Related to Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics
Description:

'The first idea in Great Britain of an institute of applied statistics appears to have occurred to Florence Nightingale. She desired to found a professorship of applied statistics. The matter did not come to fruition because the funds she could afford for the purpose were inadequate in the opinion of her advisers, Jowitt and Galton. She asserted that many problems of medical hygiene, social welfare, and even political action, failed to attain satisfactory solutions because there was no adequate training in statistical science, and went so far as to affirm that men could only ascertain the mind and purpose of the Deity by studying his laws as exhibited statistically.

One side and one side only of Florence Nightingale’s work has been commemorated in the funds raised for the training of nurses. The future will probably show that the other dominant idea of her mind, the training of statisticians, was from the scientific standpoint of equal, if not greater, importance. No finer memorial could be raised to her memory than the endowment of an institute to fulfil this function. The suggestion that the combined department of the Biometric and Galton Laboratories should be called the Department of Applied Statistics was an echo of Florence Nightingale’s plea for a professorship of Applied Statistics. There is no doubt that her ideas and her suggestion worked on the mind of Francis Galton himself. Galton indeed widened Florence Nightingale’s conception of “applied statistics.” He realised three fundamental principles: (i) that statistics are an essentially mathematical science, and that no safe progress is possible except on a mathematical basis; (ii) that once such a science should be established, it must and would invade, as a new technique, almost every branch of existing science; (iii) that, even in the narrower field of adequate statistical theory as applied to social problems (sketched out with actual statement of problems demanding a solution, by Florence Nightingale), there was a new factor which had to be recognised the advance of our knowledge, namely the hereditary factor. He asserted that national progress was only possible provided you studied not only the effects of the environment, but the laws of genetics. He defined his new science as “the study of those agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial faculties of future generations physically and mentally.” The words might almost be those of Florence Nightingale herself in her sketch of what she thought Applied Statistics should deal with. But Galton had added two features – (a) the statement that mathematical theory must be the basis of statistics, and (b) the conception that the observational study of heredity in man and the experimental study of heredity in animals must accompany the study of environment – that nature was as important in social problems as nurture. Galton reached the idea of an institute so endowed that it could carry out efficiently three aims: (i) the adequate training in statistical method, (ii) the observational and experimental research in genetics, (iii) the application of the knowledge thus gained to the problems of social hygiene. In short, Galton brought to Florence Nightingale’s vision the knowledge gained by his own researches in the theory of statistics, in heredity and anthropology.

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At the present time, the demand for trained statisticians in government departments, in municipal and mercantile offices, especially for trained medical statisticians, is much beyond the supply. A training-school for such men and women, in direct contact with research work on social and medical problems, is essential. But, if this training is to be effective, it must be built on both mathematical and medical experience...

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While the Institute of Applied Statistics was first in the field, it has been rapidly followed by foundations covering to a great extent the same ground not only in America, but in some of the chief states of Europe. The Julius Klaus foundation in Zurich under the able direction of Professor Otto Schlaginhaufen with its excellent Journal; the Swedish State Institute in Lund under Professor H. Lundborg, which has just issued its magnificent preliminary study of Swedish Anthropometry, a study which must precede any effective treatment of the problem of national welfare; the well-known Institute for Biometry and Vital Statistics under Professor Raymond Pearl in Baltimore; the recently opened Italian Institute for Statistics at Rome under Professor Corrado Gini; and the last, but probably destined to become the most important, Institute for Social Hygiene and Eugenics under Professor Eugen Fischer in Berlin, only opened in September. This latter institute, part of the Kaiser Wilhelm foundation for research in the natural sciences, consists of three great research sections each under a separate sub-director. The first is to deal with anthropology – as Galton recognised, a preliminary to the study of the influence of environment and heredity in man -, the second great section is to deal with heredity in man, and the third section is to apply the research of the two former sections to the subject of Eugenics proper. Thus scheme is not a novel one, it is precisely that which the Galton Laboratory has for many years endeavoured to carry out, but largely failed to do owing to the lack of adequate funds.

The following notes give a more detailed account of what the Institute possesses and what it needs in each of the main branches of its work.

I. Anthropometry. We have a small anthropometric laboratory, which could be expanded with great advantage, bit there are no funds available for its upkeep or for the purchase of new instruments or material. For the past two years we have retained an anthropologist on the staff at the salary of £350, but only by not replacing a badly needed member of the mathematical section, which has meant a corresponding loss on that side. There ought to be a Reader in Anthropometry with general control of Anthropometric work: his salary ought to be such that he could look forward to his life in the Institute, and there ought to be funds for providing the necessary instruments, which we especially need for the ophthalmic work we have in hand.

Sum required £1,000.

II. Experimental work on Heredity. The experimental work here should be such as relates to heredity in man. For example, such a study as is now being conducted on the heredity of cataract in mice. The present annual expenditure depends upon a grant of £200, which fails to cover food for the animals and service. There is no fund to pay a trained biologist who is needed for microscopic work, and the accommodation for animal breeding is absurd, it is an old stable, unsuited to its purpose and improperly fitted from the sanitary aspect. A properly designed and well-fitted Animal House is an urgent necessity. The salaries of a trained superintendent with proper assistants and funds for upkeep, would demand something of the order of £1,000.

Need £1,000.

III. Museum. There is a museum for exhibits bearing on Anthropology, Heredity and Applied Statistics. There are no funds for upkeep, for the purchase of material or for the payment of a trained attendant.

Need £400.

IV. Library. The total fund for this is only £80 per annum. We have had to give up several Journal series since the war and others remain unbound. The Library should be a complete library of Statistics and Heredity, which are not at all well represented in the College or University Libraries. We have also no Librarian. An additional expenditure of at least £150 on books and £250 on the salary of a Librarian is needed.

Need £400.

Small as the Library is it has already outgrown its space and additional accommodation is badly needed. There is only space for two persons to read in the present room.

V. Staff. The most urgent need at the present time is a Salary Fund adequate to maintain not only a reasonable number of workers, but to retain them. At present, no sooner is a scientist trained for our work, than he is compelled to leave us on account of the smallness of the salaries paid. At present, putting aside the Director (paid from the Galton Endowment) and the Medical Officer (paid by the London County Council), the average salary of the seven members of the Staff is £285, and we are understaffed for the large possibilities there are for Social, Medical and Eugenic Statistical Investigation. The minimum need for increasing salaries and for additional staff may be placed at £1,500.

Need £1,500.

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[requests for Fellowships, Publication Fund, Investigation Fund [funding of fieldwork e.g. on eyesight of children]

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The above scheme of expenditure represents an additional expenditure of some £6,900 under the following heads:-

I. Anthropometry £1,000

II. Breeding Experiments £1,000

III. Museum £400

IV. Library £400

V. Placing Staff on a Sound Footing £1,500

VI. Two Fellowships for Travel £600

VII. Publication Fund £1,000

VIII. Investigation Fund £1,000

In addition there ought to be an extension of the buildings. In the first place a proper animal house ought to be built, apart from the main building. In the second, increasing accommodation is needed and could be obtained by completing the building as originally designed of the front (a) for the Library, (b) for laboratory work for the large elementary classes, which have numbered up to 35. We have three small rooms for practical work, which each seat 6 postgraduate students, but there is no room large enough to seat 25 to 35 students for practical work apart from the class-rooms which are very unsuited to demonstration work. This would also provide rooms for increased staff.

Laboratories of Applied Statistics, that is statistics applied to the investigation of racial welfare, have come to stay. Our institute of Applied Statistics was the first in the field, and the importance of such institutes when they are firmly established has been well expressed by Signor Mussolini in the opening of the Statistical Institute in Rome: “All nations are at this work. I do not exaggerate when I say that statistics at this moment are of the order of the day throughout the world. They occupy themselves with the enormous complexity of modern society, and with that thirst for inquiry and control which torments mankind. The science of statistics has extended its control over all the phenomena of life, over the demographic, the economic and the cultural. With regard to the demographic data, I never weary myself by repeating that the study of their changes permits us to forecast the fate of nations.”

If we ask why statistics has become the order of the day throughout the world in this century, the answer must be that it is owing to the rapid development in the recent past of a new and sounder statistical theory. To the development of that theory the Institute of Applied Statistics at University College has contributed in a manner entirely out of proportion to its resources. The chief methods of anthropometry, craniometry, psychology and medicine owe their origin either to Francis Galton or to the laboratories started on his initiative. It is sad that the pioneer institute in this direction should remain in a crippled state of efficiency for want of funds, which it seems impossible under existing circumstances to raise in this country itself.

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Total required £200,000.’