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8
MARRIAGES.
In this Parish there are 14 churches, 15 chapels, and one
registry office licensed for marriages: of these there wore in the
First Quarter
412
Second Quarter
621
Third Quarter
571
fourth Quarter
710
Total
2314
This total indicates a marriage rate of 17.66 to every thousand
persons; or, as in each marriage there are two contracting parties,
35.32 per 1,000 of our population entered the bonds of nmtrimony.
Sixty of these weddings were purely civil contracts, inasmuch
as they required the presence of the Registrar to legalise them;
29 of them took place in chapels, and 81 at the Superintendent
Registrar's office.
Members of this Vestry who are Nonconformists have expressed
to me their dissatisfaction with the present state of the marriage
law; they consider that it is a slur upon their particular
denomination, that clergymen of the Established Church should
alone be able to solemnize a legal marriage, while their own
ministers are unable to do so, except in the presence of the
Registrar. This disability applies equally to the Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Westminster and to "General" Booth; for it is a
legal obligation that all persons married in chapels shall make the
two declarations in the 20th section of Act 6 and 7, William IV.,
c. 85, in the presence of the Registrar of Marriages; it is also the
duty of this official to ascertain that the proper certificate or
licence is produced, and to record the particulars in the Marriage
Register Book.
DEATHS OF INFANTS.
Twenty-six and a half per cent. of the deaths from all causes
were those of infants aged less than twelve months, for out of
4939 children born alive, 718 died before reaching the ago of one
year, leaving only 4221 who attained that age. This gives a death
rate, calculated upon the births, of 145.3 per thousand, the corresponding
rate for the whole of London being 141. The diseases most
fatal to infants were Chest diseases 145, Convulsions 86, Premature