# Ethel M. Elderton

Ethel Mary Elderton (1878–1954) was a British biometrician, statistician and eugenics researcher who worked with Francis Galton and Karl Pearson.

## Biography

Elderton was born on 31 December 1878 in Fulham, London. Her father, William Alexander Elderton was a private tutor and her mother, Sarah Isabella, née Lapidge was school headmistress. The couple had eight children, of which Elderton was the third and the eldest girl. Her eldest brother was William Palin Elderton, a statistician who worked as an actuary and became head of Equitable Life Assurance Society and also a friend of biostatistician Karl Pearson. Another brother, Thomas Howard Elderton was the president of the Calcutta Trust. Her father and a younger brother were Cambridge wranglers. Her exceptional mathematical abilities, stemming from family tradition, laid the foundation for her career.
Elderton was educated at Streatham High School before studying at Bedford College in London. There she was taught by Alice Lee, who was also employed by Pearson, and became involved in the eugenics movement. She left without completing her studies in 1890, on the death of her father, and became a school teacher. In 1903 she was appointed as Galton's part-time secretary. Then, recommended by Alice Lee, she became a full-time member of his Eugenics Record Office from 1905 to 1907. She was an official member (a Francis Galton Scholar) of the Galton Eugenics Laboratory and transferred to Pearson's direction from 1907 to 1911. Subsequently she became the teaching fellow in University College London in 1911 and the assistant professor at Galton Eugenics Laboratory (renamed the Department of Human Genetics and Biometry in 1966) in 1925. As a full-time member, Elderton's salary was 100 pounds per year in 1906. She gave up the offer with higher salary of the post of Secretary to a London College because she much preferred research work to executive work.
Elderton, who moved into it at the beginning of 1917 along with the rest of Pearson's team, was employed on Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section (AAES) work. Her enthusiasm and capacity for hard work remained undimmed, and in the summer of 1917 Pearson singled her out, together with Adelaide Davin (another woman employed by Pearson), for additional pay for working extended hours and for giving up their customary 12-weeks holiday. She got on very well with Pearson, being the only member of his team to remain with him after the transfer of the AAES work to the Ministry of Munitions. Writing in 1930, Pearson considered her employment at UCL to be 'a most happy choice'.
Elderton provided financial backing for Pearson's Anthropometric Laboratory, which opened in 1924.
Elderton's work was recognized by the award of the Weldon Memorial Prize by the University of Oxford in 1919. This was awarded to the person who "in the ten years next preceding the date of the award, published the most noteworthy contribution to the development of mathematical or statistical methods applied to problems in Biology." In December 1931 the University of London conferred on her the degree of D.Sc and in the same year, was promoted to a readership. She retired in 1933 and in 1939 she was living at Yew Tree Cottage, Northchapel, Sussex. She died in 1954 in Stanboroughs Hydro Nursing Home, Stanborough Park, Garston, Hertfordshire.

## Publications

Upon joining the Galton Laboratory, Elderton was guided and influenced by the eugenic objectives of Galton and Pearson. She held a firm belief that before seeking viable solutions to social problems, it was essential to provide solid statistical evidence. In 1907, Galton delivered the Herbert Spencer lecture, during which he outlined a proposal for a basic statistical textbook. Elderton and her brother William Palin Elderton, took up this suggestion and, leveraging their exceptional statistical skills, co-published Primer of Statistics which was officially published in 1909.
Journal The Economic Bulletin reviewed this book in 1910: Primer of Statistics is one of the most useful books upon the theory of statistics which have appeared in English, for it contains in a few pages and in terms intelligible to a person who is not competent to deal with higher mathematics, the principles which should govern the abstraction of statistical data. The arrangement of the book is extremely clear and logical.
Elderton delivered lectures on eugenics, which were compiled into the "Eugenics Laboratory Lecture Series" and published between 1909 and 1915. These lectures included The relative strength of nature and nurture (1909) and the relatively well-known On the Marriage of First Cousins (1911). In On the Marriage of First Cousins, her research for this publication encompassed over 2000 cases, and both the publication and the corresponding lectures were appreciated by her laboratory colleagues and Galton himself. The work, exploring the studies of the marriage of first cousins through various academic perspectives—historical, moral, and eventually eugenics. This research gained support from other women in the laboratory, including Amy Barrington, Kathleen T. Ryley, H. Gertrude Jones, Julia Bell, and Eveline Y. Thompson.
Elderton co-authored On the correlation of fertility with social value: a cooperative study, published in the series "Eugenics laboratory memoirs" in 1913 with Amy Barrington, H. Gertrude Jones, Edith Mabel M. de G. Lamotte, Harold Joseph Laski, Karl Pearson. In this publication, they sought to identify the relationship between wages—equated to social value—and family size at a certain age. Based on statistical data from various cities in the UK, the work attempted to demonstrate that individuals with greater social value tend to produce fewer offspring, a trend deemed detrimental to 'a healthier leading nation.' Furthermore, it advocated for the revision of social policies, with a particular focus on charitable welfare policies.