The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-02-01
BOUT BIG LONDON.


 Grave-London as a Health Resort
 Coroners' Inquests-The omnibuses
 Joubert street-The London Police
 man, Water supply, Etc.
 London, Jan. P. To the Editor of the Journal and Courier:
 All Americans are interested in Lon
 don, those who have never visited it.
 but who hold, as the fondest hope of
 life, next to going to heaven, the ex- pectation of visiting it, equally with
 those who have been here, and who are
 determined to come again and again, every good chance they get Conse- quently there are none who will not be glad to have their present knowledge of this big city reinforced by few new facts, especially if these facts are really new, relating to London as it is at the present hour, rather than the stale common places of the guide-book. Matrimony is always fascinating top ic, whether treated with reference to a i single couple or to multitudes of them. | Every year in London eighty thousand persons take each other for better or l worse, and from the fact that there. are relatively so few divorces, one might conclude that nearly all these forty thousand annual splicings were for the better But the divorce court is no safe criterion upon this point You can get married for a few shillings, but to get the knot united takes a small fortune, md fhapnfnra q for the well-to-do, Largely. too, the privilege of getting unspliced is in the hands of the men. Let a man refrain from punching or frightening or openly huniliating his wife, and he may be as flagrantly untrue to her as he pleases. But what is safe sauce for the gander would spoil the goose for English law on this subject, besides being for the rich as against the poor, is also for the man as against the woman.
 Three-fourths Of the London Wed- dings take place in houses of worship belonging to the Established church and are celebrated by clergymen of that church. The remainder occur mostly in the chapels of on-conformity and dis sent. Outside of the ministry the only functionary in England who can tie the knot-matrimonia is the district regis trar. But it costs quite sum, and in- wolves a special license to get spliced in a private way before an official of this kind, and this, of course, is one reason why all but a small proportion of those launching out into the uncertain sea of Wedlock, do so from some religious all tar There is, however, another reason, viz, the ingrained conviction of the English, due to inmemorial usage, that to be married elsewhere than in some house of worship is to cheat the Su- preme Being and give a dangerous ad- vantage to the devil. And it is owing to similar superstition that the lions share of English weddings are celebra- ted in churches rather than in chapels. Many even of those who statedly wor- ship in chapels would think state church the more suitable place for a, service, and the state helps this semi-superstitious notion by mak- ing chapel weddings difficult and church weddings easy At a chapel wedding, for instance, the registrar must have q part, as well as the minister, whereas at church weddings the clergyman is legally authorized to tie the knot all by himself.
 Every year two thousand persons are married in London who can neither read nor write This is somewhat strange, that for thirty years com- pulsory educational law has been in force. But up to a recent date the trou- ble with this law was that it compelled tr ,oip phi to s-pt and to pay for sending them. Only a few pence per child were exacted, but in thousands of London families pence were as prohibitive as pounds would have been, and the magistrates for a long time brought the law to bear in such cases very leniently. Elementary education is now free and the percent age of adult illiterates is likely to drop. < But it will always be greater in vast . like London than in smaller . places, Just as a big city is the safest | place for criminals to hide in, so it nat ! urally affords the best cover for minor offenders against the law. To-day, in spite of compulsory education, of free 1inners to neeessitous little ones and of . free tuition there are in London more
 
 school age not entered on any school register The school census is nearly million, the attendance not more than eight hundred thousand.
 Upon the bosom of this great city's fife there are laid yearly one hundred md thirty thousand tiny mites of ex- humanity. There are al ways more boys born than girls, and hose who know the prevalence of ille- yitimacy and other evils pathetically observe that out of these one hundred md thirty thousand new arrivals, at east five thousand are neither wanted TOT welcomed, It is, perhaps, just as veil that within two years of their oming to town thirty thousand of hese tiny additions to the biggest city m earth go to better place than Lon lon, narrowing though it is to think low many of them die from overlaying md neglect. Forty thousand people cave London annually for residence elsewhere and eighty-siX thousand go rom it to their long home, Yet the births and the large influx from the ountry so overwhelmingly swamp this rain that it's population increases by bout forty thousand a year, and from aVing been less than million a cen ury ago, is now six million six hundred  The birth rate in London last year