On March 15, 1834, the Statistical Society (now Royal Statistical) was founded. It was one of the first fruits of the activity of the British Association, which established a Statistical Committee at the Cambridge meeting in 1833, with Babbage as president. Their report recommended the formation of a society for the careful collection, arrangement, discussion, and publication of facts bearing on or illustrating the complex relations of modern society in its social, economical, and political aspects, especially facts which can be stated numerically and arranged in tables. The first president was the Marquis of Lansdowne, and among his successors have been many statesmen, such as Lord John Russell, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Goschen; authorities on finance, as Lord Overstone, Mr. Newmarch, and Lord Avebury; and eminent writers on statistics, as Dr. Farr, Sir Robert Giffen, and the Right Hon. Charles Booth. As becomes the orderly mind of a statistician, the society has been very regular in its publications, having for seventy years issued a yearly volume in quarterly parts, which form a veritable mine of statistical information.
The society presents a Guy medal (in memory of Dr. W. A. Guy) to the authors of valuable papers or to others who have promoted its work, and a Howard medal (in memory of the great philanthropist) to the author of the best essay on a prescribed subject, generally having relation to the public health. It has accumulated a fine library of about 40,000 volumes of a special character, containing the statistical publications of all civilised countries. It has conducted some special enquiries—as into medical charities, the production and consumption of meat and milk, and the farm school system of the Continent—upon which it has published reports.
Among recent developments of statistical method in which the society has taken part may be mentioned the use of index-numbers for affording a standard of comparison between statistics of different years, and a means of correction of errors that would otherwise arise; and the increasing use of the higher mathematical analysis in determining the probabilities of error and defining the curves of frequency in statistical observations. Professor Edgeworth, Messrs. Bowley, Yule, Hooker, and others, have made contributions to the Journal of the society on these matters.
In 1844 an Ethnological Society was established, under the presidency of Sir Charles Malcolm. Dr. Richard King, the founder, became its secretary. In 1846 Dr. J. C. Prichard became president, and he and Dr. King fulfilled respectively the same functions in an ethnological sub-section of the section of zoology of the British Association, which then met for the first time. In Prichard's first anniversary address to the society, he defines ethnology as "the history of human races or of the various tribes of men who constitute the population of the world. It comprehends all that can be learned as to their origin and relations to each other." Prichard died in 1848, and Sir C. Malcolm resumed the presidency, which he held until his death on November 12, 1851. In that year ethnology was transferred from the zoological to the geographical section of the British Association. Sir B. C. Brodie became the next president of the society. He retired in 1854, and was succeeded by Sir James Clark. The fourth and last volume of the first series of the society's Journal was published in 1856, and a series of Transactions begun in 1861. At that time Mr. John Crawfurd was president of the society, and he retained the office until his death in 1868, when he was succeeded by Professor Huxley.
In 1862 Dr. James Hunt, the Honorary Foreign Secretary of the Ethnological Society, withdrew from it, and founded the Anthropological Society of London, which held its first meeting on February 24, 1863, under his presidency. In his inaugural address, he defined anthropology as the science of the whole nature of man, and ethnology as the history or science of nations or races. The new society was active and aggressive. It published translations of works of such writers as Broca, Pouchet, Vogt, and Waitz, and of the famous treatise of Blumenbach. Some of the papers read before it attracted much attention, and were thought to have a political bias. Many men whose names were well known in the scientific world adhered to the Ethnological Society, and that society, under Mr. Crawfurd, entered upon a more active career. The rivalry between the two societies was prosecuted with great vigour until January, 1871, when Professor Huxley effected an amalgamation between them.
The title of the combined societies was agreed upon as the "Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland," to which, in 1907, has been added by the King's command the prefix "Royal." In 1871 the department of ethnology in the section of biology in the British Association became the department of anthropology, and in 1884 anthropology became a section of itself. This was the final recognition by the Parliament of Science that Hunt had fought for twenty years before. In the interval, the claim of anthropology to this recognition had been established by many great works, such as Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, Darwin's Descent of Man, Tylor's Early History of Mankind, and Lubbock's Prehistoric Times. Besides its annual Journal, the Anthropological Institute publishes a monthly periodical entitled Man, and it has issued several separate monographs. In 1878 the branch of anthropology, aptly termed "Folk-lore" by the late Mr. W. J. Thoms, became so popular as to call for the establishment of a separate society, which publishes a quarterly journal entitled Folk-lore, and has annually issued one or more volumes of collections of folk-lore.
In 1844 a new departure was taken by the establishment of the British Archæological Association, a body which was intended to take the same place with regard to archæology that the British Association occupied with regard to science, holding meetings in various parts of the country where there existed objects of specially archæological interest. It held its first meeting at Canterbury, under the presidency of Lord Albert Conyngham (afterwards Lord Londesborough), and arranged its work in four sections—primæval, mediæval, architectural, and historical. Before a second meeting could be held, violent dissensions arose, and the association split into two. In the result honours were divided between the two bodies, those who retained the leadership of Lord Albert retaining also the title of British Archæological Association; while those who had for their president the Marquis of Northampton retained the control of the Archæological Journal, and adopted the title of "Archæological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland," to which has since been prefixed the word "Royal." Both bodies still exist, though the causes of controversy have long died out.
Shortly afterwards, County Archæological Societies in London and greater London began to be formed. In 1846 the Sussex Society, in 1853 the Essex Society, in 1854 the Surrey Society, in 1855 the London and Middlesex Society, and in 1857 the Kent Society were established. Each of these societies has published transactions and other works of solid value. In each the annual or more frequent excursion to places of archæological interest within the county is an essential feature, tending to the dissemination of knowledge and to the preservation of antiquities, and affording the advantages of social intercourse. Societies have also been established for the like purposes within more restricted areas, as in Hampstead, Battersea, Balham, Lewisham, Whitechapel, and elsewhere.
Of merely publishing societies, the Percy, the Camden, the Shakespeare, and the Arundel have run their course; but many others, as the Roxburgh, the Harleian, the New Palæographic, and the Palæontological still exist to delight their subscribers with the reproduction of rare works.
In this summary account of the principal Learned Societies of London it has not been possible to include many societies of great importance, such as the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, the numerous societies connected with other professional pursuits, the Linnæan, Zoological, Botanical, and other societies devoted to natural history; the Royal Astronomical Society, which has important public functions; the Royal Academy, and other institutions devoted to art. The roll of Learned Societies is being constantly increased. Among recent additions may be mentioned the British Academy for Historical Studies, and the Sociological Society.