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Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Social Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain

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Abstract

This examination of the ‘statistical movement’ in Victorian Britain argues that it failed to achieve the objective of its academic founders in the 1830s, a numerical science of society. As political and social contexts changed from the 1870s the movement’s liberal environmentalism was superseded by more sophisticated mathematical statistics, a different intellectual project, and a different morality, eugenics. It draws on the papers of Adolphe Quetelet, who inspired early Victorian statisticians, and Francis Galton, who are contrasted. Yet the figure emerging as the most important among the founders and a link to the present is Charles Babbage. His attempt to build a mechanical computer is related both to the emergence of the statistical movement and the analysis of ‘big data’ in our own age.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    On approaching Prince Albert, see also Farr (1853a, 1858).

  2. 2.

    When Farr and Quetelet were in correspondence about the venue for the second meeting of the International Statistical Congress, Farr commented that ‘the idea of gathering round the great veteran of science—Humboldt—is admirable; the Association would be a homage to the man and an honour to statistics’ (Farr 1853b).

  3. 3.

    ‘You will probably have heard that we have begun holding in England annual meetings of the friends of science like that which brought us together at Heidelberg. The next of these meetings takes place at Cambridge and begins on the 24th of June. I should be extremely glad to believe that there was any probability of your attending this meeting, and I am persuaded that if you were to do so you would find there many persons and things which would interest you. If you can visit us at that time pray do: we will give you apartments in the college and do what we can to make your visit comfortable’ (Whewell 1833).

  4. 4.

    It is likely that Quetelet was also entertained in London. A letter from Malthus to him seeking information on Belgian demography, wages and prices, also mentions ‘seeing you at Mr. Babbage’s tomorrow’ (Malthus to Quetelet, nd, Malthus 1833?). For Quetelet’s biography and wider reputation see Donnelly (2015). Donnelly’s admirable study places Quetelet in the context of French and German science at this time but overlooks his extensive contacts in Britain and his enduring influence here as an inspiration for Victorian social statistics. As William Farr wrote in new year greetings to him at the very end of 1863, ‘You have many friends in many lands; but in no country more than in England’ (Farr 1863a).

  5. 5.

    Babbage’s 1832 article was republished in the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution 1856 (Smithsonian Institution 1856: 289–302). For evidence of the Smithsonian’s efforts to fulfil Babbage’s plan, see Report of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1873 (Joseph Henry 1873: 23).

  6. 6.

    ‘When in 1876 this Congress passed a resolution that a permanent International Statistical Commission should be appointed which should have its permanent seat in Paris, Bismarck protested against this decision and forbade the Prussian statisticians from participating in the Congress from henceforth. In consequence the other German states also did not take part in the Congress which, since that point, albeit still formally in existence, did not engage in further activity’ (Allgemeine Zeitung (Vienna), 14 June 1885 quoted in Nixon 1960: 9–10). For other brief secondary accounts of these events see Zahn (1934) and Latter (1985: 2).

  7. 7.

    Korski was deputy head of the 10 Downing Street Policy Unit under prime minister Cameron.

  8. 8.

    This was a French translation of a letter in English sent by Babbage to Quetelet on 27 April 1835 and preserved in file 267 of the Quetelet Papers. It is the English translation of the published French version of this seminal document in the history of computing that is quoted extensively, while the original letter has been neglected.

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  1. St. Peter’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Lawrence Goldman

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  1. Sociology Department, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Plamena Panayotova

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Goldman, L. (2019). Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Social Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain. In: Panayotova, P. (eds) The History of Sociology in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19929-6_3

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