"...damned lies, and statistics" earlier attestation claim

[Baker, John]

        The quote apparently is also attributed to Bagehot in Hanor A.
Webb, In Defense of the Subjective, Peabody Journal of Education, Vol.
28, No. 6 (May, 1951), pp. 353-359.  Can someone check this on JSTOR?
Maybe there's a cite.

John Baker


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From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
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Subject: "...damned lies, and statistics" earlier attestation claim

Earlier than the claimed attribution to Benjamin Disraeli (Beaconsfield)
in a Times letter to the editor 27 July 1895:

Now, however, that there is a lull in this process of military
conversion, the latest statistics would seem to show that the Indians
are no longer decreasing in numbers. But this is in reality only another
instance of Bagehot's "Lies, d----d, lies, and statistics." The Indians,
as Indians, are fast disappearing, in spite of the fact that these
blanketed, copper-coloured numerals of the Indians about hold their own.

Page 150 in Mr. Picket-Pin and His Friends, by Price Collier (1860-1913)
(New
York: Dutton, 1894 {also perhaps in the London 1894 ed.). Collier was an
American who spent time in England. Collier repeated "the admirable
phrase of Walter Bagehot..." in England and the English from an American
Point of View
(1909) 37.

Of course this does not prove that Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) was the
originator, nor that Disraeli was (1804-1885) was not. When I asked, an
editor of the Disraeli papers had not encountered it as by Disraeli.
Robert Giffen
(1837-1910) in a January 1892 talk published in June (and cited in
YaleBQ) said that the phrase was "lately modified" from another one. If
Giffen, journalist (who worked with Bagehot at The Economist), economist
(known for the Giffen paradox), and statistician, was right that the
coining was recent (and depending on what counts as recent), then both
Bagehot and Disraeli may have died to early to qualify; or Giffen was
mistaken. The putative earlier saying source, about witnesses who are
liars, damned (or outrageous) liars, and experts/scientific
experts/expert witnesses, is, at least, attested earlier than 1892,
e.g., by Thomas Henry Huxley in 5 Dec 1885.
Leonard Henry Courtney (1832-1918) in 1895 addressed a group in Saratoga
Springs NY about results in a future, fictitious vote without
proportional representation. Whether Courtney, a Liberal, in this case
expected his NY audience to think of Disraeli, a Conservative, as the
"Wise Statesman" may be questioned. Courtney is one of the many
attributions claimed (e.g. by J.A.
Baines in 1896) for the quotation.

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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