The Manchester Statistical Society is a

learned society A learned society (; also learned academy, scholarly society, or academic association) is an organization that exists to promote an discipline (academia), academic discipline, profession, or a group of related disciplines such as the arts and s ...

founded in 1833 in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

, England. It has a distinguished history, having played an important part in researching economic and social conditions using social surveys. It continues to be active as a forum for the discussion of social and economic issues and also in promoting research.

Origins and early history

The Manchester Statistical Society is one of the oldest statistical societies in the world and the first of its kind in Britain, having been founded in September 1833. This was a time when there was a growing interest in statistics and their use in understanding the state and the problems of society, and a Statistics Section of the

British Association for the Advancement of Science The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chie ...

had been formed earlier in 1833. The Society was the first of around 20 such societies that were either mooted or actually formed in Britain in the early Victorian period; only that in Manchester and what was originally called the Statistical Society of London (now the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

) still exist. The founders of the Society included three men who had key roles in the Manchester and Salford District Provident Society, also founded in 1833: the secretaries,

James Phillips Kay Sir James Phillips Kay-Shuttleworth, 1st Baronet (20 July 1804 – 26 May 1877, born James Kay) of Gawthorpe Hall, Lancashire, was a British politician and educationist. He founded a further-education college that would eventually become Plymo ...

(later Sir James Phillips Kay-Shuttleworth), a doctor, and William Langton, a banker; together with the treasurer,

Benjamin Heywood Sir Benjamin Heywood, 1st Baronet (12 December 1793 – 11 August 1865) was an English banker and philanthropist. Early life Benjamin Heywood was born on 12 December 1793 in St Ann's Square, Manchester. He was the grandson of Thomas Perciva ...

, also a banker. The Provident Society used house-to-house visits to collect information about the needy in Manchester in order to provide support. Another involved in the Statistical Society at the outset was cotton spinner John Kennedy, who had been present at the meeting at which the Statistics Section of the

was initiated. The Statistical Society members were described by Selleck as “imaginative and intellectually ambitious”. Many were Whigs, many were Unitarians; and 17 of the 40 members in 1835 worked in the cotton industry. While the Society planned to collect facts concerning the inhabitants of the district of Manchester, what was also important was the use to which the findings could be put: it was “a Society for the discussion of subjects of political and social economy, and for the promotion of statistical enquiries, to the total exclusion of party politics”. The Society’s first annual report indicated that the Society “owes its origin to a strong desire felt by its projectors to assist in promoting the progress of social improvement in the manufacturing population by which they are surrounded”, the background being the conditions of working people and their families, which reflected the effects of the industrial revolution in Manchester.

A pioneer in social surveys

Some of the Society’s early meetings considered statistics already collected elsewhere. A major impetus to the Society’s work, however, came when

Charles Poulett Thomson Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham, (13 September 1799 – 19 September 1841) was a British businessman, politician, diplomat and the first Governor General of the united Province of Canada.

, Vice-President of the

Board of Trade The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for International Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of ...

, suggested that the Society itself collect statistical information on, for example, the condition of the working people of Manchester. This led to the Society achieving prominence with its innovative work of several social surveys, involving considerable effort to collect detailed data, as in the report on 4,102 families in parts of Manchester, based on house-to-house research. The work was extended to cover surrounding towns, with agents paid to visit houses and collect data, the results summarised in reports. An important subject of the Society’s early enquiries was education. The reports in its first eight years included surveys of the state of education in Manchester, Bury, Salford, Liverpool, Rutland and Hull; the findings were “totally condemnatory of the situation then existing”. The Society’s early reports on education had, according to Butterfield, helped make Manchester the most education-conscious city in England. Selleck described the Society as “a pioneer in new intellectual ways”. By 1840 the Society had 60 members; they included a dozen people who were significant in running the Anti-Corn Law League. The Society had, by then, issued 22 reports and 51 papers. According to Abrams, the Society, in its early years, did more impressive work than the Statistical Society of London.

Development

The Society was unable to keep up its early momentum; the 1840s saw fewer reports and declining membership. Credited with helping the Society avoid dissolution was Edward Herford, a coroner, who enlisted 16 new recruits in 1846. The driving force of the Society in the 1840s was John Roberton, a doctor at the Lying in Hospital in Manchester; he shared an interest in collation and interpretation of medical statistics with fellow members such as

. Roberton was author of eight of the 15 papers known to have been presented to the Society from its 1842-43 session to 1849-50. In total he read 27 papers to the Society, on matters as diverse as the effect of climate on man, municipal government, national schools of Ireland, and evils affecting railway labourers. Medical and related matters were important in the Society’s meetings; in 1875 Wilkinson found that one-third of the papers read before the Society had been on sanitary and kindred matters and

John Pickstone John Victor Pickstone (29 May 1944 – 12 February 2014) was a British historian of science and the Wellcome Research Professor in the Centre for the History of science, Technology and Medicine, in the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University ...

, a medical historian, says that the Manchester Statistical Society The nature of the Society's activities was, however, changing, with Elesh highlighting a switch from original research to secondary analyses, using statistics collected elsewhere; he concluded that the Society failed to institutionalise survey research. There was also a trend toward historical essays and discussions of more general questions of political economy, such as decimal coinage. Economics was developing as a profession, and began to be represented in the membership of the Society and the papers presented. One of the new members in 1865-66 was

Stanley Jevons William Stanley Jevons (; 1 September 183513 August 1882) was an English economist and logician. Irving Fisher described Jevons's book ''A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy'' (1862) as the start of the mathematical method in eco ...

, who had accepted a teaching post in Manchester; in 1867 he became Professor in Political Economy at Cambridge. Jevons presented a paper on the progress of the mathematical theory of political economy in 1874, though many of the Society’s meetings were non-technical, across a varied range of topics. Examples of subjects covered in the 1870s, both economic and non-economic, were trade unions, population statistics, the American financial crisis, the cotton trade, prison discipline and sanitary progress in Manchester. The Society continued to take opportunities to be involved in the contribution that statistics could play in public policy: in 1900 its council addressed the House of Lords in favour of a quinquennial census, and suggested changes in the classification of workers in the cotton and coal industries, which were adopted by the Registrar-General. Membership of the Society increased to over 200 in 1879 and was then never below 170 until World War I. However, when the centenary was about to be celebrated in 1933, the Society faced a deficit, and a special appeal was made to members.

The second century

The Society continued its regular meetings, covering a range of economic and social subjects. Past presidents include two

Nobel Laureates The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ou ...

in economics,

John Hicks Sir John Richards Hicks (8 April 1904 – 20 May 1989) was a British economist. He is considered one of the most important and influential economists of the twentieth century. The most familiar of his many contributions in the field of economic ...

and Arthur Lewis. Although the Society’s activities were primarily of a non-technical nature, there were opportunities for groups of members interested in more technical subjects. In 1933-34 a group for the study of statistical methods began to hold meetings, it being re-formed as a group for the study of economic statistics in 1956-57. An industrial group was also formed for engineers and others interested in statistical quality control in industrial production, this series of meetings beginning in 1943-44. The Society’s ordinary meetings continued with a range of subjects: for example, its 1956-57 session saw discussions on the U.K. life assurance industry, economic aspects of fibre production, Soviet industrial expansion, British trade unions and the new gold standard. The Society formed an economic forecasting study group in 1970-71. Over time meetings of the Society’s specialist, more technical groups were arranged as joint meetings with the

and the North Western branch of the

Institute of Statisticians The Institute of Statisticians was a British professional organization founded in 1948 to protect the interests of professional statisticians. It was originally named ''The Association of Incorporated Statisticians Limited'', but this was later cha ...

, but meetings became infrequent in the 1980s. In 1983 the Society celebrated its sesquicentenary with a special two-day conference, held at the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

. The Society’s president at the time was Dame

Kathleen Ollerenshaw Dame Kathleen Mary Ollerenshaw, (''née'' Timpson; 1 October 1912 – 10 August 2014) was a British mathematician and politician who was Lord Mayor of Manchester from 1975 to 1976 and an advisor on educational matters to Margaret Thatcher's go ...

, who was a member of the Society from 1944 until her death in 2014. The society became a

registered charity A charitable organization or charity is an organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being (e.g. educational, religious or other activities serving the public interest or common good). The legal definition of a ch ...

(No. 1069363) in 1998.

Current activities

The society continues, aiming to attract new members, without any professional qualifications being necessary. It holds regular meetings addressed by expert speakers, the focus being the discussion of social and economic affairs, examples of subjects being health, social care, policing, economic forecasting, regional economic development and inequality. The A.H. Allman Prize was endowed in 1951 and is awarded annually to a statistics student at the

. Allman was honorary secretary of the Society for 26 years and members made a monetary presentation to him, which Allman asked to be used to establish the prize, which is administered by the

. The Society was a beneficiary of the estate of Sir

Harry Campion Sir Harry Campion, KCB, CBE (20 May 1905 – 24 May 1996) was a British statistician and the first director of what was the Central Statistical Office of the United Kingdom. He was also first director of the United Nations Statistical Office. ...

and the bequest was placed into a trust fund to provide occasional modest grants to support research consistent with the Society's objective and history. The Society first published its Transactions in 1853, containing papers presented to the Society. This, now a long-running journal, illustrates the wide range of subjects in the Society’s remit. The Society’s archives, dating back to its foundation, are kept at

Manchester Central Library Manchester Central Library is the headquarters of the city's library and information service in Manchester, England. Facing St Peter's Square, it was designed by E. Vincent Harris and constructed between 1930 and 1934. The form of the building ...

and the contents can be searched online.

Officers

Presidents

Presidents of the Manchester Statistical Society have been:

References

Citations

Pickstone, John (19–26 December 1987). "Manchester's History And Manchester's Medicine". British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition). BMJ Publishing Group. 295 (6613): 1604–1608. . JSTOR 29529232. PMC 1257489. .

External links

Manchester Statistical Society Homepage
{{authority control S Organisations based in Manchester Organizations established in 1833 Science and technology in Greater Manchester Statistical organisations in the United Kingdom 1833 establishments in England Charities based in Manchester Charities based in Greater Manchester Clubs and societies in Greater Manchester