Registrar General's Reports for England and Wales, 1859–1878

Edward Higgs

The Annual Reports of the Registrar General for England and Wales (hereafter ARRG) for the years 1859 to 1879, published in the years 1861 to 1880, represented the results of the last 20 years of a unique partnership. From 1842, when he was appointed as the second Registrar General, Major George Graham worked closely with Dr William Farr, the Superintendent of Statistics in the General Register Office (GRO), until they both retired in 1880. The ARRGs throughout this period were made up of two parts: the Registrar General's own Report, and Farr's Letter to the Registrar General. Both covered numerous and varied topics, but in general terms Farr's Letter contained detailed considerations of the cause of death data collected by the civil registration system as well as developing epidemiological theory and the tools of public health research (Eyler). On the other hand, the Registrar General's own Report tended to comment on the development of the registration service, and gave greater emphasis to the registration of births and marriages. A summary of the quarterly returns of deaths appeared, either as part of the Registrar General's Report, or as a separate appendix. Both sections of the ARRG were supplemented by copious tables of data on medical and demographic subjects.

In the period prior to the late 1850s, Farr's Letter had not always appeared in every ARRG, and the publication of the ARRG as a whole had a chequered history. The work of the GRO during the 1851 census meant that the publication of the ARRG was delayed, and the Office had to produce two versions, a short Report laid before Parliament, and a full version published separately at a later date. From the late 1850s, however, the form of the ARRG began to stabilize, and until their retirement Graham's and Farr's contributions to the Report both appeared each year. Gradually Farr's Letter expanded, and its length came to exceed that of Graham's Report. The interval between the end of the year to which an ARRG related and the date of its publication also stabilized at about 20 months, and there were none of the excessive delays of earlier years. The GRO continued to publish two sets of ARRGs in the 1860s and 1870s but they were now to all intents and purposes identical. In many ways this was the GRO's 'Golden Age' (Higgs, 2004b, 51–56, 221–5).

During these years, the ARRG contained numerous sections that made signal contributions to the development of medical science and the burgeoning public health movement (Eyler; Szreter). However, it was not always clear which of the two authors, Graham or Farr, was a greater warrior in the latter's cause. Thus, it was Graham's Report in the ARRG for 1860 that contained a classic discussion of the quality of water supplied by the London water companies rather than Farr's Letter, which was a rather dull summary of deaths in a few broad categories (Twenty-third Annual Report of the Registrar General, xxxiii–xxxvii). Farr's contribution tended to be more theoretical. In his Letter in the ARRG for 1867, for example, he included a discussion of "What are causes of death"; a rebuttal of Malthus under the title "Progress of public health possible"; and a highly theoretical and abstract discussion of the causes of smallpox and disease in general (Thirtieth annual report of the Registrar General, 207–21). But one could still find Graham musing on the inherent 'value' of individuals 'as a productive money-earning race' (£159 per head), in his penultimate Report (Thirty-ninth annual report of the Registrar General, vi–x).

Moreover, it was not always the case that the Registrar General and his Superintendent of Statistics agreed in print, although it was the former who had the last word. For example, in his Letter in the ARRG for 1864, Farr called for the compulsory registration of stillbirths (Twenty-seventh annual report of the Registrar General, 191). However, in his evidence to the Royal Sanitary Commission in 1869, published in the Thirty-first annual report of the Registrar General for 1868, Graham rejected the recording of stillbirths as 'indelicate and disgusting', and the practice was not introduced until 1927 (Thirty-first annual report of the Registrar-General, 290; Higgs, 2004a, 91–2).

Graham's last Report appeared in the ARRG for 1877, published in 1879, and it is typical of the man that his final words were a tribute to Farr (Fortieth annual report of the Registrar General for 1877, xl). Farr's last Letter appeared in the next ARRG but was a relatively minor affair, reflecting his declining physical and mental powers (Forty-first Annual Report of the Registrar General for 1878, 225–263; Higgs, 2004b, 119–20).

REFERENCES

John M. Eyler, Victorian social medicine. The ideas and methods of William Farr (London, 1979).

Edward Higgs, 'The linguistic construction of social and medical categories in the work of the English General Register Office', in S. Szreter, A. Dharmalingam and H. Sholkamy, eds, The qualitative dimension of quantitative demography (Oxford, 2004a), 86–106.

Edward Higgs, Life, death and statistics: civil registration, censuses and the work of the General Register Office, 1837–1952 (Hatfield, 2004b).

Simon Szreter, 'The GRO and the public health movement in Britain 1837–1914', Social History of Medicine, 4 (1991), 435–64.

Twenty-third annual report of the Registrar General (1860), BPP 1862 XVII. [View this document: Twenty-third annual report of the registrar-general ]

Twenty-seventh Annual Report of the Registrar General (1864), BPP 1866 XIX (3712) [View this document: Twenty-seventh annual report of the registrar-general ]

Thirtieth annual report of the registrar-general (1867), BPP 1868–69 XVI (4146). [View this document: Thirtieth annual report of the registrar-general ]

Thirty-first annual report of the Registrar General (1868), BPP 1870 XVI (C.97). [View this document: Thirty-first annual report of the registrar-general ]

Thirty-ninth annual report of the Registrar General (1876), BPP 1878 XXII (C.2075). [View this document: Sixteenth annual report of the registrar-general (Registrar-general's edition)].

Fortieth annual report of the Registrar General (1877), BPP 1878–9 XIX (C.2276). [View this document: Fortieth annual report of the registrar-general ]

Forty-first annual report of the Registrar General (1878), BPP 1880 XVI (C.2568). [View this document: Forty-first annual report of the registrar-general ]