West Coast History of Science Society Meeting

University of California, San Francisco

April 11th - April 14th, 2002

[Program]

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The Effects of the "Numbering of the People": The Cultural Impact of Censuses and Statistics on the Popular Imagination
 

Gabriel K. Wolfenstein
 U.C.L.A.
 

On April 15th, 1861, a short play premiered at the New Adelphi Theatre in London; "The Census" by William Brough and Andrew Halliday.  The play was a farcical look at the process by which the English census was taken.  It revolved around one Mr. Peter Familias, and offered a comic look at his trials and tribulations as he attempted to take the census.  The short afterpiece was immensely successful, running for sixty-five performances, perhaps livening up some dull headliners.  Indeed, The Observer stated a few days later that ?a more diverting dramatic squib . . . has not been presented upon the stage from some time past.?  While this play was apparently unique in terms of subject matter  at least in London  this was by no means the only way in which statistics in general, and the census in particular, impacted social and cultural productions.  From the stories of authors like Dickens, Eliot, and Disraeli, to the variety of sermons preached on or around census day, it is evident that the idea of statistics, of censuses, entered into popular understandings.  Indeed, that people were amused, as in the plays, or called to think about the progress of their souls, as in the sermons, suggests that it is not only the numbers themselves which were important.  Rather, it indicates that, perhaps, people were beginning to think about the world statistically, not just in terms of illustrations, but also conceptually.  It has been made abundantly clear that statistics  and especially vital statistics  were of great import throughout the Victorian period.  In this paper, I hope to expand not only our understanding of who made up the audience for those numbers, but how the idea of statistical representations impacted how a viewing and reading public thought about themselves.