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Royal statistical societý. Demographic statistics of the United Kingdom
2o2
DEMOGRAPHIC
STATISTICS OF
for arbitration, and the case was heard by a Barrister as Arbitrator, the damages claimed being
~I,O00,
The case for the claimant was that the tuberculosis was confined to the lungs and pleura, but that the rest of the carcase was fit for the food of man and not liable to seizure. In support of this contention evidence was given by several butchers, and also by Mr. Walker, M.R.C.V.S., of Halifax, and by Dr. Hime of Bradford. For the defence it was argued that it was not a question for arbitration under the section, but for a civil action ; that the seizure was good in law ; that the proceedings before the magistrates in court did not materially affect the case ; and that the claimant was in default. Evidence as to the unfitness of the carcase for food was given by the Medical Officer of Health, the Inspector of Nuisances, the condemning Magistrate, Messrs. Findlay and McKinna, Veterinary Surgeons who had seen the carcase and offal, and by Dr. Kaye, M.O.H. to the West Riding, Yorks. C.C., upon the general question of tuberculosis. The result of the case was that the Arbitrator awarded damages to the amount of ~ 1 o i xxs., with costs, amounting to nearly ~ 4 o o , against the Corporation. We understand that it is the intention of the Corporation to resist the recovery of this sum to the last, and we shall be interested to see what attitude expert witnesses will ~ake as to the danger of eating the flesh of an animal whose "lungs and pleura were thickly studded with masses of tubercle," with " a n increase of the tubercles towards the edges of the lungs and an adherent diaphragm," with also "specks in the kidneys which were probably tubercular.'! These facts are taken from the evidence of the claimant's witness, and consequently are free from any ex jOarte statement. It is well known that there is some difference of opinion as to the exact amount of tubercle which should render meat unfit for human food, and it has been claimed that we should await a government pronouncement in the matter ; but why it should be possible to question the bonaflde action of a Medical Officer of Health and of a Magistrate is not clear. AT the meeting of the Aston Manor Urban District Council, held on 4th January last, ~Dr. Henry May, the Medical Officer of Health , announced his wish to retire from office on April ISt next. Dr. May has held office for twenty-five years, and in referring the letter intimating the intended resignation to the Health Committee, the Chairman of the Committee p.aid an eloquent tribute to the valuable services rendered to the town by its Medical Officer.
THE
UNITED
KINGDOM.
ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETY. DEMOGRAPHIC STATISTICS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM.* I~TH FEBRUARY, 1898. THE decennial census enumerates the population, and each year the Registrar-General reports the numbers added by the births and lost by death, whilst the Board of Trade returns each year the numbers added and lost by immigration and emigration respectively. It should, therefore, be possible to determine at any date in an intercensaI period an estimate of the population which shall be accurate "within a few thousands." No such estimate is published officially except as regards Ireland. The "estimates" of the populations of England and Scotland are merely the results of calculations based on the rates which prevailed during the intercensal period immediately preceding the year of the estimate, and no difference would be made were the Board of Trade to report an immigration or emigration amounting to many millions, nor if the Registrar-General recorded a mortality extravagantly in excess of the average. Down to and including his report for 1893, published in January, 1895 , the English RegistrarGeneral used to assert annually that his method was " n o t likely to lead to serious error," although the "estimate" was no less than 7Ol,843, or nearly two and a half per cent. in excess when the census of 1891 was taken. In subsequent reports he has merely stated that the method is followed " i n the absence of precise information" regarding emigration and immigration. Now this insufficiently precise information, in conjunction with the births and death figures, enabled Dr. Longstaff to estimate the population within lO,25I at the time when the Registrar-General's assumed figure was 7Ol,843 in error. Even if the returns of the Board of Trade be held to be so untrustworthy as to be useless for tho purpose of estimating the population, the RegistrarGeneral should take into account the variation due to the natural increment of each year. Furthermore, if in one iutercensal period the rate of increase be ten per cent., in the next five, and in the next 2"5, it is more probable that in the next succeeding decade the rate of increase will be 1"25 per cent., not z"5 . The error due to the assumption of a steady percentage increase is greater when applied to urban areas, such as the County of London, where tho town site is becoming fully built over and the rate of increase, therefore, diminishing. Obviously erroneous as the method of estimating present and future population s by the rate of increase in the previous intercensal period is, it is * Report of a Paper, " Demographic Statistics of the United Kingdom ; their Want of Correlation and other Defects." By Edwin C~nnan, M.A.
D E M O G R A P H I C STATISTICS OF T H E not so grotesque as the absolutely analogous plan of estimating past populations on the assumption that the rate of increase was uniform throughout the intereensal period. The reports of the Registrar-General assume that the annual addition to the population:increases in an absolutely regular manner for the nine years between the middle of the first year of each decade and the middle of the tenth, and then jumps wildly about before settling down to a new series of regularly increasing additions, and that the later years of a decade are necessarily more favourable to the growth of population than the earlier. Recently the "estimates" have been made more unsatisfactory by th'e recognition of the census of I896 which was taken in the County of London. Tim Registrar-General now assumes that in London the population is increasing at the rate which prevailed during 1891-96 , and the population of the rest of England at the rate of 1881-9I. The London census of 1896 is not properly comparable with any previous census, for being a "simple census," it was likely to be more "complete," and having concern with a part of the country only, more individuals were likely to be enumerated in that part than would be so enumerated in a census dealing with the whole country. A further error, o r chance of error, was introduced by a modification of the instruction as to the inclusion of persons "habitually resident" in a given house who might be away at the date of census. This new method of estimating the population ignores the effect of migration between London and the rest of the country. In the decade 1851-6o registration London (which would be the same as the county if the Registrar-General would only include Penge) took in I88,ooo persons from the rest of the world, most of whom came from England outside London. I n the next two decades the numbers swallowed sank to i I 9 , o o o and lO8,OOO. In the decade i881-9o , instead of an intake there was an output of Ii8,ooo. In some future decade, when the area is quite full, the output may easily amount to half-a-million. The overflow from the County of London is an addition to the sources of population for the rest of the country, and consequently it is even less correct to assume a constant rate of increase for the country outside the County of London than it is to assume a constant rate for the whole country. So far, probably, the various errors in the method very nearly balance each other, but a cashier who makes mistakes which balance each other is regarded with suspicion by his employer. Where errors are unavoidable, it is satisfactory if they balance each other, but where they are avoidable it is better to avoid them. The estimated population published by the Registrar-General for England is made up of " t h e assumed figure for London, the assumed figure for the rest of England and Wales, the
UNITED
KINGDOM.
_.o3
assumed figure for Scotland, and the genuine estimate for Ireland." Iri default of a correct estimate being made by the Registrar-General, the Board of Trade might be expected to undertake the work. This is] not ~only not done, but the returns published by the Board appear to ignore the diminution in immigrants through death, and the results of the general census. The actual numbers of migrants obtained by the Board of Trade are probably sufficiently accurate "with regard to the number, starting places and destinations " o f the travellers, but the method of obtaining such statistics is unsatisfactory. T h e legislation on the subject is contained in " T h e Alien A c t " (6 and 7 Will. iv., cap. 1i), which applies to all aliens, and the 336th Section of the Merchant Shipping Act, i894, which applies to ships bringing steerage passengers from nonEuropean and non-Mediterranean ports, and Section 311 of the same Act which applies to ships carrying steerage passengers to the same ports. As a matter of fact, most of the necessary material is obtained by the voluntary co-operation of the various passenger-carrying shipowners and others. Considerable inaccuracy in distinguishing the nationality of the migrants is caused by the requirement to distinguish "British" and " N a t u r a lised British" subjects. It would be preferable to obtain the country in which each migrant was born. I f the Board of Trade obtained, under proper legal sanction, the country or colony of birth of all the trans-oceanic passengers, and of all the European passengers with whom it is supposed tc~ be worth while to deal ; and if the census returns would give as much attention to the 111,627 persons born in British colonies and dependencies as they did to the 11 Servians who happened to be in England in April, 1891 , the knowledge of migration into and out of the country would be both greater and more accurate than it is now. The attempt to collect useless particulars of occupation and condition as to marriage from trans-oceanic passengers ought to be abandoned, and the "Naturalised British" subject ought no longer to appear in the census schedule to confuse the mind of the householder. With regard to the statistics of internal migration, the information contained in official reports is unsatisfactory. Limiting the inquiry to England and Wales, it is found that " o u r statistics as to births and deaths do not apply to the same areas as our statistics of birth-places, and neither of them ordinarily apply t o any important area of local government." The returns of the last two censuses give the distribution over England of the natives of each of the old counties and the new County of London, and give the birth-places of the inhabitants of each of these counties, and of each urban sanitary district with more than 5%000 inhabitants. But the
204
DEMOGRAPHIC
STATISTICS OF THE
reports of the Registrar-General, and the decennial summary of births and deaths, use quite different areas, namely, the poor law unions and the groups of unions which the registrar-generals have christened "registration counties." Urban sanitary districts and the County of London are important areas of local government, but the old counties are not now local government areas, except in a small proportion of cases ; the poor law unions are only local government areas for a few and not very distinguished purposes; and the "registration counties" are not local government areas at all, and have never been reeognised by the legislature in a n y way. If it were possible to start afresh, it is practically certain that the poor law union would not be selected as the area for the registration of births and deaths. That it is the area has, like every,thing else, an historical explanation, which must not be mistaken for a justification. When the reform of the old poor law was in .contemplation, the most pressing need appeared to be to find or, if necessary, to create areas which ,would be big enough to suppport an efficient workhouse without compelling either the paupers or the guardians to travel too far or to a n inconvenient place. For this purpose the parishes were too small, except in London and a few of the other great towns. The counties on the other hand were too large. The hundreds were quite useless owing to their want of compactness: they were often not only straggling, but made up of numerous detached portions. T h e boroughs were not to be thought of, since many of the most important *owns were not boroughs, and the more flourishing towns which were boroughs h a d outgrown their municipal limits and were mostly governed by corrupt oligarchies. It is easy to say now that the proper way to proceed would have been to create county divisions something like the present parliamentary divisions, but with greater regard to area and less to population. But at that time the doctrine of parish responsibility for the poor was more powerful than it is now, and it was determined to p r o c e e d by federating parishes. Parliament left it to the Commissioners' unfettered discretion to determine what parishes should b e federated. T h e new poor law authorities when brought into existence became at once by far the most complete ~govelnmental organisation in the country, so that it was only to be expected that they should be made use of when the central government desired to introduce a proper system of registration of births and deaths. Accordingly, in 1836 , we find the State requiring every Board of Guardians to appoint a superintendent registrar and registrars, and to divide its district into convenient divisions for facilitating registration. Now when these divisions, w h i c h were then called registration districts, but are now called sub-districts (the union
UNITED
KINGDOM.
having changed its name from "superintendent registrar's district" to "registration district ") were mapped out, they might conceivably have been arranged so that every ancient county should consist; of a group of them, though it did not coincide with a group of whole unions or superintendent-registrar's districts, but this does not seem to have been even thought of. T h e first Registrar-General addressed a circular letter to the Guardians, in which he said : - " With respect to boundaries it is desirable, both wi~h the view to facilitate the knowledge of the limits of the new districts and to avoid a multiplicity and intermixture of divisions, that the boundaries of registrars' districts shall (when it is practicable, consistently with the attainment of other objects) be identical with ancient recognised boundaries such as township or parish, and shall not unnecessarily intersect t h e m ; but it is not desired that the limits of the district should be much extended in order to make it coincident with any ancient boundary. Facility of communication is of still greater importance than adherence to ancient boundaries, and compactness and connection of territory must not be sacrificed for the sake of such adherence." The desirability o f not creating unnecessarily overlapping areas is here recognised somewhat grudgingly, and the county boundary is not considered worth mentioning as an example. T h e consequence is that the sub-districts overlap county boundaries just as much the unions themselves. T h e groups of unions which soon became known as registration counties, made their appearance in the very first Annual Report of the Registrar-General in 1839. The census return of 1841 adhered to the old divisions of counties, hundreds, and parishes, but the much m o r e elaborate census of 1851 adopted the whole familiar arrangement by registration districts, registration counties, and registration divisions, and that more thoroughly than it has ever been adopted since. T h e old counties, the hundreds and boroughs, were dealt with in a perfunctory manner in forty pages of the preliminary tables, and the whole of the details are arranged under the " r e g i s t r a t i o n " counties and divisions. T h e migration statistics of the 1851 census, elaborate as they may be, are the product of a most extraordinary jumble. The birthplaces of the inhabitants of registration counties are classified by counties proper, so that instead of it being stated, for instance, how many inhabitants of Oxfordshire proper were born in Oxfordshire proper, the returns give the number of inhabitants of the "registration " Oxfordshire born in Oxfordshire proper, and the report gravely deduces from these statistics general inferences about migration, without giving any warning that they exaggerate very seriously the amount of migration. I n 186~ this indefensible plan was abandoned,
QUALIFICATIONS
OF P U B L I C ANALYST.
without remark, and the counties proper are used on both sides of the account, with the result of disturbing enormously the apparent amount of migration. This return to the true counties in x86I replaced the census migration figures on a proper basis so far as the counties were concerned. But the registration figures of births and deaths have continued to be collected and published without reference to the true counties, so that the census of birth-places and the statistics of births and deaths remain out of any exact relationship. In regard to areas smaller than counties, the continuance of the classification of births and deaths by unions is productive of grave practical inconveniences. If a citizen of Oxford desired to compare the mortality statistics of his town with those of other towns of the same character, and is infatuated enough to turn to the Registrar-General's Decennial Report for the purpose, what will he find ? Elaborate statistics about the Oxford Union and the Headington Union. T h e Oxford Union comprises the southern and western half of the town, with a little hole in the middle. The Headington Union includes the northern and eastern parts, and the hole in the middle of the Oxford Union. The citizen will not be able to find out much about the whole town even if he takes the trouble to add the figures for the two unions together, for the Headington Union stretches seven miles into the country. For urban comparisons the registration district figures are nearly useless. The smaller towns are generally included in large Country unions, and the larger towns are almost invariabl), cut up between several unions. The remedy for this chaotic state of affairs is very simple. It consists merely in recognising for registration purposes and for the census of birthplaces the existing local government divisions of the country. These divisions have almost entirely ceased to overlap. There may perhaps be half-adozen cases, for which the Local Government Board is responsible. The whole country is divided into administrative counties and county boroughs, between which there is no overlapping. ]~vely ~dministrative county is divided into urban and rl, al districts, each of which is wholly within the administrative county. Every county borough and every urban and rural district is divided into parishes, each of which is wholly within the county borough or the urban or rural district. Every administrative county, every county borough, every urban and rural district, and every rural parish has its own council or assembly, and has or may have its own rates. It seems evident that the proper areas to take for recording birth-places and births and deaths are the administrative county and its subdivisions, the urban and rural districts--of course grouping two or more contiguous districts together When
305
they are too small or two much intermixed to give statistical results of value. To get rid of all confusion by making the administrative county the only county, three things are required besides time. The first is that the parliamentary areas Should undergo the very slight readjustment requisite to make them correspond with administrative counties, or at any rate with the groups of administrative counties and county boroughs into which the old counties have been divided ; the second, that the Agricultural Department should instruct the Ordnance Survey to recognise frankly the administrative counties an~ county boroughs, to leave out the completely obsolete and absolutely useless hundreds, and tcr insert instead the urban and rural districts ; anc~ the third, that the registration county, which never got into the maps, should disappear from other government publications. Q U A L I F I C A T I O N S OF P U B L I C ANALYST. ON ~[anuary I6th of last year the Austriarr Reichsrath passed an A c t amending and superseding that of ~879 , which, comparing great things with small, may be considered as the equivalent of our Sale of Foods and Drugs Act. It is, however, more comprehensive, as it covers the use of poisonous pigments in wallpapers and domestic articles ; all circumstances under which lead may be introduced into food or drink ; the storage and sa!e of petroleum and explosives, and a number of other matters affecting the public health. I n these respects it is drawn upon the lines of the corresponding German Act. It provides, inter alia, for the appointment of Public Analysts, and the establishment of municipal, or the~ recognition and regulation of private, laboratories. in boroughs, in urban sanitary districts (to use the nearest English equivalent terms) with populations of 5,ooo at the last census, and in smaller places, if, from their special circumstances, of sufficient importance, and a corresponding organ:sat:on for the •ezirk or county as a whole. It also contains aprovision, almost indenfical witt~ one in the Bill introduced last year into Parliament by certain private members, for the creation of a consultative and supervisory Board attached to the Ministry of the Interior or H o m e Office, composed of fifteen experts, appointed for three years b y the Minister. The first Board consists of five professors in the University of Vienna, and therefore resident in the Metropolis, and ten directors of the Hygienic Institutes in provincial universities. A marked feature of the Act is the power and prominence given to the medical aspects of the work. The medical officers of health, though not exercising: the functions of the Analyst are associated with him, and exert a general control over his actions, whether in the routine duties of his office or in the prosecution of medico-legal enquiries.
DEMOGRAPHIC
STATISTICS OF
for arbitration, and the case was heard by a Barrister as Arbitrator, the damages claimed being
~I,O00,
The case for the claimant was that the tuberculosis was confined to the lungs and pleura, but that the rest of the carcase was fit for the food of man and not liable to seizure. In support of this contention evidence was given by several butchers, and also by Mr. Walker, M.R.C.V.S., of Halifax, and by Dr. Hime of Bradford. For the defence it was argued that it was not a question for arbitration under the section, but for a civil action ; that the seizure was good in law ; that the proceedings before the magistrates in court did not materially affect the case ; and that the claimant was in default. Evidence as to the unfitness of the carcase for food was given by the Medical Officer of Health, the Inspector of Nuisances, the condemning Magistrate, Messrs. Findlay and McKinna, Veterinary Surgeons who had seen the carcase and offal, and by Dr. Kaye, M.O.H. to the West Riding, Yorks. C.C., upon the general question of tuberculosis. The result of the case was that the Arbitrator awarded damages to the amount of ~ 1 o i xxs., with costs, amounting to nearly ~ 4 o o , against the Corporation. We understand that it is the intention of the Corporation to resist the recovery of this sum to the last, and we shall be interested to see what attitude expert witnesses will ~ake as to the danger of eating the flesh of an animal whose "lungs and pleura were thickly studded with masses of tubercle," with " a n increase of the tubercles towards the edges of the lungs and an adherent diaphragm," with also "specks in the kidneys which were probably tubercular.'! These facts are taken from the evidence of the claimant's witness, and consequently are free from any ex jOarte statement. It is well known that there is some difference of opinion as to the exact amount of tubercle which should render meat unfit for human food, and it has been claimed that we should await a government pronouncement in the matter ; but why it should be possible to question the bonaflde action of a Medical Officer of Health and of a Magistrate is not clear. AT the meeting of the Aston Manor Urban District Council, held on 4th January last, ~Dr. Henry May, the Medical Officer of Health , announced his wish to retire from office on April ISt next. Dr. May has held office for twenty-five years, and in referring the letter intimating the intended resignation to the Health Committee, the Chairman of the Committee p.aid an eloquent tribute to the valuable services rendered to the town by its Medical Officer.
THE
UNITED
KINGDOM.
ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETY. DEMOGRAPHIC STATISTICS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM.* I~TH FEBRUARY, 1898. THE decennial census enumerates the population, and each year the Registrar-General reports the numbers added by the births and lost by death, whilst the Board of Trade returns each year the numbers added and lost by immigration and emigration respectively. It should, therefore, be possible to determine at any date in an intercensaI period an estimate of the population which shall be accurate "within a few thousands." No such estimate is published officially except as regards Ireland. The "estimates" of the populations of England and Scotland are merely the results of calculations based on the rates which prevailed during the intercensal period immediately preceding the year of the estimate, and no difference would be made were the Board of Trade to report an immigration or emigration amounting to many millions, nor if the Registrar-General recorded a mortality extravagantly in excess of the average. Down to and including his report for 1893, published in January, 1895 , the English RegistrarGeneral used to assert annually that his method was " n o t likely to lead to serious error," although the "estimate" was no less than 7Ol,843, or nearly two and a half per cent. in excess when the census of 1891 was taken. In subsequent reports he has merely stated that the method is followed " i n the absence of precise information" regarding emigration and immigration. Now this insufficiently precise information, in conjunction with the births and death figures, enabled Dr. Longstaff to estimate the population within lO,25I at the time when the Registrar-General's assumed figure was 7Ol,843 in error. Even if the returns of the Board of Trade be held to be so untrustworthy as to be useless for tho purpose of estimating the population, the RegistrarGeneral should take into account the variation due to the natural increment of each year. Furthermore, if in one iutercensal period the rate of increase be ten per cent., in the next five, and in the next 2"5, it is more probable that in the next succeeding decade the rate of increase will be 1"25 per cent., not z"5 . The error due to the assumption of a steady percentage increase is greater when applied to urban areas, such as the County of London, where tho town site is becoming fully built over and the rate of increase, therefore, diminishing. Obviously erroneous as the method of estimating present and future population s by the rate of increase in the previous intercensal period is, it is * Report of a Paper, " Demographic Statistics of the United Kingdom ; their Want of Correlation and other Defects." By Edwin C~nnan, M.A.
D E M O G R A P H I C STATISTICS OF T H E not so grotesque as the absolutely analogous plan of estimating past populations on the assumption that the rate of increase was uniform throughout the intereensal period. The reports of the Registrar-General assume that the annual addition to the population:increases in an absolutely regular manner for the nine years between the middle of the first year of each decade and the middle of the tenth, and then jumps wildly about before settling down to a new series of regularly increasing additions, and that the later years of a decade are necessarily more favourable to the growth of population than the earlier. Recently the "estimates" have been made more unsatisfactory by th'e recognition of the census of I896 which was taken in the County of London. Tim Registrar-General now assumes that in London the population is increasing at the rate which prevailed during 1891-96 , and the population of the rest of England at the rate of 1881-9I. The London census of 1896 is not properly comparable with any previous census, for being a "simple census," it was likely to be more "complete," and having concern with a part of the country only, more individuals were likely to be enumerated in that part than would be so enumerated in a census dealing with the whole country. A further error, o r chance of error, was introduced by a modification of the instruction as to the inclusion of persons "habitually resident" in a given house who might be away at the date of census. This new method of estimating the population ignores the effect of migration between London and the rest of the country. In the decade 1851-6o registration London (which would be the same as the county if the Registrar-General would only include Penge) took in I88,ooo persons from the rest of the world, most of whom came from England outside London. I n the next two decades the numbers swallowed sank to i I 9 , o o o and lO8,OOO. In the decade i881-9o , instead of an intake there was an output of Ii8,ooo. In some future decade, when the area is quite full, the output may easily amount to half-a-million. The overflow from the County of London is an addition to the sources of population for the rest of the country, and consequently it is even less correct to assume a constant rate of increase for the country outside the County of London than it is to assume a constant rate for the whole country. So far, probably, the various errors in the method very nearly balance each other, but a cashier who makes mistakes which balance each other is regarded with suspicion by his employer. Where errors are unavoidable, it is satisfactory if they balance each other, but where they are avoidable it is better to avoid them. The estimated population published by the Registrar-General for England is made up of " t h e assumed figure for London, the assumed figure for the rest of England and Wales, the
UNITED
KINGDOM.
_.o3
assumed figure for Scotland, and the genuine estimate for Ireland." Iri default of a correct estimate being made by the Registrar-General, the Board of Trade might be expected to undertake the work. This is] not ~only not done, but the returns published by the Board appear to ignore the diminution in immigrants through death, and the results of the general census. The actual numbers of migrants obtained by the Board of Trade are probably sufficiently accurate "with regard to the number, starting places and destinations " o f the travellers, but the method of obtaining such statistics is unsatisfactory. T h e legislation on the subject is contained in " T h e Alien A c t " (6 and 7 Will. iv., cap. 1i), which applies to all aliens, and the 336th Section of the Merchant Shipping Act, i894, which applies to ships bringing steerage passengers from nonEuropean and non-Mediterranean ports, and Section 311 of the same Act which applies to ships carrying steerage passengers to the same ports. As a matter of fact, most of the necessary material is obtained by the voluntary co-operation of the various passenger-carrying shipowners and others. Considerable inaccuracy in distinguishing the nationality of the migrants is caused by the requirement to distinguish "British" and " N a t u r a lised British" subjects. It would be preferable to obtain the country in which each migrant was born. I f the Board of Trade obtained, under proper legal sanction, the country or colony of birth of all the trans-oceanic passengers, and of all the European passengers with whom it is supposed tc~ be worth while to deal ; and if the census returns would give as much attention to the 111,627 persons born in British colonies and dependencies as they did to the 11 Servians who happened to be in England in April, 1891 , the knowledge of migration into and out of the country would be both greater and more accurate than it is now. The attempt to collect useless particulars of occupation and condition as to marriage from trans-oceanic passengers ought to be abandoned, and the "Naturalised British" subject ought no longer to appear in the census schedule to confuse the mind of the householder. With regard to the statistics of internal migration, the information contained in official reports is unsatisfactory. Limiting the inquiry to England and Wales, it is found that " o u r statistics as to births and deaths do not apply to the same areas as our statistics of birth-places, and neither of them ordinarily apply t o any important area of local government." The returns of the last two censuses give the distribution over England of the natives of each of the old counties and the new County of London, and give the birth-places of the inhabitants of each of these counties, and of each urban sanitary district with more than 5%000 inhabitants. But the
204
DEMOGRAPHIC
STATISTICS OF THE
reports of the Registrar-General, and the decennial summary of births and deaths, use quite different areas, namely, the poor law unions and the groups of unions which the registrar-generals have christened "registration counties." Urban sanitary districts and the County of London are important areas of local government, but the old counties are not now local government areas, except in a small proportion of cases ; the poor law unions are only local government areas for a few and not very distinguished purposes; and the "registration counties" are not local government areas at all, and have never been reeognised by the legislature in a n y way. If it were possible to start afresh, it is practically certain that the poor law union would not be selected as the area for the registration of births and deaths. That it is the area has, like every,thing else, an historical explanation, which must not be mistaken for a justification. When the reform of the old poor law was in .contemplation, the most pressing need appeared to be to find or, if necessary, to create areas which ,would be big enough to suppport an efficient workhouse without compelling either the paupers or the guardians to travel too far or to a n inconvenient place. For this purpose the parishes were too small, except in London and a few of the other great towns. The counties on the other hand were too large. The hundreds were quite useless owing to their want of compactness: they were often not only straggling, but made up of numerous detached portions. T h e boroughs were not to be thought of, since many of the most important *owns were not boroughs, and the more flourishing towns which were boroughs h a d outgrown their municipal limits and were mostly governed by corrupt oligarchies. It is easy to say now that the proper way to proceed would have been to create county divisions something like the present parliamentary divisions, but with greater regard to area and less to population. But at that time the doctrine of parish responsibility for the poor was more powerful than it is now, and it was determined to p r o c e e d by federating parishes. Parliament left it to the Commissioners' unfettered discretion to determine what parishes should b e federated. T h e new poor law authorities when brought into existence became at once by far the most complete ~govelnmental organisation in the country, so that it was only to be expected that they should be made use of when the central government desired to introduce a proper system of registration of births and deaths. Accordingly, in 1836 , we find the State requiring every Board of Guardians to appoint a superintendent registrar and registrars, and to divide its district into convenient divisions for facilitating registration. Now when these divisions, w h i c h were then called registration districts, but are now called sub-districts (the union
UNITED
KINGDOM.
having changed its name from "superintendent registrar's district" to "registration district ") were mapped out, they might conceivably have been arranged so that every ancient county should consist; of a group of them, though it did not coincide with a group of whole unions or superintendent-registrar's districts, but this does not seem to have been even thought of. T h e first Registrar-General addressed a circular letter to the Guardians, in which he said : - " With respect to boundaries it is desirable, both wi~h the view to facilitate the knowledge of the limits of the new districts and to avoid a multiplicity and intermixture of divisions, that the boundaries of registrars' districts shall (when it is practicable, consistently with the attainment of other objects) be identical with ancient recognised boundaries such as township or parish, and shall not unnecessarily intersect t h e m ; but it is not desired that the limits of the district should be much extended in order to make it coincident with any ancient boundary. Facility of communication is of still greater importance than adherence to ancient boundaries, and compactness and connection of territory must not be sacrificed for the sake of such adherence." The desirability o f not creating unnecessarily overlapping areas is here recognised somewhat grudgingly, and the county boundary is not considered worth mentioning as an example. T h e consequence is that the sub-districts overlap county boundaries just as much the unions themselves. T h e groups of unions which soon became known as registration counties, made their appearance in the very first Annual Report of the Registrar-General in 1839. The census return of 1841 adhered to the old divisions of counties, hundreds, and parishes, but the much m o r e elaborate census of 1851 adopted the whole familiar arrangement by registration districts, registration counties, and registration divisions, and that more thoroughly than it has ever been adopted since. T h e old counties, the hundreds and boroughs, were dealt with in a perfunctory manner in forty pages of the preliminary tables, and the whole of the details are arranged under the " r e g i s t r a t i o n " counties and divisions. T h e migration statistics of the 1851 census, elaborate as they may be, are the product of a most extraordinary jumble. The birthplaces of the inhabitants of registration counties are classified by counties proper, so that instead of it being stated, for instance, how many inhabitants of Oxfordshire proper were born in Oxfordshire proper, the returns give the number of inhabitants of the "registration " Oxfordshire born in Oxfordshire proper, and the report gravely deduces from these statistics general inferences about migration, without giving any warning that they exaggerate very seriously the amount of migration. I n 186~ this indefensible plan was abandoned,
QUALIFICATIONS
OF P U B L I C ANALYST.
without remark, and the counties proper are used on both sides of the account, with the result of disturbing enormously the apparent amount of migration. This return to the true counties in x86I replaced the census migration figures on a proper basis so far as the counties were concerned. But the registration figures of births and deaths have continued to be collected and published without reference to the true counties, so that the census of birth-places and the statistics of births and deaths remain out of any exact relationship. In regard to areas smaller than counties, the continuance of the classification of births and deaths by unions is productive of grave practical inconveniences. If a citizen of Oxford desired to compare the mortality statistics of his town with those of other towns of the same character, and is infatuated enough to turn to the Registrar-General's Decennial Report for the purpose, what will he find ? Elaborate statistics about the Oxford Union and the Headington Union. T h e Oxford Union comprises the southern and western half of the town, with a little hole in the middle. The Headington Union includes the northern and eastern parts, and the hole in the middle of the Oxford Union. The citizen will not be able to find out much about the whole town even if he takes the trouble to add the figures for the two unions together, for the Headington Union stretches seven miles into the country. For urban comparisons the registration district figures are nearly useless. The smaller towns are generally included in large Country unions, and the larger towns are almost invariabl), cut up between several unions. The remedy for this chaotic state of affairs is very simple. It consists merely in recognising for registration purposes and for the census of birthplaces the existing local government divisions of the country. These divisions have almost entirely ceased to overlap. There may perhaps be half-adozen cases, for which the Local Government Board is responsible. The whole country is divided into administrative counties and county boroughs, between which there is no overlapping. ]~vely ~dministrative county is divided into urban and rl, al districts, each of which is wholly within the administrative county. Every county borough and every urban and rural district is divided into parishes, each of which is wholly within the county borough or the urban or rural district. Every administrative county, every county borough, every urban and rural district, and every rural parish has its own council or assembly, and has or may have its own rates. It seems evident that the proper areas to take for recording birth-places and births and deaths are the administrative county and its subdivisions, the urban and rural districts--of course grouping two or more contiguous districts together When
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they are too small or two much intermixed to give statistical results of value. To get rid of all confusion by making the administrative county the only county, three things are required besides time. The first is that the parliamentary areas Should undergo the very slight readjustment requisite to make them correspond with administrative counties, or at any rate with the groups of administrative counties and county boroughs into which the old counties have been divided ; the second, that the Agricultural Department should instruct the Ordnance Survey to recognise frankly the administrative counties an~ county boroughs, to leave out the completely obsolete and absolutely useless hundreds, and tcr insert instead the urban and rural districts ; anc~ the third, that the registration county, which never got into the maps, should disappear from other government publications. Q U A L I F I C A T I O N S OF P U B L I C ANALYST. ON ~[anuary I6th of last year the Austriarr Reichsrath passed an A c t amending and superseding that of ~879 , which, comparing great things with small, may be considered as the equivalent of our Sale of Foods and Drugs Act. It is, however, more comprehensive, as it covers the use of poisonous pigments in wallpapers and domestic articles ; all circumstances under which lead may be introduced into food or drink ; the storage and sa!e of petroleum and explosives, and a number of other matters affecting the public health. I n these respects it is drawn upon the lines of the corresponding German Act. It provides, inter alia, for the appointment of Public Analysts, and the establishment of municipal, or the~ recognition and regulation of private, laboratories. in boroughs, in urban sanitary districts (to use the nearest English equivalent terms) with populations of 5,ooo at the last census, and in smaller places, if, from their special circumstances, of sufficient importance, and a corresponding organ:sat:on for the •ezirk or county as a whole. It also contains aprovision, almost indenfical witt~ one in the Bill introduced last year into Parliament by certain private members, for the creation of a consultative and supervisory Board attached to the Ministry of the Interior or H o m e Office, composed of fifteen experts, appointed for three years b y the Minister. The first Board consists of five professors in the University of Vienna, and therefore resident in the Metropolis, and ten directors of the Hygienic Institutes in provincial universities. A marked feature of the Act is the power and prominence given to the medical aspects of the work. The medical officers of health, though not exercising: the functions of the Analyst are associated with him, and exert a general control over his actions, whether in the routine duties of his office or in the prosecution of medico-legal enquiries.