Tom Crook is Lecturer in Modern British History at Oxford Brookes University. He has published in Social History, Urban History and Journal of Victorian Culture. He is currently completing a book-length study entitled Time and the Social Body: Public Health and English Modernity, 1830-1914. Glen O’Hara is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Oxford Brookes University. He is the author of Britain and the Sea since 1600 (2010), From Dreams to Disillusionment; Economic and Social Planning in 1960s Britain (2007), and the co-editor of The Modernisation of Britain? Harold Wilson and the Labour Governments of 1964-1970 (2006).

"Unlike many books that collect together papers on a particular subject, this volume has coherence and has the advantage of being a good read." -Iain Smith, The Historical Association“This is a welcome collection of essays that yields important insights into the history of the modern British state, the public, and the evolving use of statistical knowledge.”-J.F. Mayer, University of Edinburgh

• 1. The ‘Torrent of Numbers’: Statistics and the Public Sphere in Britain, C. 1800-2000. Tom Crook and Glen O’Hara 2. Statistics and the Career of Public Reason: Engagement and Detachment in a Quantified World. Theodore M. Porter Part I: Governing Numbers 3. ‘In These You May Trust’: Numerical Information, Accounting Practices and the Poor Law, c. 1790 to 1840. Steven King 4. The State and Statistics in Victorian and Edwardian Britain: Promotion of the Public Sphere or Boundary Maintenance? Edward Higgs 5. Numbers, Experts and Ideas: The French Economic Model in Britain, c. 1951-1973. Glen O’Hara Part II: Picturing the Public 6. Numbers and Narratives: Epistemologies of Aggregation in British Statistics and Social Realism, c. 1790-1880. Maeve E. Adams 7. Printed Statistics and the Public Sphere: Numeracy, Electoral Politics and the Visual Culture of Numbers, 1880-1914. James Thompson 8. The Statisticalization of the Consumer in British Market Research, c. 1920-1960: Profiling a Good Society. Stefan Schwarzkopf Part III: Numbers and Public Trust 9. Suspect Figures: Statistics and Public Trust in Victorian England. Tom Crook 10. Numbers, Character and Trust in Early Victorian Britain: The Independent West Middlesex Fire and Life Assurance Company Fraud. James Taylor Part IV: The Politics of Statistics 11. ‘Population Combined With Wealth and Taxation’: Statistics, Representation and the Making of the 1832 Reform Act. S.J. Thompson 12. A ‘Naked Strength and Beauty’: Statistics in the British Tariff Debate, 1880-1914. Edmund Rogers 13. Polling Public Opinion before Opinion Polls: The Conservative Party and Election Prediction between the Wars. Laura Beers 14. Towards New Histories of an Enumerated People. Tom Crook and Glen O’Hara