Manchester Statistical Society

The Manchester Statistical Society is a learned society founded in 1833 in Manchester, England. It has a distinguished history, having played an important part in researching economic and social conditions using social surveys. It continues to be active as a forum for the discussion of social and economic issues and also in promoting research. Origins and early history The Manchester Statistical Society is one of the oldest statistical societies in the world and the first of its kind in Britain, having been founded in September 1833. This was a time when there was a growing interest in statistics and their use in understanding the state and the problems of society, and a Statistics Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science had been formed earlier in 1833. The Society was the first of around 20 such societies that were either mooted or actually formed in Britain in the early Victorian period; only that in Manchester and what was originally called the Statistical Society of London (now the Royal Statistical Society) still exist. The founders of the Society included three men who had key roles in the Manchester and Salford District Provident Society, also founded in 1833: the secretaries, James Phillips Kay (later Sir James Phillips Kay-Shuttleworth), a doctor, and William Langton, a banker; together with the treasurer, Benjamin Heywood, also a banker. The Provident Society used house-to-house visits to collect information about the needy in Manchester in order to provide support. Another involved in the Statistical Society at the outset was cotton spinner John Kennedy, who had been present at the meeting at which the Statistics Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was initiated. The Statistical Society members were described by Selleck as “imaginative and intellectually ambitious”. Many were Whigs, many were Unitarians; and 17 of the 40 members in 1835 worked in the cotton industry. While the Society planned to collect facts concerning the inhabitants of the district of Manchester, what was also important was the use to which the findings could be put: it was “a Society for the discussion of subjects of political and social economy, and for the promotion of statistical enquiries, to the total exclusion of party politics”.