was dropped from the Annual Reports, the latter losing much of their vitality and innovativeness.
87. 1901 Census Report, P.P., 1904, CVIII [Cd.2174], pp. 74, 90.
88. Margo Anderson, The American Census: a Social History (London, 1988), pp. 1-115, 236-40.
89. RG 19/186: Memorandum on census taking in Austria, Hungary, England and Wales, France, German Empire, the Netherlands, Switzerland, USA [1911].
90. Desrosieres, Official Statistics and Medicine in Nineteenth-century France', pp. 525-6;
91. Van den Ende, 'The Number Factory', p. 18; Scottish Record Office: General Register Office of Scotland, Registration Branch Files (GRO 5): GRO 5/1196 Statistical methods used in preparation of Registrar General's Reports: 'Notes on the revised scheme of reports adopted by the RG for Scotland', dated 28 Jan. 1916.
92. The timing of innovation being determined by the development of a gap between what an organization wants to do and what its established systems allow it to do, in conjunction with changes in key personnel and office culture, will be familiar to students of modern management theory: e.g. Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (London, 1983).
93. John M. Eyler, 'Mortality Statistics and Victorian Health Policy: Program and Criticism', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 50 (1976), 350.
94. RG 29/22, pp. 3, 28.
95. 71st ARRG for 1908 (London, 1909), pp. vi-vii.
96. 74th ARRG for 1911 (London, 1913), p. viii.
97. 71st ARRG for 1908, p. lxxv.
98. 72nd ARRG for 1909 (London, 1911), p. viii.
99. 36th ARRG for 1873 (London, 1875), p. liv.
100. 47th ARRG for 1884 (London, 1886), p. xx.
101. 32nd ARRG for 1869 (London, 1871), p.195.
102. 43rd ARRG for 1880 (London, 1882), p. 99; RG 29/23, p. 131.
103. Bill Luckin, 'Death and Survival in the City: Approaches to the History of Disease', Urban History Yearbook (Leicester, 1980), pp. 53-62;
104. Anne Hardy, 'Death is the End of all Disease: Using the GRO Cause of Death Statistics for 1837-1920', Social History of Medicine, 7 (1994), 473, 480-1.
105. MH 19/195: Correspondence between the GRO and LGB , 27 August 1890.
106. T 1/8954A/13154.
107. 71st ARRG for 1908, p. 7.
108. RG 29/4, p. 176; MH 78/114 GRO, Co-ordination of work with Ministry of Health and appointment of Registrar General, 'Note by Dr Stevenson' dated 25/1/20.
109. PRO: GRO: Population and Medical Statistics: Correspondence and Papers (RG 26): RG 26/34 Transferable Deaths - policy (Dr Buchanan), 1921, and 1940; RG 26/35, Transferable Deaths - Correspondence, 1910-43, letter of 7 Nov. 1911 from the Public Health Department of Notts County Council to Newsholme.
110. 73rd ARRG for 1910 (London, 1912), pp. vii-viii.
111. Indeed the census can itself be seen as a medical survey: Edward Higgs, 'Disease, Febrile Poisons and Statistics: the Census as a Medical Survey, 1841-1911', Social History of Medicine, 4 (1991), 465-78.