Victorians and Numbers

Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain

Lawrence Goldman

Presents Britain as the preeminent centre for the collection of statistics and their development as a branch of mathematics in the 19th century
Explores the 'data revolution' in the 1830s, showing it as somewhat equivalent to the 'digital revolution' of our own era which stimulated the collection and use of statistics
Demonstrates that our use of statistics to understand disease was already well-established in the Victorian period
Shows that statistics were intimately connected to social reform and developments in the natural and social sciences in the Victorian period
Draws on the personal histories of many eminent Victorians with an interest in data, including Albert, the Prince Consort; Florence Nightingale; and the mathematicians and natural scientists Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and William Whewell

Victorians and Numbers

Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain

Lawrence Goldman

Description

A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population, the development of industry and commerce, and the increasing competence of the state, generated profuse numerical data. This is a study of how such data influenced every aspect of Victorian culture and thought, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration and the arguments and conflicts between social classes. Numbers were collected in the 1830s by newly-created statistical societies in response to this 'data revolution'. They became a regular aspect of governmental procedure thereafter, and inspired new ways of interrogating both the natural and social worlds. William Farr used them to study cholera; Florence Nightingale deployed them in campaigns for sanitary improvement; Charles Babbage was inspired to design and build his famous calculating engines to process them. The mid-Victorians employed statistics consistently to make the case for liberal reform. In later decades, however, the emergence of the academic discipline of mathematical statistics - statistics as we use them today - became associated with eugenics and a contrary social philosophy. Where earlier statisticians emphasised the unity of mankind, some later practitioners, following Francis Galton, studied variation and difference within and between groups. In chapters on learned societies, government departments, international statistical collaborations, and different Victorian statisticians, Victorians and Numbers traces the impact of numbers on the era and the intriguing relationship of Victorian statistics with 'Big Data' in our own age.

Victorians and Numbers

Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain

Lawrence Goldman

Introduction: Victorians and Numbers
Prologue: Statistics at the Zenith: The International Statistical Congress, London 1860
Part I: Political Arithmetic and Statistics 1660-1840
1:Before the Victorians
Part II: The Origins of the Statistical Movement 1825-1835
2:Cambridge and London: The Cambridge Network and the Statistical Society of London
3:Manchester: The Manchester Statistical Society: Industry, Sectarianism and Reform
4:Clerkenwell: The London Statistical Society and Artisan Statisticians, 1825-30
Part III: Intellectual Influences
5:Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace: Statistics and Computing
6:Richard Jones and William Whewell: Statistics, Induction, and Political Economy
7:Adolphe Quetelet: Social Physics, Determinism, and 'The Average Man'
8:Alexander von Humboldt: Humboldtian Science, Natural Theology, and the Unity of Nature
9:The Opposition to Numbers: Disraeli, Dickens, Ruskin, and Carlyle
Part IV: Statistics at Mid-Century
10:Mapping and Defining British Statistics
11:Buckle's Fatal History: Making Statistics Popular
12:Statistics and Medicine
Part V: Liberal Decline and Reinvention
13:The International Statistical Congress 1851-78: Conservative Nationalism versus Liberal Internationalism
14:The End of the Statistical Movement: Francis Galton, Variation and Eugenics
15:Social Statistics in the 1880s: The Industrial Remuneration Conference, London 1885
16:Conclusion: From Statistics to Big Data 1822-2022

Victorians and Numbers

Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain

Lawrence Goldman

Author Information

Lawrence Goldman, Emeritus Fellow, St. Peter's College, University of Oxford

Lawrence Goldman was born in London and educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he taught British and American History for three decades in Oxford, where he was a fellow of St. Peter's College, and Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004-2014. Latterly he was Director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His publications include books on Victorian social science and the history of workers' education, and a biography of the historian and political thinker R. H. Tawney. He is now Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford.