MARRIAGE IN EAST LONDON.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10035, 28 April 1894, Page 3

MARRIAGE IN EAST LONDON.

.As a social observer and reformer, Mr H. Dendy devotes an article in the March number of the " Contemporary " to the weddings of Bast London _workers, considered both from the descriptive ai:d the political economy view point. Bank Holiday is the fashionable wed* ding day, and, if funds will possibly permit, ! couples bound on matrimony celebrate the occasion by the expenditure of S3 on a cab to take them to and from church. Walking weddings are low. It is significant of future developments that brides generally sit with their backs to the horse, while the bridegrooms sit in front, and light their pipes as they drive away. The light-hearted way in which girls. thus undertake burdens, almost too heavy to be borne, of care, sickness and poverty, hopeless squalor or unceasing toil aftar courtship often of the most brief and informal type, astonishes Mr Dandy. Jack and Jill become acquainted somehow or other, and after keeping company awhile Jack has got a rise of wages, and Jill has saved up enough for a wedding dress. They pick up a modest household outfit at a cost of, ptrhaps, 10 <, and embark on matrimonial life. ThiDgs may go smoothly witn them for a while, the wife being still an earner, and they add to their household goods, with a keen eye generally to the possibilities of the future in respect to the pawnshop; which inevitably supervenes. As the years go on the troubles increase, want becomes intensified, and existence squalid misery. Early marriages, in London at all events, Mr Denby pronounces a great mistake, and he denies to them even the merit of bticg useful in maintaining moral standards. The main fault lies in ths fact that girls are allowed to think and made to fed that they have no legitimate interests outside matrimony, and that to loee an opportunity of getting married may be to miss all the good life has to offer.

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