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John Tatham (1844–1924)

Edward Higgs

John F. W. Tatham (1844–1924) held the post of Superintendent of Statistics at the General Register Office (GRO), the body responsible for census-taking and the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths, from 1893 to 1909. He was plainly a man of learning, and made important contributions to medical statistics, but he was perhaps not as innovative a figure as the other men who held the post of Superintendent in the years before 1920.

Tatham graduated in medicine in Glasgow in 1867, and obtained the diploma in public health at Cambridge in 1876. In 1884 he graduated in medicine and arts at Trinity College Dublin, and proceeded to his M.D. two years later. From 1873 to 1892 he was a medical officer of health, first for Salford and then from 1888 for Manchester. Whilst in Manchester he produced life tables for the city, and was lecturer on hygiene at Owen College (British Medical Journal; Szreter, 86, 89).

On taking over from William Ogle at the GRO in 1893, Tatham's contributions to the Office's flagship publication, the Annual Report of the Registrar General for England and Wales (ARRG), were at first anonymous. Under Brydges Henniker, the Registrar General from 1880 to 1900, the ARRG was only signed by Henniker, although the Superintendent of Statistics must at least have provided the data included. From 1902, however, a new Registrar General, Sir William Cospatrick Dunbar, reintroduced the separate 'Letter to the Registrar General' from the Superintendent of Statistics on mortality that had been a feature of the pre-Henniker days. Dunbar's reason for instituting was that 'it occurs too me that the medical practitioners of this country, on whose generous co-operation the accurate compilation of vital statistics so largely depends, will, in this way, more readily appreciate the fact that the particulars they contribute concerning the causes of death are analysed, and the results authenticated, by a member of their own profession' (Sixty-fourth Annual Report of the Registrar General, xxi). This was more generally associated with an expansion in the size of the GRO's publications, and in the institution's staffing (Higgs, 2004, 129–31, 149–52).

Tatham's contribution to the GRO's main publication was then more obvious and his work blossomed. In the ARRG published in 1904, Tatham noted improvements in the statistics published since the end of the last century, including supplementary tables on infected organs/parts of the body; on deaths in childbirth; and on deaths from specific diseases discriminating between urban/rural areas. He also discussed attempts to correct for age when calculating local rates of mortality, building on work initiated by his predecessor, William Ogle (Sixty-fifth Annual Report of the Registrar General, xxxiii-iv). Tatham's later Letters also gave great emphasis to infant mortality. This had not declined in the same way as mortality in other age groups, and in 1906 the President of the Local Government Board called a conference of medical officers of health to consider this question. The chief medical officer of the Board had subsequently taken steps to gather special returns from medical officers on mortality in infants, and Tatham's own work on the subject was to act as a reference point for them (Higgs, 2004, 136–7).

Tatham also published two Supplements to the Annual Report of the Registrar General, both under his own name, in which he looked at trends in the mortality data for the decades 1881 to 1890, and 1891 to 1900. Both were in two parts, the second volumes extending work undertaken by William Ogle on occupational mortality. The first volume of the Supplement covering the years 1891 to 1900, published in 1907, also contained a distinct section on mortality rates for infants and young children, in line with developments in the ARRG for that year (Decennial Supplement to the Registrar General's Sixty-fifth Annual Report, cv-cxvi). Tatham was also responsible for the analysis of the data for the 1901 census. This contained an extra column for 'working at home' but does not appear to have been an innovation sponsored by Tatham personally (Higgs, 1988, 83).

During his time at the GRO, Tatham was also in demand for appearances as an expert witness at numerous committees of enquiry. He appeared before the Inter-Departmental Committee on Gas Poisoning, the Royal Commission on Tuberculosis, the Select Committee on Death Certificates, the Royal Commission on the Feeble Minded, the Royal Commission on Arsenical Poisoning, and the Lords Select Committee on Infant Life Protection. He was also a member of the 1904 Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, and of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Committee (National Archives; RG 29/3, 365). He was also president of the Society of Epidemiology. Tatham retired in 1909, and in 1917 he took holy orders at the age of 73, subsequently serving as a curate at Tandridge in Surrey (British Medical Journal; Szreter, 86, 89).

REFERENCES

British Medical Journal, 22 November 1924, 978–9.

Supplement to the Registrar General's sixty-fifth annual report [Part II], BPP 1905 XVIII (Cd.2619). [View this document: Decennial supplement to registrar-general's sixty-fifth annual report [Part II]]

Edward Higgs, 'The struggle for the occupational census, 1841–1911', in R. M. MacLeod, ed., Government and expertise. Specialists, administrators and professionals, 1860–1919 (Cambridge, 1988), 73–88.

Edward Higgs, Life, death and statistics: civil registration, censuses and the work of the General Register Office, 1837–1952 (Hatfield, 2004).

TNA RG 29. General Register Office: Letter Books.

Sixty-fourth annual report of the Registrar General (1901), BPP 1902 XVIII (Cd. 1230) [View this document: Sixty-fourth annual report of the registrar-general ]

Sixty-fifth Annual Report of the Registrar General (1902) BPP 1904 XIV (Cd.2003). [View this document: Sixty-fifth annual report of the registrar-general ]

Simon Szreter, Fertility, class and gender in Britain 1860–1940 (Cambridge, 1996).