Historical essay on the rise and early progress of the doctrine of life-contingencies in England : leading to the establishment of the first life-assurance society in which ages were distinguished / by Edwin James Farren.

  • Farren, Edwin James.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Historical essay on the rise and early progress of the doctrine of life-contingencies in England : leading to the establishment of the first life-assurance society in which ages were distinguished / by Edwin James Farren. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    S5 offered from the conjoint materials, a regulated Table of Mortality, which the reader will find set forth in Vol. 49, p. 182, of the publication referred to. [ 1756] In 1756, was published, the Third Edition of De Moivre’s “ Doctrine of Chances,” including the usual species of Appendix on Life-Annuities, &c. with a few miscellanea added. Among these w^ere the four Tables of Mortality then generally known; two of these have already been brought under the notice of the reader, viz. Dr. Halley’s, (1693) and Messrs. Smart’s and Simpson’s, (1738-1742); the remaining two were proposed by foreign authors, one by M. Kersseboom, (1738), representing the Mortality in Holland, among the Dutch Annuitants; the other, by M. De Parcieux, (1746), derived from the List of claimants for the French Tontines. De Moivre remarks on each of these, and in illustration of Dr. Halley’s says, “ We may therefore retain this last as no ‘ ‘ bad standard for mankind in general; till a better Police, in this “ and other nations, shall furnish the proper data for correcting it, “ and for expressing the decrements of Life more accurately, and in “ larger numbers. “ For which purpose, the parish Registers ought to be kept in a better manner, according to one or other of the Forms that have “ been proposed by Authors. Or, if we suppose the numbers an^ “ nually born to have been nearly the same for an age past, the thing “ may be done at once, by taking the numbers of the living, with “ their ages, throughout every Parish in the Kingdom: as was in part “ ordered some time ago by the Right Reverend the Bishops: but their Order was not universally obeyed; for what reason we pretend “ not to guess. Certain it is, that a Census of this kind once esta- “ blished, and repeated at proper intervals, would furnish to our Govemours, and to ourselves, much important instruction of which ” we are now in a great measure destitute: Especially if the whole was distributed into the proper Classes of married and unmarried, “ industrious and chargeable Poor, Artificers of every kind, Manu-