EARLY MARRIAGES

Evening Star, Issue 18334, 23 July 1923, Page 2

EARLY MARRIAGES

DIVORCE FIGURES

[By the Medical Correspondent of the London ‘Times.']

Tho Registrar-General, in Ids 1 Statistical Review of England and Wales ’ for the year 1921, affords some interesting information about the marriages occurring dating that period There wen 320,852 marriages, or 59,130 less than in 1920, in which year the largest number ever re corded took place. The marriage rate fot 1921 was therefore 16.9 persons per 1,000 living. Except for tho war years (19151919) and tho year 1920, this rate lias not been exceeded snice 1874. The marriages included thi.se of 28,627 widowers and 29,141 widows—a sufficient refutation of the idea that widows’ marriages arc as two to one to Hose of widowers.

The age of marriage necessarily varied onumeuriy, hut . wenty-four ’or men an I I went v-oi.e for women were the in >st usual ages. This docs »..* accord wr.h the popular belief that met, and women arc now tending to marry later in life. Some 15,452 men and 47 Sol women marrmd under tic age of iwerty-one. Du the other baud, sixty men and twelve women married af'i-r they hid rcacliel eighty years: of ago. Divorces were more numerous than ever before There were 1,592 divorced men and 1,286 divorced women remarried in 1921. The number of decrees nisi made absolute were • Tor “ dissolution,'’ 3,458; “annulment,” 64—total, 3,522. Tho largest number formerly recorded was 3,090 for 1920. In Biitisu dominions the highest marriage rate w’js 18.0 per 1,000 living in Natal: tho lowest 13.4 in Saskatchewan,

The bulb rale ->{ 22-1 per_l,oD' living, which was recorded in 1921, is the lOWts’ recorded since 1837, except for He wal ' years. For every 1.000 females burn '.litre ware 1,061 males; born. Illegitimate tiirehs ‘uneunHd to 45 in cvctv I , JOJ births The excess of births over deaths, or natural increase of population, was 590,185, or 10 3 per 1,000 population.