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1881. NEW ZEALAND.

FRIENDLY SOCIETIES REPORT ON THE SICKNESS, MORTALITY, AND OTHER CONTINGENCIES EXPERIENCED DURING THE QUINQUENNIUM ENDED 31st DECEMBER, 1877

Presented to both Souses of the General Assembly, pursuant to " The Friendly Societies Act, 1877," Section 13, Subsection 1 (c)

The Registrar of Friendly Societies having instructed the Actuary to prepare abstracts of the returns of sickness and mortality experienced, forwarded by the various Friendly Societies for the quinquennium ended the 31st December, 1877, has now the honor to submit the report of the Actuary thereon. The report may at first be deemed to be late, considering the period under review, but the difficulties incident to the work have prevented its being submitted earlier. Not only were the returns not due to the office until the middle of 1878, but many of them were long in arrears. Then they had to be carefully and critically examined ; numerous inquiries had to be instituted respecting evident errors, discrepancies, and omissions, involving often long delay The names and particulars for the five years required to be tabulated for all the members of the various societies—had to be transcribed on to cards, one card for each member —a work of very considerable magnitude; and, subsequently, the results for each year had to be separately compiled, and then tabulated. This work, moreover, could only be dealt with at intervals, on account of the pressure of other work of more immediate and pressing urgency Wμ. R. E. Beown, Registrar of Friendly Societies.

The Actitaey for Feiendly Societies to the Registeak of Feiendly Societies. Sib,— Registrar-General's Office, "Wellington, 29th July, 1881. I have the honor to submit to you my report on the sickness, mortality, and other contingencies experienced by registered friendly societies in this colony, during the quinquennium ended the 31st December, 1877 The number of returns I have been able to -utilize for the purposes of this report is 58. The remaining returns furnished to you I found on examination to contain either palpable inaccuracies, or else such suspicious features that I consider the experience of sickness, mortality, &c, would lose more in trustworthiness by including the facts contained in them than it would gain by the increase in the numerical basis that would be thus secured. Besides the check afforded by an examination of the consistency or otherwise of the returns themselves, I was able in. most cases to institute a comparison with the ordinary annual returns for the years 1876 and 1877 In a few cases, also, annual returns, though of a very imperfect nature, existed for the years 1874 and 1875, and thus afforded an additional check. In spite of this, it must be evident that the bulk of the data were not susceptible of independent verification, and that, therefore, the present compilation must be greatly inferior in reliability to future compilations relating to periods subsequent to the passing of " The Friendly Societies Act 1877 " The 58 returns I have utilized include facts relating to 33 " Lodges " of the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Odd Fellows, 16 " Ceurts," and 1 " Shepherd Sanctuary " of the Ancient Order of Foresters, 2 "Tents" of the Independent Order of Eechabites, 1 "Division" of the Sons and Daughters of Temperance, 3 "Branches " of the Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society, and 2 isolated local societies. Each of these bodies, with one exception, to be noted immediately, furnished a return of all persons who were members at any time during the quinquennium (giving, generally,* the date of birth of each person), of all the admissions, withdrawals, and deaths (giving the date of each) which occurred during the quinquennium, and, finally, of the number of days' sickness experienced by each member who received sick-pay during any one or more of the five years. In the case of one body the return did not relate to the whole quinquennium, but only to the last three years of it. There was a corresponding defect also in the case of a very few individual members, giving rise to minute discrepancies in Schedule I. hereto.

* In the case of 55 members, out of a total of 7,918, or 069 per cent., the age was not indicated.