160 Miss M. Beetim, Mi. (i. I . Vulr, an. I IY<f. K. Pearson. 



2. The data dealt with in this paper consist of four series, the first 

 three collected and reduced by Miss M. Beeton, and the fourth series 

 1>\ .Mr. G. U. Yule. The sources from which they were extracted are 

 the following : 



Mothers. Length of Life and Size of Family. 



Series I. Taken from the ' Whitney Family, of Connecticut,' a well- 

 known history of an American Quaker family. In order to complete 

 a thousand and more entries some very few additions were made from 

 the ' Backhouse Family,' the history of an English north-country 

 Quaker family. This series may be taken to substantially represent 

 American women more or less closely connected with one strain of 

 blood, either by inheritance or by marriage. 



As soon as these results were tabled it was noticed that the average 

 age at death of mothers was immensely below the average age at death 

 of Englishwomen. Further, the maximum frequency of deaths which 

 occurs at 35 to 40 was actually greater than the maximum which 

 occurs between 70 to 75 ! Either then American women of this class 

 die very early, or the women of the Whitney family suffer under some 

 hereditary taint, e.g., phthisis. 



Series II. Taken from purely English Quaker records. The data for 

 this series were drawn from a great variety of histories and records 

 most kindly placed at our disposal by Mr. Isaac Sharp, Secretary of the 

 Society of Friends, arid by the Secretary of the well-known insurance 

 office, the Friends' Provident Association, both of whom we desire to 

 cordially thank for their aid. The object here was to avoid the selec- 

 tion which may unconsciously be made when the data are drawn from 

 the records of a single family.* In these two series, as in the third 

 series, we selected the records of the Society of Friends because 



('(.) They appear to be the most trustworthy and complete of the 



family histories available. 

 (b.) The ages at death of the women are given ; these are rarely 



recorded in other genealogical works. 

 (c.) The artificial limitation of fertility seems to be less probable 



in a strongly religious community like the Friends than 



in other classes of the population. 



In this series the mean age at death, the modal age, and other con- 

 stants are quite fairly in accord with what we know of the population 

 at large. 



* Of course a ' ; family " history like tliut of the Whitney family, professing to 

 deal with all the descendants of a single pair, really contains an immense addition 

 through marriage of other strains. 





