On an Investigation to show the Rates of Mortality and Marriage among Daughters of Peers and of Heirs-Apparent; with values of certain Benefits depending on Marriage and Death.

Every one who has had to deal with the valuation of life interests, reversions, and entails, or with investigations involving Marriage Rates, must have been impressed with the carefully compiled and very complete tables which have been furnished by Dr. Sprague, dealing with the combined probabilities of marriage and mortality. These relate entirely to the marriage and mortality probabilities of bachelors and widowers of the Peerage ; and, so far as I am aware, no similar tables have been published relating to females. I find that in the discussion on Dr. Sprague's paper of 1879 ( J.I.A. , xxi, 448), Mr. C. J. Bunyon stated that about fifteen or sixteen years previously he had formed a table precisely similar to Dr. Sprague's, showing the probabilities of death and marriage among 10,000 unmarried people, up to the age of 60; only his table was not a table of bachelors, but of spinsters.