On an unfair supression of due acknowledgement to the writings of Mr. Benjamin Gompertz

Abstract

In 1839, in the Penny Cyclopædia (article “Mortality”), I wrote as follows, referring to Mr. Gompertz's well-known hypothesis on the law of mortality:—“We enter into some detail of it the more readily, that it is necessary as an act of justice to Mr. Gompertz, whose ideas have been adopted by a recent writer on the subject, without anything approaching to a sufficient acknowledgment.”