Statistician Dies
Thomas Wrigley Grimshaw, physician, public-health reformer and former registrar-general for Ireland, died at his residence in Carrickmines, County Dublin, on 23 January. Born near Belfast in 1839, he had spent much of his professional life examining the relationship between disease, poverty, housing and mortality. His death removed one of the country’s most influential medical statisticians at a time when Irish towns still faced recurring epidemics, tuberculosis, overcrowding and poor sanitation. Grimshaw believed that accurate records of births, deaths and illnesses could reveal conditions that anecdote, prejudice and political argument often concealed.
