1. The ideas submitted in the present paper have their origin in an investigation carried out by the author with a view to determining whether it was possible to estimate the mortality likely to be experienced by married men in England and Wales in the course of the next few years. The English law relating to registration of deaths does not require that the marital condition of a deceased man shall be recorded when death is registered, in this respect differing from the law in Scotland and in various other countries. Thus no statistics could be obtained of married men’s deaths in England and Wales, and the question had to be approached by indirect methods.