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Nightingale and the Statistical Society John Aldrich RSS History Section Elected Fellow of the Statistical Society of London The SSL was founded in 1834 and in 1887 became the Royal Statistical Society. 1 A society to join ? Since 1920 (say) the Society has been a professional society with joining part of the statistical career. Before, statistics was more a cause, hobby or side-line and the Society attracted a variety of people who participated to varying degrees. Take the admissions of December 1858 • No papers in the Journal from stock-broker Herepath, bankers Hyde and Rennie or Nightingale. • One paper each from Baines, newspaper proprietor interested in the local industry, and Jourdan, foreign exchange broker who wrote on exchange rates. • None became officers and only Jourdan served on the Council. 2 The right stuff for the Society ? One cause the Society promoted was the use of statistical knowledge to inform government decisions. Nightingale was the ideal Fellow: she was famous and her contribution to the Royal Commission on Sanitary Conditions in the Army demonstrated skill with statistics and with politicians. The Society’s Council had the cream of the doers of statistics and of their political well-wishers. Farr and Tulloch were doers she worked with. Stanley, Ebrington, Gladstone, Harrowby, Pakington were politicians she dealt with. Socially these were her people— some were family friends and Milnes had been a suitor. 3 The wrong sex ? Nightingale belonged to the wrong sex for • parliament • the universities • the professions—medicine and law • the army • most learned societies—including the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society. (The first female FRS was in 1945 and first FRGS in 1912.) The Statistical Society • Nightingale appears to have been the first woman to want to join since the Society began. • The Society interpreted the he, him and his of its rules to cover both sexes and did not consider fitness confined to men. 4 “being desirous of admission…” Certifying to her fitness William Farr * ** William Barwick Hodge William Augustus Guy * ** George Sowray William Newmarch * ** Frederick Hendriks * William Henry Sykes * ** Samuel Brown * ** James Heywood * Thomas Muir * Obituary in Journal Horace Mann ** ** Entry in Oxford DNB 5 Officers & leading practicioners among the signatories Treasurer Honorary Secretary William Farr (1807–83) William Newmarch (1820–82) Professional statistician and Businessman, actuary and Nightingale’s statistical mentor. journalist. Statistical Society Statistical Society Fellow from 1839 Fellow from 1847 President 1871–73 President 1869–71 Proposed & seconded 216 candidates Economic statistics Vital statistics Honorary Secretary Vice-President William Augustus Guy (1810–85) William Henry Sykes (1790–1872) Physician and Professor of Forensic Retired from the army of the East Medicine at King’s College. India Company. Scholar at large. Statistical Society Statistical Society Fellow from 1840 Fellow from founding President 1873–75 President 1863–65 Medical statistics Miscellaneous statistics 6 Benefits of being a Fellow ? The Society offered active Fellows a platform and a network of like- minded people. • The main platform was the Journal. Nightingale published nothing there but had other platforms • She made no new statistical associations in the network of Fellows. In July 1860 the Society hosted the Fourth Session of the International Statistical Congress. • Nightingale had a platform for her ideas on hospital statistics. • She met Quetelet, a statistical hero and delegate at the Congress. The Society next hosted an International affair in 1885 but Nightingale took no part. 7 The Journal records her death 1911, a year after she died… No obituary … Nightingale died a national figure But, like most Fellows, she did little for the Society And only big contributors got obituaries—Dilke a politician and Galton a man of science. Galton was a unique case, remembered as “the founder of modern statistical methods” for work done outside the Society But Galton, unlike Nightingale, had intellectual descendants in the Society to eulogise him. 8.
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