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12
1907]
decline, for undoubtedly they show that the inclination to get married has not
decreased. The Registrar General, in his last annual report (1906), when
discussing the marriage rate, says that the total population does not afford
the most satisfactory method of measuring it, because of the variations which
occur from time to time in the number and age constitution of marriageable
men and women in the population. How important these changes have been
is shown by the circumstance that the proportion of batchelors in 1,000 males
aged 15 years and upwards, rose from 884 in 1891 to 411 in 1901, and that
among 1,000 females aged 15 years and upwards, the proportion of spinsters
increased from 361 to 395, and also that the proportion of widowed persons
steadily decreased. And he also gives some very interesting figures which
the writer has abstracted from his report (Table B), which undoubtedly point
to a decrease in the marriage rate, in England and Wales, when based on the
number of persons living at a marriageable age, that is to say above 15 years
of age.
1870-72 57.2 per 1,000 of the unmaried and widowed population aged
15 years and upwards.
1880-82 51.5 „ „ „ „
1890-92 49.8 „ „ „ „
1900-02 48.7 „ „ „ „
1903-05 47 0
1906 47.7 „ „ „ „
These changes, however, can have had very little influence in Islington, for
as we have seen, the marriage rate, calculated on the total population, has
been fairly constant, although undoubtedly there have been considerable changes
in the population. Indeed, this is shown by the fact that the number of
persons now living in the borough over 15 years of age is 245,596, whereas
if no change had occurred in the age constitution of the borough since the census
of 1891, it would have been 234,600, which means that there are now nearly
eleven thousand more people fifteen years and upwards living in Islington than
there would have been if the proportions of people living at the several age
periods had remained constant since 1891.
The marriage rate for last year, on the basis of persons over fifteen years,
would have been, on the 1891 proportions 25.25, and on the 1901 proportions
24.96, per 1,000 persons at a marriageable age.
There is undoubtedly a tendency among men and women to marry at a
later period of life than formerly, and, indeed, the Registrar General indicates
this fact in his Annual Report for 1906, where he says that, "among the
persons who married in 1906,43 per 1,000 of the husbands and 146 per 1,000