The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1892-12-08
Shall the Marriage Of Criminals, Drunk
ards and Diseased Persons Be Pro-
hibited bv I.awP

Shall the Marriage of Criminals, Drunk
ards and Diseased Persons Be Pro-
hibited by Law?
A committee, of which DR.. William NJ. L. Fiske
is chairman, is preparing to lay before the legis-
lature of New York, at its next meeting, project
OF law imposing restrictions on marriage. DIR.
Fiske is now lecturing on the subject in New
York City. Within a few years scientific men have
devoted considerable attention to the injurious
effect OF i'll considered marriages. and it is becOm-
ing general opinion that society it to itself
to adopt some safeguards against evils which are
both serious and preventable. 1t is thought that
communities have right to require of two per-
sons contemplating matrimOny some security
that they will not add to the diseased, or the
criminal, or the necessarily pauper class which
has TO be supported at the public expense. Recent
researches, published by D. Strahan in his work
Marriage and Disease" have shed light on the
subject and contributed much to form public
opinion. 1t appears from the statistics embodied
in the census that One-half the insane now con-
fined in asylums are suffering from hereditary in
sanity. Thus, if their parents, in whose blood in
sanity ran, had not married, there would have
been fewer lunatics by One-half than there are.
Physicians are well aware that dipsOmania is
also hereditary; yet girls constantly marry young
men who are confirmed drunkards, in a wild idea
that they can reform them, and they give birth to
children who are afflicted in the same way and
become charge on the public. Whether cancer,
phthisis, and the various sequel2 of syphilis
are hereditary. the faculty are not agreed. But
it has been made plain by penOlOgiStS that GER
tain forms of crime are transmitted from parents
to their Offsprings, and that all other things be-
ing equal. the son of thief is likely to be thief
and the son of a murderer is apt to be a man of
violence. Yet there is no hindrance to the mar
riage OF criminals most of them in fact, do marry
and, in the ordinary course of events the State is
put to the expense of arresting trying, and hOus-
ing their progeny in Jail. This seems unfair, and
if a law can be framed to prevent the marriage of
inveterate criminals, it ought to be tried. Next
to the marriage of those whose offspring will
probably be vicious or diseased. early marriages
call for attention. At the London Diocesan Con-
ference. held in 1889, it stated. as the unani-
nous opinion of the body, that the evil of early
marriages had grown to such an extent as to rem
der some reform in the marriage laws urgently
necessary Two years later, at the Congress of
HYGIENE held in 1884, DR.. KOrOSi of Buda PeSth,
read paper on the influence of the age of par
ents on the vitality of their children which con-
talnS some startling statements. He showed,
from comparison of several thousand cases,
that the proportion of deaths among children
from weakly constitutions or maladies traceable
to the mother was twice as large among the chill
dren OF mothers under twenty as among the chill
dren of mothers over thirty. He proved by fig
ures that the healthiest offspring was born of
mothers between twenty and thirty, united to
husbands between thirty and forty. Where Ell
ther husband or wife was under twenty, the off
spring was generally weakly, and this he stated
to be the case even in Hungary, where the girls
become women at thirteen. Whether and in
what way restraints can be placed ON marriages
which are likely to swell the criminal or the help
less class, it is not easy to discern. If we clOthe
the officials who were authorized to sOlemnize
marriages with power to refuse to perform the rite
for those who are incOrrigible criminals, or dipso-
maniacs or incurable invalids, the applicant for
matrimOny will simply dispense with the cere-
mOny. Early marriages, however, can be reg,l-
lated. The age of consent may be raised to
twenty years. Such a reform would probably
reduce the number of delicate children and the
number of divorces. But the topic calls for
most circumspect handling.-S0n Francisco A.
gOndM.