Modern science is invading all the old realms of whims and fancies,
charms and witchcrafts, prejudices and superstitions. No kind of
ignorance seems sacred from attack. The wise men of our generation are
evidently bent beyond recall on finding out all things that may by
possibility be discoverable, no matter what pains the search may impose.
Not content with making lightning run messages, chemistry polish boots,
and steam deliver parcels and passengers, the _savants_ are superseding
the astrologers of old days, and the gipsies and wise women of modern
ones, by finding out and revealing the hitherto hidden laws which rule
that charming mystery of mysteries—that lode star of young maidens and
gay bachelors—matrimony.
In our fourteenth number we gave a description of the facts made out by
the returns of the Registrar-General on the subject of life and death in
London and the Country. The office of that official has some other
duties, however, beyond that of chronicling the business of mortality
and birth in this land of ours. There is a third great heading in his
tables, under which there are long lists of serious looking figures, and
they tell, not in units, or in _fews_, like the back page of a
newspaper, but in tens of thousands, how many marriages take place in
England. And besides the mere number of these interesting events, these
figures reveal what are found to be the laws regulating their frequency
and other circumstances connected with them, such as how many couples
are joined by the costly and unusual mode of special license; how many
by ordinary license; how many (and they are the great majority) by the
old English fashion of “out-asking” by banns; how many by the new
systems introduced for the union of various classes of dissenters, at
Registrars’ offices, in registered places of worship; how many between
Quakers and between Jews; and, beyond all these particulars, how many
young folks, hot of heart and full of courage, take the awful plunge
into matrimony whilst “not of full age;” how many men reject the advice
of Sir Roger de Coverley, and marry widows; and how many widows, like
the wife of Bath, love matrimony so well that when once released from
its bonds they tie themselves up in them again. The history of this
registration of marriages is soon told. This plan of recording the
matrimonial engagements of the country commenced in 1745, when the
marriage act came into operation. Before that date marriages were
performed clandestinely, and by such extraordinary persons that any
correct record of their number was impossible. “Fleet marriages” are
thus noticed by Smollett:—“There was a band of profligate miscreants,
the refuse of the clergy, dead to every sentiment of virtue, abandoned
to all sense of decency and decorum, for the most part prisoners for
debt or delinquency, and indeed the very outcasts of human society, who
hovered about the verge of the Fleet Prison to intercept customers,
plying like porters for employment, and performed the ceremony of
marriage without license or question, in cellars, garrets, or alehouses,
to the scandal of religion, and the disgrace of that order which they
professed. The ease with which this ecclesiastical sanction was
obtained, and the vicious disposition of those wretches open to the
practices of fraud and corruption, were productive of polygamy,
indigence, conjugal infidelity, prostitution, and every curse that could
embitter the married state. A remarkable case of this nature having
fallen under the cognizance of the Peers (in 1753) in an appeal from an
inferior tribunal, that House ordered the judges to prepare a new Bill
for preventing such abuses; and one was accordingly framed, under the
auspices of Lord Hardwick, at that time Lord High Chancellor of
England.”
“It underwent a great number of alterations and amendments, which were
not effected without violent contest and altercation; at length,
however, it was floated through both houses on the tide of a great
majority, and steered into the safe harbour of royal approbation.”
For seventy-seven years after the passing of this bill the number of
marriages was collected with tolerable accuracy, and published in the
Parish Register Abstracts. No other country has so valuable an abstract
of tables. Since that time the Registrar-General’s office has made this
branch of our national statistics almost accurate.
Premising that the documents from which our statements are derived are
the Annual Reports of the Registrar-General, of Births, Deaths, and
Marriages, in England, issued—not for a short term, but during the last
six years—that the observations extend over a still longer period—we may
proceed to cull out what appear to be the economical laws regulating
matrimony, with any peculiarities characterising their operation amongst
us. We would say the _general_ laws—for individual peculiarities will,
of course, influence individual matches. One young lady will secure the
youth of her choice by force of beauty, or by mere weight of purse;
managing mothers will get husbands for their girls, whatever wind may
blow, or however trade or politics may influence the less fortunate or
less clever world. The great beauty, the great talents, and the great
wealth are the exceptions in the lottery of life. In speaking of
matrimonial prospects we, like the Registrar-General, mean the prospects
of the great family of twenty millions of souls that make up the
population of this land we live in.
About a century ago, the marriages in London were under six thousand a
year—they are now four times as many. In all the country, the increase
has been most remarkable in the Metropolis and in Manchester. In
particular localities the proportion is found to differ. Thus Yorkshire,
the seat of the Woollen manufactures and of prosperous agriculturists,
appears to be the most marrying district of all England; Lancashire and
Cheshire, the Cotton districts, coming next; and London third.
Staffordshire and Worcestershire, Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire
stand next, followed by other counties more or less blessed by the
presence of Hymen, but descending gradually till we reach the
matrimonial zero which is found in the agricultural parts of Middlesex.
The average annual number of weddings is about one hundred and
twenty-three thousand. It would help a winter night’s amusement to
decide how many pounds weight of Californian produce must be wanted for
the rings? How many garlands of orange blossoms for the hair and bonnets
of the brides? The probabilities of marriage, of course, vary; but the
rule seems to hold, that about one in seventeen unmarried women, between
the ages of fifteen and forty-five, are married in a year throughout the
country. Marriages have their seasons. They are least numerous in
winter, and most numerous after harvest in the December quarter; the
births and deaths, on the contrary, are most numerous in the winter
quarter ending in March, and least numerous in the summer quarter ending
September. War diminishes marriages by taking great numbers of
marriageable men away from their homes; whilst a return of peace
increases marriages, when soldiers and sailors with small pensions are
discharged. Trade and manufactures have also become more active in
England on the cessation of wars, and the employment and wages thus
induced, have contributed still more to add to the numbers of those
entering the married state. The establishment of new, or the extension
of old, employments promotes marriages: the cotton manufactures, the
canals of the last century, the railways of the present day, are
examples. Indeed, an increase of their incomes, is taken by the
generality of the people for the beginning of perennial prosperity, and
is followed by a multitude of marriages. There are only about fifteen
persons married annually, for the first time, out of a thousand living.
There are about five children born in wedlock to every marriage. The
births now exceed the deaths in England, in about the proportion of
three to two—three young subjects present themselves for Queen Victoria,
in place of every two that pass away. “The number of marriages in a
nation,” says the Registrar, “perhaps fluctuates independently of
external causes; but it is a fair deduction from the facts, that the
marriage returns in England point to periods of prosperity, little less
distinctly than the funds measure the hopes and fears of the money
market. If the one is the barometer of credit, the other is the
barometer of prosperity—a prosperity partly in possession, and still
more in hope.” The year 1845 was a great matrimonial year, the
proportion of persons married being more than had been known in England
for ninety years before. It was a season of great speculation, activity,
and temporary prosperity. Three years before, in 1842, on the contrary,
there was a great diminution in the number of weddings. It was a year of
difficulty and high prices. Rather more than ten per cent. of the
persons married in 1845, had been married more than once. When food is
dear, as in 1839, marriages are few; as food becomes cheap, as in 1845,
marriages are many. When a cheap food year indicates a year of “marrying
and giving in marriage,” another sign is generally found; the price of
consols indicates a condition of national affairs much more conducive to
matrimonial arrangements, than young ladies would imagine. In what may
be called the great English matrimonial period, the three per cents.
were about par, instead of being about 88, as they were in the
unfavourable season a short time before. When employment is plenty,
trade active, and money _easy_, Doctors Commons becomes brisk, clergymen
have long lists of banns to declare, and the Registrar’s column of
marriages fills up.
As an instance of the influence of the price of food and want of
employment upon the number of marriages, let us take an illustration
from the Registrar as to the period from 1792 to 1798. The weather was
bad, the funds low, and bread excessively dear, and upon particular
districts a change of fashion made the burthen fall with still
additional weight. The “Church and King” riots broke out in July, 1791,
in Birmingham; and the mob burnt Dr. Priestley’s library, several
houses, and some dissenting chapels; in May, 1792, they again rose, but
the magistrates this time evinced some vigour, and put a stop to the
outrages. A staple manufacture of Birmingham had been subject to one of
the mutations of fashion, which caused great distress; for it is
recorded, that, on December 21st, 1791, “several respectable
buckle-manufacturers from Birmingham, Walsall, and Wolverhampton, waited
upon His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, with a petition setting
forth the distressed situation of thousands in the different branches of
the buckle manufacture, from the fashion now, and for some time back, so
prevalent, of wearing shoe-strings instead of buckles. His Royal
Highness graciously promised his utmost assistance by his example and
influence.” After the recovery of George III. from his first illness, in
1789, an immense number of buckles were manufactured about Birmingham;
Walsall among other places invested the greater part of its available
wealth in the speculation. The king unfortunately went in the state
procession to St. Paul’s without buckles: and Walsall was nearly ruined.
Shoe-strings gradually supplied the place of straps. The effect of this
freak of fashion and speculation on the marriages of Birmingham was to
reduce them most seriously; and it had probably more to do with the
licentious Birmingham riots, than the more patent political agitation of
the day. The disuse of wigs, buckles, buttons, and leather breeches at
the close of the eighteenth century, is supposed to have affected the
business of a million of people. In 1765, the peace of London had been
disturbed by the periwig-makers, who went in procession to petition the
young king, “submitting to His Majesty’s goodness and wisdom, whether
his own example was not the only means of rescuing them from their
distress, as far as it was occasioned by so many people wearing their
own hair.” When change of fashions influence unfavourably the employment
of the people, and when, at the same time, influenced or increased by
lack of work, their poverty increases, matrimony is at a discount. It is
not simply the poorer classes, dependent on weekly wages for their
support, who feel the influence of times of business activity, and allow
it to impel them to matrimony. When the workman is busy, the trader
makes profits, the landlord gets his rents, and all sections of the
community feel the beneficial influence of a prosperous season. The
number of those persons entirely removed from such social sympathies is
very few; indeed, as a great rule, when the workmen are prosperous, all
classes above them are thriving too: and when the one section of the
great English family is influenced to matrimony in an unusual degree,
the others feel the influence of the same law. When the reaction, a
period of depression, arrives, the number of marriages declines, but
they have never fallen back to their original numbers. A time of
prosperity lifts up the total in a remarkable manner, and when the happy
time ceases, the number falls—but not equal to the level from which it
sprung. It is to a certain degree a permanent increase.
As to the mode in which marriages are performed, it appears that nine
out of ten take place according to the rites of the established church.
The marriages by banns are about six times as numerous as those by
license. Upon these weddings, by aid of Doctors Commons, there is, it
seems, a vast sum of money spent; but who are the lucky men receiving
it, does not appear very clearly, and the services they render for the
cash is still more doubtful. There are about eighteen thousand licenses
granted by Doctors Commons and by country surrogates every year. The
usual cost of the license at Doctors Commons is 2_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._ There
is 10_s._ 6_d._ additional for minors; and in the country, surrogates,
it is said, obtain higher fees. At only 2_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._, the tax on
eighteen thousand licenses is 47,250_l._ a year. The stamps on each
license are 12_s._ 6_d._ Deducting this sum, the licenses to marry yield
at least 36,000_l._ a year. The expense of granting licenses in a manner
the most useful and convenient to the public would not be considerable;
and it is not easy to see why the surplus revenue derivable from the
tax, should not go into the public treasury, when a portion of the
expenses of the registration of births, deaths, and marriages, is paid
out of the Consolidated Fund. The aggregate amount of charges for the
General Register Office, at which all the returns of the country are
examined, indexed, and analysed, and the Act is administered, was
13,794_l._ in 1846; and the six hundred and twenty-one superintendent
registrars received 9097_l._ for examining certified copies. After
discharging the expenses of the civil registration, defrayed by the
Consolidated Fund, and the cost of the decennial census, a large surplus
would be left, out of 47,250_l._ for licenses, to go to the public
revenue of the country. And this would not interfere in the slightest
degree with the marriage fees; which would continue to be paid to the
officiating clergy. In the places of worship registered by Dissenters,
there were not quite ten thousand marriages in one year; nearly four
thousand in the same year took place in the Superintendant Registrar’s
offices; one hundred and eighty-four according to the rites of the Jews;
and seventy-four marriages between Quakers. The only fortuneteller who
can henceforth be believed, is the one who answers the question, “When
will the wedding take place?” by saying, “When trade flourishes, and
when bread is cheap.”