I - Newmarch and the Progress of Statistical Inquiry

Summary

William Newmarch, whom we remember and honour in these lectures, will be known to all of you as a great economic statistician. Born in Yorkshire in 1820, he made his career in insurance and finance. As a young man he came to live in London and in his leisure hours devoted much of his immense energies to furthering the science of statistics. He was especially active in the Statistical Society of London (as the Royal Statistical Society then was) and contributed some eighteen papers and communications to its Journal, which he edited for many years. He was a Liberal, for many years a leading member of the Reform Club, a Fellow of the Royal Society and an active member of the Political Economy Club. He collaborated with Tooke in the two final volumes of Tooke's History of Prices and was responsible for a great part of the work of these volumes. In 1863 he started the Annual Commercial History in The Economist. He died in 1882.

In the session of 1869-70 he succeeded Mr Gladstone as President of the Statistical Society and devoted his inaugural address to the Progress and Present Condition of Statistical Inquiry. If we look back at the course of statistical inquiry over the last eighty years it is remarkable how clearly Newmarch saw many of the subjects which would engage the attention of economic statisticians in succeeding generations. He lists the eighteen fields of research most requiring early attention, of which the first four are:

1. (1) The annual consumption per head among different classes, and by the nation as a whole, of the chief articles of food—corn, butchers' meat, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, wine, spirits and beer.

2. (2) The annual production in agriculture, minerals, metals, ships and manufactures.

3. (3) The comparative wages, house-rent, and cost of living in different parts of the country.

4. (4) The total annual income and earnings and the total annual accumulations of different classes, and of the country as a whole.

While I am tempted to digress on these topics it is really the last item in the list which I shall take as the text for these lectures. Newmarch described it thus: