interestingly, before fox or livermore, the superintendent of the1870 united states census, francis a. walker, had estimated the number of male deaths to be “not less than 850,000.” but this was not as widely accepted as the lower numbers. probably the main reason was that the census itself that year was suspected of being wrong. walker's estimate was based on calculating a typical growth in population which had been consistent during the nineteenth century, minus the number of males who were missing from the census.