MEMOIR ON PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM 27 



in our investigations, but which have no existence in our 

 classification. There is only one word by which this process 

 can be described, but it is better left unsaid. 



Let us now fix Sir Victor Horsley and Dr. Sturge down 

 to another of their characteristic statements : 



*To return now to other kinds of porters — namely, 

 porters, coal porters, and street porters — we have put them 

 together in one table as below. Of porters thus grouped 

 we find only thirteen in the Edinburgh statistics, and no 

 other porters are mentioned therein. Professor Pearson, 

 however, says there are seventeen. He, therefore, has 

 invented for this trade four imaginary individuals, although 

 asserting throughout that he is quoting the Edinburgh 

 figures. The Edinburgh Committee verified the wage rate, 

 showed that for eleven individuals this could be done, 

 and the average weekly wage came out at 20s. 6d. Of 

 course Professor Pearson, to construct his wage (and 

 sobriety) table for the Times and his Supplemental Memoir, 

 gives this average weekly wage of 20s. bd. to all his seven- 

 teen porters, the thirteen real ones, and the four imaginary 

 ones, in spite of the Edinburgh data. Turning now to 

 the sobriety question, Professor Pearson makes out of his 

 seventeen porters, nine were sober and eight w^ere drinkers, 

 each of whom gets according to him 10s. 6d. Thus for 

 this relatively low wage he naturally obtains by this 

 ''expert" method a practical equality between the wage- 

 earning of the drunken and of the "sober" porter 

 respectively' [B.M, J., Jan. 14, 191 1, p. 81). 



The above is a typically Horsleyan sample of contro- 

 versial writing ! No statement as to the wage-earning of 

 sober and drunken porters has ever been made by me. 

 No average was struck for such porters by ' expert ' or 

 any other methods. In my letter in the Times and in the 

 Stipplemental Memoir a list of trades was given, and to 

 grade these trades as high or low a list of the wages paid 

 in Edinburgh for these trades was attached to them, taken 

 from the Edinburgh Committee's Report. No statement 



