Price's 1771 first edition already prints a Northampton table, as Appendix Table IV

actuarial-historyrichard-pricenorthampton-tabledatesprimary-source

The first edition of Richard Price's Observations on Reversionary Payments (printed for T. Cadell, 1771) carries a Northampton mortality table in print. The title page advertises "Four New Tables, shewing the Probabilities of Life in London, Norwich, and Northampton," and on p. 256 Price describes Appendix Table IV as "the genuine Table of Observations for Northampton." The method of construction is set out in Essay IV, on forming tables of observations from registers of deaths.

This contradicts any reading on which the Northampton table first appeared in the fourth edition of 1783. What 1783 prints is a later, extended version: see claim-price-1783-fourth-edition-reforms-northampton-table-on-1735-1780-data. The existing note dating the book to 1771 (claim-price-northampton-table-standard-actuarial-reference-century) is therefore right about the table's first appearance too, though it rests on Wikipedia rather than on this primary.

Quotes are from the archive.org OCR with long-s normalised; the sha above receipts the cached text. Whether the 1771 Table IV and the 1783 table share the same numbers was not checked. See also entity-northampton-table.

Question: question-verify-price-northampton-table-completion-date.