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Auwal. J. Smrirr., 28 (l), 1986, 124-137 THE CONTRIBUTION OF W. H. ARCHER TO VITAL STATISTICS IN THE COLONY OF VICTORIA JOHN L. HOPPER Faculty of Medicine Epidemiology Unit, University of Melbourne “And what are figures worth if they do no good to men’s bodies William Farr, letter to Florence Nightingale, Sept. 2, 1864; see Eyler (1979) p. 161. or souls[?]” Summary William Henry Archer, as Assistant Registrar General, was responsible for implementing the 1854 Registration Act in the colony of Victoria, and thereby helped establish the framework for official statistics in Australia. Eminently suitable for this role, having served his apprenticeship as an actuary and statistician in London prior to emigration in 1852, his career paralleled that of Dr. William Farr, the famous vital statistician. The greatest contribution Archer made to statistics in Australia was to put the lessons learnt by the statisticians of early Victorian England to advantage and place government statistical practices on a sound footing. Archer had a special interest in infant and childhood mortality, then accounting for one-half of all deaths in the new colony, and showed that a major factor was the extent of dysentery and diarrhoea during the warmer part of the year. Despite the high prevalence, Archer calculated the incidence of infant mortality to be less than in Europe at the time. Had he established links with the medical profession or with persons in the social sciences who could have appreciated the valuable information being collected in the new government records, as in England where the sanitary reformers made great use of data collected by Farr for their own ends, Archer could have had a far greater impact on the intellectual and medical life of Victoria. Instead he was deflected into an administrative career which ended prematurely for political and relib’ ’ious rc;isons.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF W. H. ARCHER TO VITAL STATISTICS IN THE COLONY OF VICTORIA

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Page 1: THE CONTRIBUTION OF W. H. ARCHER TO VITAL STATISTICS IN THE COLONY OF VICTORIA

Auwal. J . Smrirr., 28 (l), 1986, 124-137

T H E CONTRIBUTION OF W . H . A R C H E R T O VITAL STATISTICS IN T H E C O L O N Y OF

V I C T O R I A

JOHN L. HOPPER Faculty of Medicine Epidemiology Unit, University of Melbourne

“And what are figures worth if they do no good to men’s bodies

William Farr, letter to Florence Nightingale, Sept. 2, 1864; see Eyler (1979) p. 161.

or souls[?]”

Summary

William Henry Archer, as Assistant Registrar General, was responsible for implementing the 1854 Registration Act in the colony of Victoria, and thereby helped establish the framework for official statistics in Australia. Eminently suitable for this role, having served his apprenticeship as an actuary and statistician in London prior to emigration in 1852, his career paralleled that of Dr. William Farr, the famous vital statistician. The greatest contribution Archer made to statistics in Australia was to put the lessons learnt by the statisticians of early Victorian England to advantage and place government statistical practices on a sound footing.

Archer had a special interest in infant and childhood mortality, then accounting for one-half of all deaths in the new colony, and showed that a major factor was the extent of dysentery and diarrhoea during the warmer part of the year. Despite the high prevalence, Archer calculated the incidence of infant mortality to be less than in Europe at the time.

Had he established links with the medical profession or with persons in the social sciences who could have appreciated the valuable information being collected in the new government records, as in England where the sanitary reformers made great use of data collected by Farr for their own ends, Archer could have had a far greater impact on the intellectual and medical life of Victoria. Instead he was deflected into an administrative career which ended prematurely f o r political and relib’ ’ious rc;isons.

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1. The Development of Vital Statistics in England

F. Bisset Hawkins (1829) predicted that application of statistics to medicine would provide a means of evaluating “the comparative merits of various modes of practice, the history of disease in different ages and countries, the increase and decrease of particular maladies, the tendency of certain situations, professions, and modes of life to protect or to expose; . . . medical statistics. . . can be employed to refute . . . that nature alone is sufficient for the cure of disease.” That this prediction was made a reality within the next few decades was due to a combination of social forces and to the efforts of numerous statisticians. The special contribution of Dr. William Farr (1807-1883) is worthy of examination and provides a framework for studying the work of Archer below. Biographical details on Farr are given in Humphreys (1885) and Eyler (1979), while historical perspectives are taken from Eyler (1979), Susser & Adelstein (1975), and from a selection of F a d s own writings; see Farr (1975).

The new “Science” of statistics enjoyed a rapid growth in the 1830s and 1840s with the formation of statistical societies throughout the country. Farr was a prominent member of the London society; medically educated and attracted to the subjects of hygiene and medical statistics while studying at the Paris University, he was involved in medical journalism, and wrote articles on vital statistics and medical reform. In 1837 the civil registration of births, deaths and marriages came into operation, and in 1839 Farr was appointed Compiler of Statistical Abstracts at the General Registry Office, being responsible for the scientific content of the office reports.

Although he abandoned practice entirely and contributed less frequently to medical journals, Farr retained connections with the medical profession to become one of the leading advocates of medical and public health reform in the civil service, exploiting his annual letter to the registrar general. Read by an influential group of administrators and professional men, Farr was a key source of “facts” for the sanitary cause through collaboration with individual reformers, the best known being Florence Nightingale; nurse, sanitary reformer, avid collector of statistical information and persuasive political activist. Another notable contribution by Farr to epidemiology was in the classic studies of John Snow on cholera.

Farr was largely responsible for the development of techniques and procedures for the gathering and analysis of. official statistics, being deeply influenced by the work of the actuary Thomas Rowe Edmonds (1803-1889) that appeared in the 1830s. Edmonds claimed to have discovered a fundamental “law” of mortality, and suggested that accurate life tables could be constructed using this law and interpolation. Farr applied the approach to census and registration

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material at his disposal to create three national tables, and other tables for particular regions and occupations.

In comparing death rates it was important to consider the underlying demographic distributions; Farr was aware of this and is attributed with having invented the standardised mortality rate, so that the mortality of areas and occupations could be compared after adjusting for different age and sex distributions. Together with the eminent actuary Francis Gustavus Pavius Neison, Farr realised that rather than the mean age at death (which was highly dependent on the age distribution of the population in question), “expectation of life” calculated from a life table, or if a life table was unavailable, the mortality rate (the ratio of number of deaths to total number of years of life at risk), was a proper measure of health. Farr criticised the famous Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Popufation by Edwin Chadwick for failing to appreciate this fundamental epidemiological point.

A further innovation introduced by Farr was the development of a “statistical nosology” for the naming and classification of diseases, “founded upon the mode in which diseases affect the population” (Farr, 1975; p. 231), which reflected his views on the causes of disease and changed over the years as these views changed. There were three basic categories: “zymotic” diseases, “sporadic” diseases and deaths by violence. The important distinction between the first two categories was that to Farr the former were endemic, epidemic or propagated by contagion, and he believed the zymotic diseases “like ague, fever, small-pox, and cholera’’ were created by similar morbid processes. The mortality rate of zymotic diseases in a district he defined as the “index of salubrity,” and used it as a pointer to areas where health measures were desperately needed.

Unfortunately Farr ended his public service career on a sour note, resigning in 1880 after having been passed over for the vacancy left by the retirement of the registrar general. He died within four years. At the time of his retirement and death Farr was recognised by the medical profession; perhaps, it has been suggested as a cause ckf2bre for their demands on the government over other grievances (Eyler, 1975). More recently, however, the founding work by Farr in the fields of biostatistics and epidemiology are being appreciated. Modern statistical methods for survival analysis, used extensively in the assessment of clinical trials, are the stochastic extension to smaller samples of the original concepts of comparing groups through ex- amination of life tables, as enunciated by Farr.

2. William Henry Archer (1825-1909)

In 1853 the government of the colony of Victoria passed a Registration Act for births, deaths and marriages, and was in nccd of

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capable men to administer the Act. It was fortunate for the future of statistics in Victoria and the country as a whole that William Archer, having been “reared in the ranks of the Statistical Society” (Humphries, 1882), had recently arrived in Melbourne. Earlier that year he had written to the Melbourne Morning Herald asking for the co-operation of scientifically minded people in research into the extent of mortality and causes of death among children under five years of age, and followed this up by writing to the statistical branch of the Colonial Secretary’s Department, seeking a position in the Public Service (Beever, 1971). Archer was eventually taken up by Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe who asked him to examine the new Registration Act (which had been based on the English Act), to draw up a plan for the guidance of its administration, and to thereby lay the foundations of government statistics in the colony.

William Henry Archer was born in London on Nov. 13, 1825. (For biographies, see Humphries (1882), Close (1966) and Beever (1971).) His family was not well off, and from an early age he had to contribute to their support. In 1841 he joined the Medical, Invalid and General Life Assurance Company as a clerk to train under Neison and worked there until 1849; in his spare time he studied French, Spanish and German. Neison’s life assurance company was reputed to be the first to employ life tables for diseased as well as healthy persons, and it has been suggested that William Farr also held an appointment in this same office. Although this is not mentioned by any biographer of Farr, it is certain that Archer and Farr knew each other well for they corresponded during Archer’s early colonial years; the University of Melbourne Archives has correspondence between Archer and Farr, Neison (Snr) and his son Neison (Jnr), dated from 1859 to 1878, contemporary newspapers and copies of Archer’s scientific articles. For seven years Archer “moved in a circle of literary and scientific men” (Humphries, 1882), while Neison used him to assist with his own classic work Contributions to Vital Statistics. In 1848 Archer was converted to Roman Catholicism and became managing actuary in the Catholic Law and General Life Assurance Company. The company failed to expand, leading to his demotion to a financially insecure position.

In 1852 Archer sailed for Melbourne to join his family. He realised his good fortune being in Melbourne just when the colony needed a man of his training, and was aware of the special oppor- tunities awaiting an alert mind in this new environment. In a letter to the Melbourne Morning Herald published on Jan. 10, 1853, he wrote that “the novelty of the condition of the population . . . will develop laws that could not come under scientific observation in any other part of the world.”

La Trobe appointed Archer ;is Acting Registrar General and to this new position Archer applied the lessons he had learnt in London.

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The two major points he had made in his letter of recommendations were (i) that fixed and identical boundaries be used for both registration purposes and for the census, and (ii) that the suggested schedules needed important changes to bring them in line with those recommended by the Registration Committee of the Council of the Statistical Society of London (Archer, 1855). He also suggested that the chief registrar be a statistician, referring to the role played by Farr in England, but La Trobe saw fit to appoint Archer as Assistant Registrar-General. This initial appointment was beneficial as, similar to Farr, it left him free from administrative responsibility yet well paid. Archer travelled throughout the colony on horse-back recruiting and advising deputy-registrars, sometimes at risk to his own life.

The problem of differing boundaries had plagued Farr in creating accurate life tables for areas other than the whole country because it necessitated the combining of two sources of information. The new colony provided a wonderful chance to overcome the legacy of those historical problems in England, and for things to be done correctly right from the start. Archer realised the need to divide the colony into well-defined districts, and then to conduct a census based on these same boundaries, and this he was able to do; yet he does not appear to have used this information himself to construct life tables.

The following omissions were noted from the originally proposed schedules:

(i) for births, the ages of the parents, the date of their marriage, and

(ii) for marriages, the ages of the bride and of the groom, while (iii) for deaths, the duration of last illness, time of residence in the

colony, and, if the deceased was married, the period of marriage and list of living and dead offspring, including their ages.

the number and sex of previous children,

The importance of these changes “could only be appreciated by Actuaries in calculating tables of mortality. . . and by Vital Statist- icians, who have hitherto sought for such arithmetic information in vain,” said Archer in his address “On Statistical Sanitary Processes” to the Victorian Institute for the Advancement of Science (to become the Royal Society in 1859) on Sept. 26, 1854 (Archer, 1855). The enthusiasm Archer had for the potential good that could be derived from his new work is evident from the quotes below.

Good results in England were “lamentably slow in coming due t o . . . misconceptions in the theory and the mistakes in fact, made by the first agitators of the Public Health Movement.” He failed to elaborate, intending in another publication to “point out the rocks on which [sanitarians] split, much to the injury of a good cause,” but a search of the proceedings of the Royal Society fail to reveal such an address; perhaps he was referring to the misuse by Chadwick of the

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mean age of death, criticised by Neison and Farr. “[Wle in this colony are in possession of materials and advantages that they had not, and it will be our fault if the progress of the Science of Vital Statistics should become impeded by unnecessary obstructions.”

Not only interested in the issue of Public Health, having a particular interest in infant mortality, Archer’s aims were broader than Farr’s, at least in words; apart from the legal value he suggested ‘La long list of important scientific results deducible from the registration schedules when combined with census information.” From the birth schedules, “for the first time” (Archer’s emphasis), the following problems could be solved; the relationship between age at marriage and number of offspring, the mortality rate among children and among family groups, the more fatal periods of age for each sex, and which sex is the more difficult to rear, the influence of age of parents over the sex ratio of their children, and the difference in birth rate, mortality and sex ratio for the different races (which to Archer meant the distinction between the British, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Chinese and Aborigines). From the death schedules the health of the colony and of specific localities, the extent of fatality of each disease, tables of sickness, mortality and life expectancy, the influence of occupation, a comparison of life duration for immigrants and for local born, and the rate of mortality among children and influence of age of parents at marriage, longevity of their progeny and the climate could all be studied. From the marriage schedules questions as to the present and future political state of the population could be answered, throwing light on the “laws of birth, disease and death as they variously affect the different members of the human family.”

The framework for future scientific exploration was being laid down. It is obvious that Archer had a broad interest in life, whereas Farr had concentrated on the more immediate problems of death and poverty that surrounded him. Archer was obviously a competent statistician, but had he been able to follow through the suggestions above, or at least found colleagues similarly interested in those issues in the way that Nightingale, Snow and others inspired Farr, he might be remembered today as a great social scientist.

Archer’s first official publication was the Statistical Register of Victoria 1854 (Archer, 1854), which collected a vast amount of facts from old government records and private documents furnished by the Colonial Secretary, Captain Lonsdale. Comparing figures for the years 1841, 1846 and 1851, Archer tabulated the population by age, sex and districts, while deaths were categorised by religion, sex and age (above or below 5 years) for the period 1848-52. Included was an abridge- ment of Farr’s Statistical Nosology, and in pointing out the need to divide the colony into districts, Archer refcrred to Neison and quoted from his work on vital statistics. From 1855 to 1873 this publication, now incorporating the newly collccted statistics, appcarcd annually

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from the Registrar General’s Department under the title Statistics of the Colony of Victoria. Later it became the Victorian Year Book and was published by the Government Statist, Henry Heylyn Hayter, who had worked as an assistant to Archer for the preceeding five years.

Archer was keen to reach a wider public and published summaries of the annual report; for example Statistical Notes on rhe Progress of Victoria 1835-60 appeared in 1861 and The Progress of Victoria. A Statistical Essay in 1873. The latter was typical of the annual reports, and was his final publication as Registrar General because in May 1874 he was promoted to Secretary of Lands and Survey. In it he brought together all the available statistical evidence up to the end of 1871, or in some cases to 1872, and presented a magnificent summary of the rapid development during the early years of the colony. Recognising the contribution of Hayter, then senior clerk, Archer proudly ex- claimed that the “statistical records of Australia [were] not excelled either in fullness or in accuracy by those of any other country,” and that the “statistical system initiated in Melbourne in 1853 is gradually being followed by statisticians in surrounding states.” Bold words, but sentiments backed up later by none other than William Farr, in a letter to Archer thanking him for “your very valuable collection of Statistical Documents-which in my opinion reflect the highest credit on your Department. ”

A tabulation of the population since May 1826 by sex ratio and ethnicity was accompanied by an optimistic description of “an Austra- lian people . . . another national type. . . whose destiny. . . will be to show, that, as they are the latest, so will they prove to be the wisest, best and happiest amongst the nations” (Archer, 1873). Topics covered included geography, climate, population by race, marriages, immigration and emigration, occupations, mortality statistics, and detailed information on the commerce and agriculture of the colony, as well as local government and education.

What had Archer learnt from two decades collecting vital statistics? The average death rate in Victoria for the years 1862-71 was 16.3 per thousand, compared to estimates all over 20 per thousand for England, France, Austria and Italy. However Archer made the point that “the absolute value of such comparisons depends upon the similarity of the proportion of persons at any age to the total population in each country,” illustrating his grasp of statistics. The mortality rates for age groups, measured as the number of deaths per 1000 living in that age group, for males and females separately based on the 1861 and 1871 censuses, were compared with those from England and France. Archer noted that differences from 1861 to 1871 indicate the danger of relying on the experience of any one year as a permanent guide.

The causes of death, according to Farr’s nosology, were then compared for Victoria and England; whereas 30% of all deaths in

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Victoria were attributed to “zymotic” causes, in England this was only 24%. The reverse was the case of “constitutional” diseases, of which consumption was the most fatal, accounting for only 13% of deaths in Victoria compared to 21% in England. There was little difference for the other causes, except for violent deaths which accounted for 9% in Victoria, but only 3.6% in England.

The relationship of age to cause of death was studied closely. Over 50% of all deaths occurred in children under 5 years of age; one-third of all zymotic deaths were of children under one year of age, and another third in the next four years of life. Two-thirds of deaths from ‘‘developmental’’ diseases occurred in children under one year.

The most fatal of the zymotic diseases were diarrhoea and dysentery, which together accounted for one-eighth of all mortality; moreover there was a seasonal factor involved, these diseases being more frequent in the summer months when total mortality was about 1.5 times that of the winter months. Although several sporadic cases had been brought in ships, smallpox and typhus apparently had yet to spread within the colony; however typhoid fevers were not rare, and a type called “colonial fever” was frequently fatal. N o case of cholera had occurred in Australia. Of the constitutional diseases consumption was by far the most fatal, while in one of every 221 live births the mother died. Violent deaths were becoming less frequent since the days of the gold discoveries.

Infant mortality over 1862-71 averaged 12.6% with a slight tendency to decrease, being lower than in England where it was 18.3% over 1851-60 and 16% in 1870, “yet there is no doubt that i t will still further decline in proportion to the progress of morals and hygienic knowledge among the people” (Archer, 1873).

Sickness and infirmity were discussed via statistics on the number and ages of persons suffering from accidents, lunatics, idiots, deaf and dumb, blind, epileptic, crippled and deformed, and it was seen that about one in every 55 were by this definition “sick.” Scant statistics on the Chinese and Aborigines also were presented.

Unlike Farr, Archer made only brief comments in his annual reports and summaries. He was far more lucid, however, in the monthly journal Facts and Figures: or, Nores of Progress, Sraristical arid General which he privately published and edited between 1857 and 1858 (Archer, 1977). A total of eleven issues appeared, with over 700 subscribers including many individuals prominent in the early history of Melbourne. Right from the first issue Archer concentrated on infant mortality and the mortality of children, although he includcd articles on new sugar plants (in which he had a personal interest), agricultural statistics, astronomical surveying, education, “growth of Melbourne-stones and souls,” and included ;I section o n Mathematics for Youth, rcstrictcd to basic algebra.

On infant mortality Archer observed t h a t f o r the year encling Junc

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30, 1856, 46% of all deaths were for children under 5 years of age, and over 90% of these were under 2 years; see also Archer (1857). Archer listed nine causes: improper diet, want of exercise, poor ventilation, want of cleanliness, administration of narcotics, unsuitable clothing, too long a period of continuous nursing and living in the same room as parents, as well as the ordinary diseases of childhood, aggravated by the above. He admitted to having no proof, relying on his own experience, but suggested that there be a public lecture on the management of children, and that this could be organised by Statistical Societies “easily formed by the clergy, the medical practitioner, and the Deputy Registrars of each district,” and that these societies could help distribute a special form on the mortality of children that he had prepared, an idea originally suggested by Neison.

Archer refuted the rumour “stated in public journals’’ that 80 out of 100 infants die before the end of their first year of life, pointing out that infact the reverse was the case; over 1854-57 the infant mortality rates for Melbourne and suburbs, and for the rest of the state, were typically 20% and 14%, slightly higher in males. Comparing over this same period by disease class, Archer underlined the tendencies referred to above for dysentery and diarrhoea, especially in the summer months, to be the predominant causes of infant mortality. Interestingly, he included an artificial example to show that the age distribution needs to be considered to correctly calculate the relative mortality of different ages in various districts.

On the mortality of children Archer examined in detail the variation with month of year, relating this to average temperatures, and listed in detail the cause of death for each of the years 1854 to 1857 for Melbourne and suburbs. In infants, deaths from zymotic diseases were six times greater in the hotter part of the year, and this same tendency also occurred in other causes, except notably for diseases of the respiratory organs which were more numerous in the winter months. Aware that from “Hippocrates to Farr” men had held that there was a relationship between death, disease and temperature, Archer observed that “by limiting the comparison to infants. . . the result of climatic influence is brought out in far bolder relief.” In comparison with England he noted that the forms of disease in Victoria “have a very different destructive-rate.” Although keen to show that infant mortality in Victoria was not as “fearful” as some would have it, Archer nevertheless was deeply concerned with the extent of the problem; see also Archer (1859):

Appointment as Registrar General in Jan. 1859 effectively bro- ught to a close the journal; Archer had become an administrator. The statistical content of the annual reports was taken over by Hayter, and in 1874 when Archer took up his appointment in the Lands Depart- ment the statistical section of thc dcpartmcnt bccamc a separate body

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(Victorian Year Book 1973, 1974). Archer was obviously suited to administration, as his setting up of the organisation to administer the Registration Act bears witness.

As Registrar General Archer instigated moves for uniform statistical procedures to be adopted throughout Australia; South Australia wished to conduct a census in 1860, but Archer and his New South Wales colleague were able to persuade South Australia and Qaeensfand to join the other two cofonies in conducting a census on the same day as the English census of 1861. This incident is mentioned in correspondence with Farr.

Archer contributed to the scientific life of Melbourne, typically playing an innovative role (The Argus, 1863). He was a member of the Royal Society, and in 1873 was appointed the inaugural president of the Microscopical Society. In 1870 he was knighted by His Holiness Pope Pius IX.

The fortunes of Archer as a public servant were influenced by his Catholicism, and by his friendship with John O’Shanassy, from time to time Premier of Victoria alternating with the Conservative Richard Berry. On Jan. 8, 1878, Berry sacked many high public servants one of whom was Archer on what has come to be known as “Black Wednesday.” His associations made it unlikely that he would be reappointed, and in 1880 the Berry ministry rejected the recommen- dation of the trustees of the public library that Archer be appointed public librarian. Eventually Archer was forced to sell his land in Hawthorn and lived out a comfortable retirement; amongst his papers in the University of Melbourne Archives are numerous annotated newspaper articles from the early 1880s on the reform of the public service. He died in 1909.

3. Conclusion

How can one assess the contribution of Archer to vital statistics? No great mathematical or conceptual advance can be traced, although it is evident from his writings that he understood basic algebra and trigonometry without having the inventiveness of Farr to create life tables from limited data. He had not received a substantial formal education, but instead learnt on the job from Neison, and from contact with the statisticians of the day in London, including Farr. That he had learnt well was his greatest achievement. for the statistics of Victoria were placed on a sound footing. Archer corresponded with his London mentors, exchanging copies of statistical returns and keeping up with the news, including the latest discoveries about cholera.

Whereas Farr’s early training was in medicine and his religious energies directed to the sanitarian cause. Archer trained as a n actuary

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and poured his religious zeal into Catholicism. Yet the humanitarian side of Archer expressed itself in a strong interest in childhood and infant mortality, from his figures obviously the major contributor to mortality in the colony. His suggestion that statistical societies be formed to address this problem apparently fell on deaf ears, as the first statistical societies in Australia were not formed for another century, and then for very different reasons (The Australian Statistical Society was not formed until September, 1962, although the New South Wales Branch was formed in 1959).

Both Farr and Archer were concerned that their opinions be expressed in public, and spent a short spell in journalism until the demands of public office took over. Both were men of the times, taking a broad interest in science and language. Their government statistical careers started as assistants, and ended prematurely. Per- haps the biggest difference in the two men’s careers, and disappoint- ment from the point of view of Archer, was the intellectual stimulation provided by their environment. Although the “virgin” Australia offered great hopes and potential for the newcomer, it was still a “desert” in many respects. Archer was never able to get back to England to attend any of the Statistical Congresses, and his isolation from the English statistical school was widened by his Lands Depart- ment appointment and premature dismissal. Archer believed that living conditions could be improved both by hygienic and by moral measures, and it was to this latter cause that he devoted more and more of his energies.

An examination of the comments of contemporary physicians and visitors to Victoria may indicate to what extent the efforts of Archer to influence public opinion and attitudes to health were not in vain. James Bennet Clutterbuck, M.D., on returning to England after nine years in the colony, collected his thoughts on the voyage back to England (Clutterbuck, 1850). Without the aid of statistics he observed that “inflammatory and other diseases are of as frequent occurrence as in England,” and “consumption. . . confines many victims in Port Phillip to a premature grave,” blaming the “sudden vicissitudes of the Australian climate.” Liver disease and dysentery were considered as the two endemic maladies. Of the children Clutterbuck considered that the “sallow complexions of the majority of young persons of both sexes are attributable to a deranged condition of the digestive organs,” and after an early period of rapid growth, their teeth were prone to decay at an early age, while their voice was shrill, “accompanied by a sort of wiriness.” He was very doubtful whether Australian boys and girls were destined to live to a “good old age.”

By 1871 conditions in the colony had no doubt changed dramati- cally, not the least of these changes being that now vital statistics existed upon which to base opinions for advising the would-be

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emigrant. The Rev. James Ballantyne gave a more optimistic picture; the “more prevalent and fatal maladies of our climate have been gradually diminished in their ravages of late” (Ballantyne, 1871). He compared statistics for the prevalence of diarrhoea and dysentery, which were reported to have decreased from 163 per thousand in 1858 to 89 per thousand in 1864. Ballantyne was not as shrewd as Archer would have been, as a considerable increase in the proportion of adults in the colony could have produced a similar effect without any change in the underlying incidence of these diseases, which we have seen were predominantly amongst the children. He encouraged emigration, noting that the “violent and fatal epidemics of the old country have not yet taken root among us,” and suggested that by “common sense arguments” the Victorian climate would have a beneficial effect on consumptive patients, an opinion not shared by the earlier commentator.

In 1889 J . W. Springthorpe, lecturer in Hygiene at the University of Melbourne, brought together a range of statistical information to support his opinions on the state of health and cause of debility of the typical Victorian individual, who he described as “healthy, but neurotic” (Springthorpe, 1889). Thanking the Government Statist, Hayter, he states that the daily rate of meat consumption over the preceeding five years was over 1 Ib for the adult population, which was seen to be of the order of three times that for England. The yearly consumption of alcohol was almost equivalent to that of the United Kingdom, however the local beer was considered to be stronger and “more injurious.” He also considered that Melbourne had a climate unsuited to the consumptive.

Springthorpe described public hygiene legislation and the climate, suggesting that “the actual results which follow. . . can, perhaps, be best illustrated by the presentment of vital statistics, and expectancy of life, as compiled by recognised authorities.” He presented the mortality rate for Victoria and various countries for different age groups, taken from Hayter’s 1888 Year Book, and a table for expectation of life. (The Australian entries were acknowledged to the actuary Burridge; Hayter also had apparently not calculated life tables.) Unfortunately Springthorpe makes no further comment on these statistics, which showed dramatically that death rates for children under five years were two to three times lower than in Europe and the United States of America, yet very comparable for ages over 20 years, and that life expectancy from birth was .four to five years longer in the colonies, yet very similar from twenty years onwards.

The medical profession were not, apparently, as adept as statis- ticians in uncovering the “truths” concealed within data. Archer’s analyses of the government figures thirty years prior had revealed far greater information about the relationship of dcath to age and climate,

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but Springthorpe did not delve further into the figures; he had his opinions which he described in the following “general statements.” The major characteristics of a Victorian were that “he eats too much meat, lives in a climate characterised by its variability. . . accentuated by the fact, that if a drinker, he takes alcohol in greater quantity and more injurious form than the average Englishman.” Although Spring- thorpe came to his conclusions without what today would be con- sidered a strong scientific argument, it is cogent to notice that currently considerable public money is being spent to determine the validity of his hypotheses.

Mathematical statistics is today an important element in the methodology of epidemiology. The framework was laid down in the nineteenth century by the founding work of the Farrs, Archers and others, using government statistics to make inference about the vital status of populations and relating this to external factors. Since then classical statistical theory has been developed to incorporate sampling, and is now used to analyse clinical, cohort, case-control and other epidemiological studies. Archer understood basic principles that are relevant to this contemporary research; namely the need for sound baseline statistics on the general population, and the importance of taking account of confounding variables. He was aware also of the broad range of issues that could be addressed by prudent use of data, and sought to make the public aware of his own findings on the causes of mortality. As Victoria’s pioneer statistician, William Henry Archer gave the state a legacy of excellent government statistics, and set a high standard in scientific enterprise that is an inspiration for future generations of statisticians.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Dr. Diana (Ding) Dyason for introducing me to the subject, and Emeritus Professor H. 0. Lancaster for helpful comments.

References

ARCIIER, W. H. (1854). Starisficnl Rqisfer of Victoriu 1854. Melbourne. (VPL) ARCHER, W. H. (1855). On statistical sanitary processes. Trans. Proc. Vic. Inst. Adu.

ARCHER, W. €1. (1857). Infant mortality. A m . Quart. Med. J . April 1857. ARCHER, W . H. (1s59). Mortality of children. Aust. Med. J . 4, 139-145. ARCHER, W . H. (1873). The frogress of Victoria. A Stafisficd Essay. Melbourne. (VPL) ARCJIEK, W . H. (1977). Fucts und Figures: or, Notes on the Progress, Statisticul and

General for Aiutrdiun Circiilufion, Vols 1-2, 1857-/S5,9, (W. H . Archer, ed). Reprintcd Melbourne: Queensberry Hill Press, 1977. (Archives)

BALLANTYNE, J . (1871). Horns und Homesreah in rhe Land of Plenty: A Hnndhook oj Vicroricr, u v N I;ic,ltl j b r Etiii,qr(riioti. Melbourne. (Baillieu)

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BEEVER, M. (1971). W. H. Archer, Ciuil Servant. PhD thesis, University of Melbourne.

CLOSE, C. (1966). W. H. Archer, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 3,

CLUTTERBUCK, J. B. (1850). Port Phillip in 1849. London. (Baillieu) EYLER, J. M. (1979). Victorian Social Medicine. The Ideas and Methods of William Farr.

London: Johns Hopkins University Press. (Brownless) FARR. W. (1975). Vital Statistics: A Memorial Volume of Selections from the Reports and

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Comparative Sfatistics in the 1% Century. Germany: Gregg, 1973. (Baillieu) HUMPHREYS, N. A. (1885). Biography of William Farr. Reprinted in Vital Statistics: A

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HUMPHRIES, H. M. (1882). Men of the Time in Australia, Victorian Series (2nd ed). Melbourne. (Baillieu)

SPRINGTHORPE, J . W. (1889). Hygienic Conditions in Victoria. Melbourne. (Baillieu) SUSSER, M. & ADELSTEIN, A . (1975). Introduction. In Vital Statistics: A Memorial

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Sources Archives: University of Melbourne Archives, the W. H. Archer collection Baillieu: Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne Brownless: Brownless Medical Library, University of Melbourne VPL: Victoria Public Library

Received May 1985; revised July 1985