Vital statistics : a memorial volume of selections from the reports and writings of William Farr / edited for the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain by Noel A. Humphreys.

William Farr

Date:: 1885

Credit: Vital statistics : a memorial volume of selections from the reports and writings of William Farr / edited for the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain by Noel A. Humphreys. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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$own misconduct or want of caution, if we adopt the judgment of the companies in the matter. The persons injured in the two categories, they state, were 578 and 6, the latter evidently wrong; for that year the companies paid 322,985/. as compensation for personal injury, &c.* This is a large sum; it is 2-4 per cent, on the 13,534,28]/. of fare- receipts from passengers. It does not include all the legal expenses of the party injured; and we have no means of knowing the amounts or the per-centage on the suras awarded by juries. The companies have just grounds to complain of the costs of litigation, which are probably included in the above sum, and of the uncertainty of awards, which are based on appreciations of the extent of injuries often obscure,t and of the value of men's life incomes, scarcely within the capacity of juries, or of the ordinary courts. The public have still ■reater ground for dissatisfaction. The famihes of poor men can derive fittle advantage from the law; and the result to the opulent is uncertain. Some railways deal with sufferers in a liberal spirit; others are said to oppose every claim by hostile litigation: here is another ground of inequality under the laws. In endeavouring to arrive at remedies, four thmgs have to be especially kept in view; (1) the principle that to ensure the utmost care on the part of the railway authorities loss of life or limb is to be compensated, so far as this can be equitably done, by payments in money bearmg some reference to the economic value of the person injured; that (2) the railway should know beforehand the amount it may be called upon to pay; that (3) both the railway company and the person mjured should be relieved from any unnecessary expense in obtaining an equitable settlement; and that (4) the tribunal for determining the extent of injury, the value of the life, and the division of blame, should be skiltul and competent. . , <• i,„ I have shown elsewhere that the economic value of men can be estimated by deducting the present value of their necessary subsistence from the present value of their future earnings. Thus, taking his wages as the basis, the value of a Norfolk agricultural labourer, at the age of 25, was found to be 246/.J; while the value of the income of a professional man earning 300Z. a year being 5,000/., the deduction of his necessary professional subsistence may reduce the money value ot his life to something like 3,000/. By neglecting this element, the values of a life are sometimes exaggerated. The compensation for iniury can never exceed the value of the life; and the injuries to body and limb may be classified by a tariff, so'as to bear dehnite proportions to the vaSe^of the whole life. The tariff would be subject to modifi- cation in singular cases which can be easily conceived; thus the loss ot a finger may deprive a great violinist of his fortune. Objections may be raised to this principle of compensation. The lives of the Queen's subjects are all equal in the eyes of the law. And no one admits that a railway company can be justified in neglectang any precaution in the case of a single passenger, be he rich or poor The same vieilance and care are required and given in all cases. Why then Scrthe company pay more for the life of an officer than for he life orrLldLr'Z- the life of a judge than for the life of a solicitor, for * Parliamentary Return, No. 484, 18G8; what the &c. means in the return is Erichsen, Professor of Surgery m Umvcrs.ty College I Journal of Statistical Society, March 18o3, pp. J» 44. xn«. is 488Z.; of the necessary subsistence 242i. {See Extracts on pp. 531 7.)$