VICTORIAN MARRIAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 72, 25 March 1919, Page 9

VICTORIAN MARRIAGES.

MELBOURNE, March 11. The responsibility of the fashion of late marriages for the declining birth-rate, and incidentally for other ills to the national weal, are reviewed in the polite way of the statist in an official record of the year 1917-18 in Victoria. The age constitution of brides, it is recorded, shows a very marked alteration in recent periods. Of every 1,000 women who were married during the year under review only 496 were under 25 years of age, as against 042 at the corresponding age from the yeara 1881 to IS9O. Owing to the altered age distribution oi wives the potential births to every 1,000 marriages are fewer than hitherto. Some idea of the age constitution of the parties to these late marriages m.iy be gleaned from the announcement that in lfil", out of 9,306 brides in Victoria 1,008 were between the ages of 30 and 35, 527 between 35 and 40, 246 between 40 and 43, 181 between 45 and 50, 42 between 55 and CO, 2i between 60 and 65, and 12 between 65 and 70, whilst three of them —believers apparently in the wisdom of Shakespeare's advice, " Take not too short a time to make a world-wide bargain," took the plunge only when over 70 years of age.