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Charitab le instituti ons, meteorological research, sericulture,
the Exhibition Pamphlet, diet and nutrition;
chairman of the Executive
Committee of the Benevolent Society, memb er of the Board of Management of
the Servants ' Home , 17 chief Catho lic layman , supporter of every worthWhile
cause in the community, private practitioner, Municipal Counci l medical
attendant on the Hobart Police Station from May 8, 1862, 18 medi cal
scientist, statistician, sanitarian - for Hall the early sixties were years
rich in variety and experience, effort and achievement .
With recognition
and success, both at home and overseas, came also the satisfaction of
kno\ing that , owing to his own determination, Tasmania was amp ly documented
in medical and scientific circ les, and its importance as
colony recognized. 19
an Australian
Indeed, his services as an intermediary between the
Government authorities in Tasmania and overseas scientific bodies were
recognized and occasionally solicited, as did the Assistant-Secretary
(F .W. Haddon) of the Statistical Society of London in a letter to Hall,
dated February 21, 1862.
I avail mys elf of this opportunity to solicit your good offices
in obtaining for the society a regular transmission of the
statistical pub lications published in Tasmania. From the other
Australian colonies we obtain a tolerably regular supply from
the Government offices , but with the exception of a stray volume
or two, we have nothing from Tasmania. 2 0
Yet , Hall personally had little faith in the reliability of
officials to promote Tasmania and preferred to do what he could himself.
On July 7, 1862, his paper 11Vital Statistics of Tasmania in 186111 was one
of three read before a distinguished audience at the Epidemi ological
Society of London, its Foundation President, Dr B.G. Babington in the
Chair .
. The paper was subsequently pub lished in The Trans actions of the
E p idemiological Society Part III Volume I and reviewed by the Lancet
(July, 1862) and the British Medical Journal (August, 1862) .
Amongst
its details, Hall was happy to relate that the Tasmanian death rate for
1861 was only a trifle more than 16.25 per 1000, or one death in ab out
60 .85 individuals , less than the normal standard of mortality of 17 per
1000 found in the sixty-three healthiest registration districts of England
and Wales . Of the 1,479 deaths, only 323 were under one year of age ,
notwithstanding the great preponderance of infants to the mass of the
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