XXV 



lection of facts, so far as they could be learned, respecting the 

 march of the disease from India through Russia, and was able to end 

 his story by telling of a Board of Health established for England, 

 with Sir Henry Halford, President of the College of Physicians, at 

 its head. 



Dr. Hawkins' professional knowledge, combined with his regard 

 for numerical accuracy, was recognised by his appointment succes- 

 sively to office as Factory Commissioner and Inspector of Prisons. 

 He rendered useful service in these capacities, particularly in pleading 

 for abridgment of extravagant hours of labour by women and children, 

 and by preventing serious sanitary mistakes by the Government of 

 the time in its dealings with prisoners. He afterwards became a 

 Commissioner in Lunacy. 



When, in 1836, provision was made for registering births and 

 deaths throughout England, Dr. Hawkins was in a position in the 

 counsels of the College of Physicians and of the Government to 

 speak with authority in favour of a proposal to record the fatal 

 disease in the death register ; along with the mere facts of identity 

 and of time and place. Of course it could not be long before the 

 value of this record was felt ; and the column at first reserved experi- 

 mentally for " causes of death " has long been seen to be the most 

 important of all the columns of the register for the purposes of the 

 community . 



Dr. Bisset Hawkins, in 1838, urging on England a greater interest 

 than she then took in the affairs of Germany " and her allied 

 countries," had to coin a phrase to distinguish the wider idea of 

 social life taken in Germany from the subjects which formed the 

 political economy of England at that period. He would have English- 

 men study the "state economy" of Germany, her natural history, 

 her educational, medical, and other concerns, that were at the begin- 

 ning of the century much better cared for in Germany than in his 

 own country. He lived to see his distinction well nigh effaced ; and 

 we may credit him with having helped to the effacement. 



He spent the later years of his life at his residence at Bourne- 

 mouth, in Dorsetshire, a deputy -lieutenant of the county, the ideal of 

 an English country gentleman and retired scholar. 



G. B. 



ALBERT WILLIAM BEETHAM was born in London, on August 20, 

 1802, being the eldest son of William Beetham, F.R.S., Deputy- 

 Lieutenant for the county of Middlesex. He was elected a Fellow 

 of the Linnean Society on February 6, 1827, and of the Royal 

 Society on February 5, 1835. He was appointed Clerk of the 

 Cheque and Adjutant of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen- 

 at-Arms on July 3, 1835. In November, 1836, he was called 



