Such was a portion of Mr. Hodgson’s contribution in 1747 to vital statistics. This work was followed in 1751 by the “Observations on the past Growth and present State of the City of London” of Corbyn Morris, containing tables of burials and christenings from 1601 to 1750. The tables were important in themselves, and the book is noticeable as containing a proposal to remodel the Bills of Mortality. The topic was particularly interesting to mathematical men. In 1753, Mr. James Dodson pursued the subject, and solved in his “Repository” an immense variety of questions. Hitherto a table deduced by Simpson from the London Bills of Mortality, was the only one taken from real observation. But it need not be said that London was a very limited theatre on which to found the payment of premiums. The number of persons who died there in a given time, doubled that of other and more healthy cities. It was impossible to separate the casual visitors from the natives, in the record of deaths. It was equally difficult to divide those who had been born there, from those who were naturalised by virtue of a long and continued residence. The city, which has ever been the land of promise to the country, brought adventurers from the rural districts in a continued stream. The difficulties which prevented correct information from spreading may be judged by the statement that, from 1759 to 1768 a third more deaths than births were registered, the average annual burials being 22,956 to 15,910 of births. In the previous 10 years, the excess had been 10,500, or near half the burials. The baptismal registries were also very deficient in that large class denominated sectarians; Jews, Quakers, Roman Catholics, and all who refused to recognise the rites of the English Church being excluded. It required, therefore, care and calculation of no ordinary character to make any approximation to the truth; and Mr. Dodson believed he would be nearer it, by adopting the opinions of De Moivre as the ground work of his tables, rather than by entering on a sea of uncertain and hypothetical calculations. In 1754, a further “valuation of annuities on lives,” deduced also from the London Bills of Mortality was published. By this it appeared that the work of Mr. Hodgson had not produced much effect in sending the Breslau Tables out of general use; for, says the author, “I think it very unreasonable that a poor citizen of London should be made to pay for an annuity according to the probability of the duration of life at Breslau, where, as appears from the bills of mortality, one-half of the people that are born live till they are about 41 years of age, whereas at London one-half die before they arrive at the age of 13.” The first known fraud in assurance is one of the most singular in its annals. The reader must judge for himself of the circumstances attending it; but there is no doubt that others far more fearful in their results have since been practised.