xvi REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS 229 



and applied to parliament for powers to carry it into effect. 

 Thomas Potter, M.P., undertook the conduct of the affair : a 

 Bill was printed, and seemed to be in a way to pass the House 

 of Commons. Unfortunately Potter insisted on inserting a 

 clause for numbering the people of both sexes and all ages 

 before the other provisions came into force. It seems hardly 

 credible at this day that the number of the population was 

 then unknown. Yet so it was, until the first census was taken 

 in 1801. It was urged that if these numbers were obtained 

 they would furnish a foundation for computing insurances on 

 lives and other political calculations of great utility. The 

 Life Tables of Simpson and Price had in fact to be constructed 

 from the London Bills of Mortality. But the Opposition in 

 parliament laid hold of the new clause ; it was assailed with 

 clamour, and " nothing but the sin of David was heard of " 

 until the Bill was rejected by a large majority. Such was 

 the end of Fothergill's attempt to set up a national system 

 of vital statistics, a system which Vicq d'Azyr showed to be 

 no less needed in France. The old regime received a new 

 lease of life, and a period little short of a century had to pass 

 before the reform was made by the Registration Act of 1837. * 



OTHER SOCIAL EFFORTS 



The food of the people much engaged the thoughts of 

 Fothergill, especially in times of war and scarcity, when 

 wheat rose to over 3 per quarter, then an excessive price, 

 and the quartern loaf, which fetched fivepence in the 

 middle of the century, rose to twice or- three times that 

 sum. An artisan's weekly wage, it may be noted, was 

 then about ten shillings. In such a period of distress 

 Fothergill advocated the use of potato to mix with the 

 wheaten flour in making bread. He caused to be printed 

 and distributed to bakers and others in London the 

 following directions : 



1 Fothergill put on record anonymously in 1768 an account of his efforts, 

 and tried to get his Pennsylvanian friends to set up registers : M ed. Obs. & 

 Inq. iv. 214 ; Works, i. 157, 165-167, ii. 107 ; Letter to J. Pemberton, 13.2.1771, 

 Etting MSS. Fothergill's friends, Drs. Percival, Haygarth and Pulteney, 

 worked later in the cause, and Dr. Hawes in 1781 addressed the king and 

 parliament, recounting Fothergill's earlier effort, but in vain. Ann. Med. Rev. 

 and Reg., 1808, p. 371 ; Phil. Trans, xvi. 445, Ixxii. 35, Ixxvi. 349 ; T. Short, 

 Observations on the Bills of Mortality, 1750 ; Med. Obs. & Inq. v. 270, 282 ; 

 T. Percival, Essays ; Farr, Vital Statistics, p. 218. 



