---
id: "20260916-0239-does-william-suttons-1874"
title: "Does William Sutton's 1874 Institute of Actuaries paper on Price's Northampton table survive in any accessible copy?"
type: "capture"
status: "promoted"
origin: "batch"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
date_created: "2026-09-16T00:00:00.000Z"
provenance: "Batch capture run, 2026-09-16, following up the 2026-08-24 known-blocked-routes entry in 00-meta/specs/sources.md"
derived_from: []
tags: ["william-sutton","richard-price","northampton-mortality-table","actuarial-history","source-availability","journal-of-the-institute-of-actuaries","quote-verification","cambridge-core","jstor","internet-archive","google-books","hathitrust"]
source_url: "https://resolve.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-institute-of-actuaries/article/on-the-method-used-by-dr-price-in-the-construction-of-the-northampton-mortality-table/F46429428874C4590738E994FBE2B940"
source_title: "On the Method used by Dr. Price in the construction of the Northampton Mortality Table"
source_author: "William Sutton"
source_date: "Published online by Cambridge University Press 18 August 2016; original January 1874"
source_venue: "Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, Vol. 18, Issue 2, pp. 107-122 (Cambridge Core / British Actuarial Journal platform)"
source_tier: 1
source_sha: "69788b6f93916e1c4d5c595098a75ba19de007e44a560614afde887c0e8f9ef2"
source_quote: "Access optionsGet access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below... Article purchase / Temporarily unavailable"
source_url_2: "https://www.jstor.org/stable/41131700"
source_title_2: "On the Method used by Dr. Price in the construction of the Northampton Mortality Table (JSTOR item record)"
source_author_2: "JSTOR (ITHAKA)"
source_date_2: "fetched 2026-09-16"
source_venue_2: "JSTOR"
source_tier_2: "N/A — archive_page returned a Cloudflare bot-block page; content not read, no tier assignable"
source_sha_2: "32ed63159c77e21ee19ca1b9aa3213ccf0218eb59539560b132a8e68ef0e18ea"
source_quote_2: "Client Challenge — A required part of this site couldn't load. This may be due to a browser extension, network issues, or browser settings."
source_url_3: "https://archive.org/metadata/journal18instuoft"
source_title_3: "Internet Archive item metadata API response for identifier 'journal18instuoft' (and, identically, 'journalofinstitu1818inst')"
source_author_3: "Internet Archive"
source_date_3: "queried 2026-09-16"
source_venue_3: "archive.org Metadata API"
source_tier_3: 1
source_sha_3: "44136fa355b3678a1146ad16f7e8649e94fb4fc21fe77e8310c060f61caaff8a"
source_quote_3: "{}"
source_url_4: "https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php?q=identifier%3Ajournalinstitut*goog&fl%5B%5D=identifier&fl%5B%5D=title&fl%5B%5D=year&rows=50&output=json"
source_title_4: "archive.org Advanced Search API results for identifier:journalinstitut*goog"
source_author_4: "Internet Archive"
source_date_4: "queried 2026-09-16"
source_venue_4: "archive.org Advanced Search API"
source_tier_4: 1
source_sha_4: "379188566a5126fda986235cd4b8b44946cd8174b694d11ea3876f7140f671f1"
source_quote_4: "\"numFound\":16"
source_url_5: "https://books.google.com/books?id=DN9HAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover"
source_title_5: "Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, Volume 18 (Google Books)"
source_author_5: "Google Books (digitized volume; original authorship: Institute of Actuaries)"
source_date_5: "accessed 2026-09-16"
source_venue_5: "Google Books"
source_tier_5: 3
source_sha_5: "5c5411539e6fc5688a6ebeabd6b581c46d59df46d02118df091a7b078754d729"
source_quote_5: "Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, Volume 18 ... Download PDF"
source_url_6: "https://resolve.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-institute-of-actuaries/article/on-the-method-used-by-milne-in-the-construction-of-the-carlisle-table-of-mortality/"
source_title_6: "On the Method used by Milne in the Construction of the Carlisle Table of Mortality"
source_author_6: "William Sutton"
source_date_6: "Published online by Cambridge University Press 18 August 2016; original July 1883"
source_venue_6: "Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, Vol. 24, Issue 2, pp. 110-129 (Cambridge Core)"
source_tier_6: 1
source_sha_6: "83818c2629c12b80b4f1dfde1252662c801c2608b9d7ace36e5fba1da1422c41"
source_quote_6: "Article purchase / Temporarily unavailable"
source_url_7: "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000523826"
source_title_7: "Catalog Record: Journal of the Institute of Actuaries (HathiTrust Digital Library)"
source_author_7: "HathiTrust Digital Library"
source_date_7: "attempted 2026-09-16"
source_venue_7: "HathiTrust"
source_tier_7: "N/A — HTTP 403 to both WebFetch and archive_page on the catalog record page, and HTTP 403 to archive_page on the full-text search interface (babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls); no content obtained, no tier assignable"
seek_code_commit: "17d9798"
promoted_to: ["30-notes/claim-sutton-1883-carlisle-paper-mirrors-1874-northampton-paper.md","30-notes/claim-jia-volume-18-google-books-scan-exists-but-captcha-blocks-automated-retrieval.md","40-entities/entity-joshua-milne.md (new hub)"]
not_promoted: ["Cambridge Core still fails today (Claim 1) — re-confirmation of the 2026-08-24 finding, no new information; folded into the 2026-09-16 progress entry on question-verify-northampton-table-overestimated-mortality-primary and the dated line on entity-william-sutton rather than a standalone note.","JSTOR mirror still fails today (Claim 2), including the Early Journal Content 1870-cutoff detail — same reasoning: a re-confirmation plus a supporting detail, not a new atomic claim about the world; folded into the same progress entry.","Internet Archive gap holds across three digitization sets (Claim 3) — strengthens a pattern already logged 2026-08-24 from one data point to three, but the underlying claim (the paper is unread) is unchanged; folded into the same progress entry rather than duplicated as a fresh note.","HathiTrust route failed outright (part of Claim 4) — a fifth failed route, same shape as other paywalled-platform 403s already catalogued elsewhere in sources.md; folded into the progress entry, and separately flagged to 00-meta/seek-flags.md as a defect since sources.md itself has no HathiTrust entry yet (out of scope to edit directly in a single-capture promotion).","The core unresolved question ('no tool could read the text this session... probably retrievable by a human') — this is the session's overall verdict, not a discrete claim; it is exactly what question-verify-northampton-table-overestimated-mortality-primary already tracks, so it became that question's 2026-09-16 progress entry rather than a new question or note.","Further leads (IFoA's own 'List of available journals' and pre-1901 library catalogue PDFs, WorldCat lookup from Google Books) — genuinely unread this session, nothing to promote; noted as candidate next moves on the routed question and as a dated line on entity-institute-and-faculty-of-actuaries.","Entity candidate 'Google Books' as a concept/venue — the CAPTCHA-vs-paywall access pattern is real but is a tooling/sourcing pattern, not a domain concept this vault's entity model covers; not promoted to a hub, left as color in the Google Books claim-note."]
---


Follow-up to [[entity-william-sutton]] (built 2026-08-24 on a paper identified but never read) and the [[moc-early-life-assurance-and-the-age-rating-lag]] cluster, specifically the open question of whether [[claim-price-northampton-table-overestimated-mortality-favouring-insurers]]'s directional-bias mechanism can be traced to a Tier 1-2 primary. `00-meta/specs/sources.md` already logs three failed routes to Sutton's paper as of 2026-08-24: Cambridge Core (body "Temporarily unavailable"), JSTOR (would not render), and a gap in the Internet Archive's *Journal of the Institute of Actuaries* holdings at exactly volume 18. This session re-tested all three with fresh, receipted fetches and tried two further routes (Google Books, HathiTrust) not previously logged.

## Claim: Cambridge Core, the article's venue of record, still fails today, and its own page shows the block is a deliberate access gate layered under a site-wide technical disruption, not a one-off glitch

A direct `archive_page` fetch of the article's Cambridge Core page (verified TLS, sha256 `69788b6f93...`) on 2026-09-16 returned real content: a page banner reading "Temporary Disruption — We have implemented additional assurance measures to protect our systems," the article's genuine bibliographic record (*Journal of the Institute of Actuaries*, Volume 18, Issue 2, January 1874, pp. 107-122; DOI `10.1017/S204616740004458X`; author affiliation "London and Provincial Law Assurance Society"), and its opening "Extract" paragraph. But the body itself sits behind an access-options block reading "Article purchase" with the full-text option itself marked "Temporarily unavailable." The article is thus doubly gated: a commercial purchase requirement (independent of the render date) plus a currently-active platform-wide technical suspension. Render timestamp on the fetched page: 2026-09-15T10:31:53Z.

## Claim: JSTOR's mirror still fails today with the same Cloudflare bot-challenge observed in 2026-08-24

A direct `archive_page` fetch of `jstor.org/stable/41131700` (sha256 `32ed63159c...`) returned a Cloudflare "Client Challenge" interstitial rather than article content: "A required part of this site couldn't load. This may be due to a browser extension, network issues, or browser settings." No article text, abstract, or metadata was served. Separately, JSTOR's own "Early Journal Content" free-access program — the initiative that has released some pre-1923 journal content on archive.org (see below) — is explicitly scoped to material "published prior to 1923 in the United States and before 1870 elsewhere" per its own archive.org collection description; an 1874 British journal falls outside that 1870 cutoff, so even JSTOR's free-content program would not cover this article by its own stated terms.

## Claim: the Internet Archive's gap at volume 18 holds across three independently-named digitization sets, not just the one previously logged, strengthening the 2026-08-24 finding from a single data point to a pattern

The previously logged gap was in the `journalXXinstuoft` (University of Toronto) scan series. This session checked two further, independent IA holdings and found the same gap in both. First, `archive.org/metadata/journal18instuoft` returns an empty `{}` (sha256 `44136fa3...`) — confirmed non-existent, as does the identically-empty `journalofinstitu1818inst` (the naming convention that hosts the neighbouring volumes 10, 14, 16, 20, 23, 25, 32, 35 already logged in `sources.md`). Second, a separate Google/NYPL-sourced scan series on archive.org (identifiers `journalinstitut00goog` through `journalinstitut08goog`) covers the journal's 1867-1883 run in eight scattered volumes — years 1867, 1870, 1872, 1873, 1875, 1881, 1882, 1883 (`archive.org/advancedsearch.php`, sha256 `37918856...`, `"numFound":16` including two unrelated *Institute of Bankers* items) — with 1874 the one year missing from that span. Three separately-catalogued Internet Archive digitization efforts, built at different times from different physical library copies, each independently lack this exact volume.

## Claim: a fourth digitization does exist — a full-view Google Books scan of the exact volume — but automated retrieval of it is blocked, and a fifth route (HathiTrust) failed outright

`books.google.com/books?id=DN9HAQAAMAAJ` identifies itself as "Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, Volume 18" (sha256 `5c541153...`) and its page carries the "Download PDF / Download EPUB / Plain text" menu Google Books shows specifically for full-view, out-of-copyright books — a different signal from the "Preview" or "No eBook available" labels shown for restricted items. This is a genuinely different digitization from any of the three Internet Archive sets above. However, attempting the direct download (`books.google.com/books/download/...pdf?id=DN9HAQAAMAAJ&output=pdf`) via `WebFetch` returned a 302 redirect to `google.com/sorry/index?...` — Google's automated-traffic CAPTCHA wall — and the same URL 429'd on both `extract_pdf` and `archive_page`. The volume's existence and full-view status are confirmed; its actual page images/text were not obtained by any tool this session, so whether pp. 107-122 specifically are legible within that scan remains unread. Separately, HathiTrust's catalog record (`catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000523826`) returned HTTP 403 to both `WebFetch` and `archive_page`, and its full-text search interface (`babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls`) also returned 403 to `archive_page` — a fifth route tried, and a fifth failure, though HathiTrust's own search-result listings elsewhere (not independently re-verified this session) suggest it holds the volume 15-60 run, which would include volume 18.

**On the core question**: no tool available this session could read the text of Sutton's 1874 paper. `[unverified — could not confirm or deny after search]` whether a human researcher — clearing Google Books' CAPTCHA by hand, obtaining institutional HathiTrust access, or visiting the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries' own library in person — could retrieve it; the evidence points toward "probably yes, by at least one of those three non-automated routes" rather than the paper being lost, but that is an inference from access-gate signatures, not a confirmed read.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The most useful thing this session found isn't a new dead end — it's that the Google Books hit changes the shape of the answer. Every route logged on 2026-08-24 was "this exists but I cannot open it." The Google Books scan is the first one where the evidence (a full-view download menu, not a preview snippet) points toward "a human with five minutes and a browser almost certainly could." That's a different, more actionable kind of blocked than the others, and worth distinguishing in `sources.md` from a route that's blocked because the content genuinely isn't free anywhere.
> — Seek

## Further leads

- William Sutton wrote a structurally identical retrospective paper eleven years later — "On the Method used by Milne in the Construction of the Carlisle Table of Mortality," *JIA* vol. 24, July 1883, pp. 110-129, DOI `10.1017/S2046167400045912` — evaluating [[entity-william-morgan|a different]] predecessor's mortality-table construction, gated identically ("Article purchase" / "Temporarily unavailable") on Cambridge Core today (sha256 `83818c26...`). Sutton's later affiliation is given as "Registry of Friendly Societies." Worth folding into [[entity-william-sutton]] as a second instance of his genre and a second primary this same access barrier blocks.
- The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries' own library holds a "List of available journals" (`actuaries.org.uk/system/files/documents/pdf/available-journals.pdf`, extracted this session, 58 pages, alphabetical by title) that was not read past its opening pages — it may record the Institute's own physical/interlibrary-loan holding of its own historical journal run, directly relevant to the "library loan" branch of this question and unexplored this session.
- The IFoA also publishes a pre-1901 library catalogue (`actuaries.org.uk/system/files/field/document/pre1901_library_catalogue_0.pdf`) — unread this session, another candidate for the physical-holdings question.
- Google Books lists the same scan under the "Read eBook" and "Find in a library" options alongside the blocked download links; a WorldCat lookup from that page was not attempted this session.

## Entity candidates
- Joshua Milne — person — English actuary who built the Carlisle Table of Mortality; the older, foundational figure Sutton's *second* retrospective methodological paper measures against, in the same way his 1874 paper measures [[entity-richard-price|Richard Price]]'s Northampton table. Not currently an entity in this vault; surfaced only because this session followed the Cambridge Core "sibling article" lead.
- William Sutton — already [[entity-william-sutton]] — update candidate: his affiliation is now sourced directly ("London and Provincial Law Assurance Society" in 1874, "Registry of Friendly Societies" by 1883), and he authored at least two papers in this genre, not one.
- Google Books — concept/venue — first confirmed instance in this cluster of a digitization that appears to exist and be legally downloadable but is blocked from automated tooling by a CAPTCHA rather than a paywall or missing-holding gap; may be worth a `sources.md` pattern entry if this recurs.

## Safety flags
None. Every page reached this session (Cambridge Core, JSTOR, archive.org's metadata and search APIs, Google Books, HathiTrust) returned ordinary paywall, bot-challenge, CAPTCHA, or empty-API-result behavior — no addressed-to-AI language, override language, claimed authority, tier self-assignment, file-system instructions, credential requests, or urgency framing observed on any page actually read.