PAL STATISTICS OP THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, Ki3 



in the burial grounds of Friends within the limits of the 

 Lancashire Quarterly Meeting, from the commencement of 

 1777 to the end of 1837, affords some interesting information 

 on this subject. There is no reason to believe that the Society 

 of Friends eighty years ago had fewer personal comforts, were 

 more harrassed by the cares of business, were less cleanly, 

 orderly, or temperate than at the present day, so we must 

 not look to changes in these respects to account for any 

 variation in the duration of life ; they probably stood in the 

 same relation to the community as they do now. It should 

 be remarked that the list includes a few persons who died 

 previous to 1777. 



Table 15 gives a summary of this investigation. It will 

 be observed throughout that the women live longer than the 

 men, and on the average nearly two years. The proportion 

 of women to men has steadily increased. To each 100 men 

 who died in the twenty years ending 1797, there died 102 

 women; in the next twenty years 110; in the third twenty 

 years 120. This great increase in the number of women 

 arises from various causes, one of which may be, that more 

 men leave the Society by disownment than women. Still 

 this will only account in part for the remarkable increase of 

 women, and the subject is worthy of investigation. 



It must be observed that Table 15, containing the deaths 

 of all persons interred in the burial grounds, includes a num- 

 ber of persons not in membership, but who were connected 

 with Friends and attended their religious meetings ; this re- 

 duces the average age of death. In Manchester the age at 

 death of Friends only, for the twenty years ending 1856, 

 was 41 ; for all interred in their burial grounds for the same 

 time, 38. Thus we may add three years to each of the ages 

 to form an idea of the age of Friends only. 



Lancaster appears to have been a very healthy town, the 



average duration of life eighty years ago was greater than 



of Manchester at the present time. The duration of 



