The term “family annuities” appears to have been coined by George King, who used it in a paper read before the Institute on 19th December, 1892 (J.I.A. Vol. xxx, p. 291), to describe that form of orphans' benefit in which a small annuity is paid to each child of a deceased father until the child attains a specified age, such as 14 years. King gave a formula for the evaluation of the benefit and discussed a suitable basis, but though he worked out commutation columns he did not give any results in the form of specimen premiums. He was mainly concerned with the problem as an element in the schemes of State insurance which were then under discussion; indeed, as he revealed in a letter to the Insurance Record in 1920 (see J.I.A. Vol. LII, p. 35), he had been asked to make estimates in this connexion in 1890 by Mr Joseph Chamberlain.

The objects of this paper are (1) to set out for members of the profession some account of the further investigations that have been made into the statistics that formed the basis of the A 1924-29 Table, (2) to correct certain errors that have been discovered, (3) to explain the possible weaknesses in the statistics, (4) to discuss the variations in mortality shown by individual offices, and (5) to give some idea of the range in mortality above and below the combined result of all the offices. There is necessarily some overlapping in the treatment of these objects and it is difficult to draw hard and fast lines between them, but we hope that by bearing these general objects in mind the reader will not be disturbed by what is, we fear, a somewhat discursive paper.