There are no membership lists of the Association, but one indication of its size is the annual subscriptions, which are set out in table 60. The annual subscription was Rs 50; but a simple division of the total receipts by 50 does not give an accurate figure for the membership: in the first place the heading ‘subscriptions’ in the accounts includes ‘other receipts’; in the second, Rs 50 was the minimum subscription—the Rs 8,479.12.6 ½ in 1856 were subscribed by only thirty-two members. Even so, the table indicates that the membership at its largest could never have been more than 300 and that by the end of the period it was hardly 100.

Another indication of the size of membership can be gained from the monthly and annual reports which list the names of new members. Between 1851 and 1879 approximately 170 men were recruited—an average of six a year. From these reports it is also apparent that by the 1870s the Association was finding new members hard to come by.