It continues to be active as a forum for the discussion of social and economic issues and also in promoting research.
[4] The founders of the society included three men who had key roles in the Manchester and Salford District Provident Society, also founded in 1833: the secretaries, James Phillips Kay (later Sir James Phillips Kay-Shuttleworth), a doctor, and William Langton, a banker; together with the treasurer, Benjamin Heywood, also a banker.
[10] While the society planned to collect facts concerning the inhabitants of the district of Manchester, what was also important was the use to which the findings could be put: it was "a Society for the discussion of subjects of political and social economy, and for the promotion of statistical enquiries, to the total exclusion of party politics".
[11] The society's first annual report indicated that the society "owes its origin to a strong desire felt by its projectors to assist in promoting the progress of social improvement in the manufacturing population by which they are surrounded", the background being the conditions of working people and their families, which reflected the effects of the industrial revolution in Manchester.
[14] This led to the society achieving prominence with its innovative work of several social surveys, involving considerable effort to collect detailed data, as in the report on 4,102 families in parts of Manchester, based on house-to-house research.
[15] The work was extended to cover surrounding towns, with agents paid to visit houses and collect data, the results summarised in reports.
The reports in its first eight years included surveys of the state of education in Manchester, Bury, Salford, Liverpool, Rutland and Hull; the findings were "totally condemnatory of the situation then existing".
[17] The society's early reports on education had, according to Butterfield, helped make Manchester the most education-conscious city in England.
[19] By 1840 the society had 60 members; they included a dozen people who were significant in running the Anti-Corn Law League.
[23] Credited with helping the society avoid dissolution was Edward Herford, a coroner, who enlisted 16 new recruits in 1846.
[24] The driving force of the society in the 1840s was John Roberton, a doctor at the Lying in Hospital in Manchester; he shared an interest in collation and interpretation of medical statistics with fellow members such as James Phillips Kay.
[26] In total he read 27 papers to the society, on matters as diverse as the effect of climate on man, municipal government, national schools of Ireland, and evils affecting railway labourers.
In their new societies the leaders of local medicine and surgery sought to show that they were scientific professionals not just tradesmen; intellectual and aware investigators, even though they were in provincial cities rather than London or Edinburgh.
[30] There was also a trend toward historical essays and discussions of more general questions of political economy, such as decimal coinage.
[31] Economics was developing as a profession, and began to be represented in the membership of the society and the papers presented.
One of the new members in 1865-66 was Stanley Jevons, who had accepted a teaching post in Manchester; in 1867 he became Professor in Political Economy at Cambridge.
[32] Jevons presented a paper on the progress of the mathematical theory of political economy in 1874,[33] though many of the society's meetings were non-technical, across a varied range of topics.
[34] The society continued to take opportunities to be involved in the contribution that statistics could play in public policy: in 1900 its council addressed the House of Lords in favour of a quinquennial census, and suggested changes in the classification of workers in the cotton and coal industries, which were adopted by the Registrar-General.
[36] However, when the centenary was about to be celebrated in 1933, the society faced a deficit, and a special appeal was made to members.
Past presidents include two Nobel Laureates in economics, John Hicks and Arthur Lewis.
Although the society's activities were primarily of a non-technical nature, there were opportunities for groups of members interested in more technical subjects.
[39] The society's ordinary meetings continued with a range of subjects: for example, its 1956-57 session saw discussions on the U.K. life assurance industry, economic aspects of fibre production, Soviet industrial expansion, British trade unions and the new gold standard.
[42] In 1983 the society celebrated its sesquicentenary with a special two-day conference, held at the University of Manchester.
[45] The A.H. Allman Prize was endowed in 1951 and is awarded annually to a statistics student at the University of Manchester.
The society's archives, dating back to its foundation, are kept at Manchester Central Library and the contents can be searched online.
"The Manchester Statistical Society: A case study of a discontinuity in the history of empirical social research (Part I)".
The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes employed in the cotton manufacture in Manchester (2nd ed.).