The life span of Methodist ministers: an example of the use of obituaries in epidemiology.

Obituaries have occasionally been used in epidemiological studies, 2 but their use gives rise to methodological problems. We aimed to highlight and investigate these problems in an historical cohort study of British Methodist ministers from two branches of the church. The Primitive Methodists came from a predominantly lower socioeconomic background, whereas the background of Wesleyan Methodists tended to be more privileged. So we aimed to examine diVerences in life span between groups performing the same work but coming from diVerent socioeconomic backgrounds.