Benefit or Friendly Societies, 



75 



which may be accounted lor from more cleanly habits, the l>etter treatment of 

 diseases among the poor, the practice of vaccination, &c. The belief of this 

 is so prevalent, that some of the insurance oflices have altered their terms ; 

 and the Carlisle tables seem to confirm the opinion. The effect of an increase 

 of longevity is to increase the value of an annuity for life ; to lower the tenns 

 upon which insurance for life may be effected ; to ameliorate the terms for an- 

 nuities to widows ; but it increases the demands upon Friendly Societies for 

 the relief of sickness and old age." — " Although the possession of more tables, 

 founded upon recent observations, is to be desired, we must, in any present 

 scheme, make the best of those we have •.'* 



Accordingly, upon considering various tables of mortality, and after the 

 most mature deliberation, it was resolved to found the computations upon a 

 medium derived from the Northampton, Carlisle, and latest Swedisli tables ; 

 and, from such data, Mr John Lyon, now one of the masters of the High School, 

 Licith, and an able calculator, constructed a new table of mortality. In the 

 formation of this table, Mr Lyon reduced the three tables, of which it is an 

 average, to the same radix^ or number, at the completion of 20 years of age (it 

 being only after that age that such tables are chiefly useful, at least for 

 Friendly Societies); added the corresponding numbers together, and assumed 

 1005 as the radix for a new table, using the nearest whole numbers to avoid 

 fractions. Before, however, giving this table, it may not be superfluous to 

 contrast those tables from which it has been deduced, in decades, or periods 

 of ten years, by which means some idea will be formed of the propriety of the 

 rate of mortality adopted. According to those three tables, then, the propor- 

 tion of the deaths to the living, at different ages, is as follows ; 



Thus it appears that the Northampton Table represents the rate of morta- 

 lity, in the earlier ages, to be double that represented by the Carlisle ; 1 out 

 of 63 persons, of any age between 20 and 30, dying annually according to the 

 former table, while there is only 1 out of 132 according to the latter. The 

 following is the average of the three, and also the average of the number of 

 the living to those who died at the same ages in the city of Glasgow, as cor- 

 rectly ascertained by Mr Cleland, during the year 1822, the one succeeding 

 that in which the last census was taken, and in which the number of deaths 

 differed only by four from that of the preceding year. The table of the High- 

 land Society represents the average rate of males and females combined. 



• Highland Society's Rqx)tt ou Baicfit or Fricmlly Societies, p. M. Edin. 1884. 



