The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-02-05 00:00:00

Et sitoartribge Obserber.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6,
.1887.

BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS

LAST week in London,the Registrar-General
reports, there were 2,579 births and 1,585
deaths, which shows, roundly, an addition to
the population of the rnetropol:s of over
50,000 a year. Here is a fact which may
well arrest the attention of the thoughtful.
The Great Babylon of London is already
packed close by its human habitants, who
have kept ceaselessly pushing their way
count' ywards, until the city and port which
form England's capital have grown into a
community of more men, women, and
ohildren than the King of Portugal has
under his rule. And Londoners, as we have
seen, are adding to their number by the
survival of the fittest at a very rapid rate.
When one thinks of this weekly :addition of
1,000 to the London aggregate population
by thy preponderance of births over deaths,
and keep in view also the ceaseless recruit-
ing of the metropolitan ranks from every
part of provincial Britain, the coming scene
which sterns to locm prophetically before
the mental eye presents no picture of
Ilneanlay's New Zealander surveying some
erumblinz reliqui sof a dead and gone race
from a dilapidated and desert( d London
ruin, but rather suggests a fierce struggle
for existence among millions of human be-
tugs pent up by circumstance into one vast
rrowdod centre. And what is going on in
London is also occurring, in a lesser degree
oniy, in most of the big cities and populous
towns of the country. The problem of the
population is a serious one indeed. It has
engsgsi the anxious thought of all classes of
politcal economists and philosophers for
ages pest, and it is still a burning question.
Our own little kingdom is touched more
eloi•ely by the .natter than perhaps any other
dominion in the wo:ld ever was, and yet we
have no satisfactory solution of the difficulty,
Ito way of knocking off the knotty point
, Which commends itself to the sense and feel.
.
ings of the wkole people. Some of the
theorists suggest fanciful and coldly Intel
lectual remedies for the coming evil—reme-
dies which get no sympathy from the great
heart of the people; but no practically suc-
cessful melt me has yet had trial other than
that of emigration, which, though sound
enough in its ideal, is unlovely to look on, as
its working brings about very often the
sundering of kinsfolk. It takes generally a
great wrench to pull up the roots of the
workers of Britain from
_their native soil;

and many of them would sooner starve,
breathing English air, than seek a new home
and a new life over the waste of waters.
The very danger of such a sad calamity as
has occurred this week to the ill-fated
Kapunds, prevents not a few peasants from
adventuring on an emigrant voyage. Yet,
prejudice apart, depopulation by emigration,
under wisely perfected arrangement, is really
the only workable preventive of the distress
which must arise when mankind stands too
thick upon the ground. These and many
other considerations arise when one ponders
such evidence as is produced in the return
published the other day by the Registrar-
General, who calculates that at the time of
casting the figures which now see the light,
there were in England and Wales about
twenty-seven millions and a half of people,
a majority of three-quarters of a million
being of the gentler sex. About nineteen
in every thousand of us die in each year;
and science and sanitation, one sees with
pleasure, have a continuous tendency to de-
crease the mortality table. Last year had
the lowest death-rate on record, save only
that for 1881. The birth-rate, though on
the decline stands at a little over 32 per 1,000
persons living This arises, statistics show,
from a disposition to linger longer in the
states of spinsterhood and bachelordom.
The marriage details in the return are inter-
esting reading to all. It may be that the
exactions of liociety and the expenses attend-
ant upon our ever-expanding ideas of domes-
tic comfort keep back those who would
otherwise embrace the golden bond of wed-
lock from taking that momentous step.
Whether or not, the fact -remains that the
marriage age even amnng those will are con-
tent with but a little of life's luxary_ is

gradually rising. In the year covered by
:the return the percentage of marriages was
only 14 per 1,000, and that, it si" ould be
noted, was the lowest rate recorded since
-the commencement of civil registration. The
average marrying man had seen 28 winters,
while the mean age of tee brides was almost
26. the poorest people marrying earliest,
working miners transferring themselves—
striking an average -- to the Benedictine
order when halfway over their 2 ith year,
while the well-to-do professional classes
waited generally until they had roached the
4th decade. In the good oil Spartan days
those independent and profesional people
whose matrimonial career is not commenced
until the mean age of 3012 per thousand is
srrived at, would have had to snifer serious
disabilities; but modern philoFophy has for
7.ta goal not the increase and multiplicatiAn
:,f the race, but rather a reduction of those
tfother Earth has to furaish sustenance for.
r_t used to be said that marriage was ruled
- tke qusztern loaf, but that theory is now
.xploded. . Whereas a cheap food year
might always be relied on to increase the
~tergyman's fees for - tying the nuptial knot,
..ove with provisions unpreeedently and
.:nnly low, we have fewer weddings.
i.ighty-eeven in every hundred of the happy
gone had never
t;ritiegtool,lll of Ole : :year
*fore isoted the sweets of matrimony. This
yee 12'7 per cent. of re-married widowers.
oaly 8.8 per cent. of the brides had worn
:tourning weeds for a first husband, so that
re ido WO sreuld certainly seem less inclined
boa again on Os troubled no od

matrimony now-a-days than in the historic
time when the elder Weller exhorted his son
" Samivel," again and again, to "beware of
the vidders." To put the whole thing into
a nutshell, we are dying less rapidly, com-
paratively, than our foregoers did, and we
are not marrying so much as was their wont;
neither are we coming into the world so
quickly.