Sir Robert Giffen, K.C.B., F.R.S.

Abstract

THE sudden death of Sir Robert Giffen on the morning of April 12, while on a tour in Scotland accompanied by Lady Giffen. is a great loss to economic and statistical science. He joined the Statistical Society in 1867, at the age of thirty, having then already acquired reputation as a writer on financial subjects in the Globe, the Fortnightly Review, the Economist, and the Spectator. He was elected a member of the council and one of the secretaries of the society in 1876, in which year he joined the Civil Service, and was appointed chief of the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade, and one of the delegates of the Government of England to the International Statistical Congress at Buda-Pest. He submitted to that congress “Considérations sous Forme de Tableaux pour la Préparation d'une Statistique internationale des Chemins de Fer,” and was appointed a member of the permanent committee. To the Social Science Congress at Liverpool, in the same year, he contributed a paper on the causes and effects of the depreciation of silver, how far is it an evil, and what are the means of remedying the evil? In his official capacity, he devoted himself with zeal to rectifying and harmonising governmental statistics, and to diminishing the overlapping and cost of parliamentary returns. For example, he pointed out that the statistics of emigration were vitiated by the omission of any deduction in respect of the return of persons temporarily leaving the country; and he induced the Government to appoint a committee to consider the whole question of official statistics.