19 WOMEN TO 14 MEN.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16464, 17 June 1919, Page 7

19 WOMEN TO 14 MEN.

STARTLING MAN SHORTAGE IN BRITAIN. Some curious facts ax© revealed in the British Registrar-General’s report, issued recently, of births, deaths, and marriages in 1917. It is estimated, for instance, that there are 19 women to every 14 men, the figures being 19,625,700 and 14,085,30 u. Between the ages of 15 and 40 there are 9,542,600 women and only 4,492,927 men. It would seem, therefore, that it is something like two to one against a woman marrying. The figures, it should be pointed out, are the estimated civilian population. Whereas most marriages used to take .place m July, August, and September, the favourite months now are October, November and December. Widows remarried in great numbers. Although young war widows attected the figures, it is clear that the war is not wholly responsible, for the total began to increase in 1912. Widowers, too, show an increasing tendency to take second wives. About half of the divorced people married again. The youngest bachelor to marry was 15, and the youngest spinster 14. No fewer than 29 males married at the age of 16, and 389 at the age, of 17, two of the latter marrying widows. Twentysix spinsters married at the age of 15, one of them to a widower; 187 women were 16 when they married, and of 1201 marrying at 17 years 15 married widowers. The earliest second marriage of males was at the age of 19, and three widows remarried at the age of 18.

Of 39 men marrying when they were turned 80, only one, aged 81, had never tasted the joys of matrimonial bliss previously, the rest being widowers; but out of nine women.marrying beyond that age two were spinsters. The oldest man to be married was a widower of 92, and the two oldest women were aged 85, one a widow and one a spinster. A girl of 15 married a man of 40; one wife of 66 married a husband aged 24; another aged 24 took a husband of 16. A man of 70 married a girl of 20; others, aged 68 and 66, wed with sweet 17, and 146 couples married when they were past 70.