The Annual Monitor for 1851 / or, Obituary of the members of the Society of Friends in Great / Britain and Ireland, for the year 1850

by Anonymous

Transcribed from the 1850 C. Gilpin, R. Y. Clarke, and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

New Series, No 9.

THE ANNUAL MONITOR FOR 1851.

or
OBITUARY
of the
MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
In Great Britain and Ireland,
for the year 1850.

LONDON:
SOLD BY C. GILPIN, R. Y. CLARKE, AND CO., DARTON AND CO.,
AND E. MARSH: GEORGE HOPE, YORK.

1850.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

We have again to present to our friends the Report of the Annual Mortality in the Society of Friends, in Great Britain and Ireland. It has frequently been observed, how nearly the number of deaths in each year has approximated, but we have this year to notice a considerable diminution in the annual return. We are not disposed, however, to attribute the diminished numbers, chiefly to any special cause connected with health, but consider it rather as one of those fluctuations which are ever found to arise in a series of years, in the mortality of a small community. The number of the dying, however, may be expected to bear, as respects the average, a pretty uniform relation to the number of the living. And if the fact be, as all our late inquiries lead us to believe it is, that we are, though slowly, a diminishing body, we must expect that our average number of deaths will also be found gradually to diminish.

We have often anxiously pondered over the question,—Why the Society of Friends should be a diminishing body? And we propose to give in this place a few of the thoughts which have been suggested to us in the course of our consideration.