ON 



THE STATISTICS 



OF 



MARRIAGES IN ENGLAND. 



BY 



S. M. DRACH, Esq., F.R.A.S. etc. 



To CLASSIFY deaths according to age has for upwards of a century 

 been deemed highly important for deducing a Law of Mortality, 

 that is, the Law of Extinction of the present generation. 



Equally valuable to the philosophic statist should be the 

 numerical law regulating the Continuity of our species : and 

 Tables exhibiting the proportion of persons marrying at various 

 ages may be regarded as contributing essential data on this sub- 

 ject. 



Acting on this idea, I have reduced the data furnished by 

 p. 26-7 of the Registrar-General's octavo Reports for 1851-55, 

 and herewith present the results, which show that annual same- 

 ness, insisted on by Prof. Quetelet ('De F Homme') as indicative of 

 Mathematical Law. I designate Bachelors, Widowers, and Hus- 

 bands by B, V, M ; and Spinsters, Widows (Relicts), and Wives 

 by S, R, F respectively. The male population of the age-limits 

 living by N,„, the female population by Ny, The class Bachelors 

 and Spinsters is noted as BS, and the total (Bachelors) married 

 by prefixing S 3 thus 2,B = B of BS and VS, &c. 



To ascertain how far the age-specified marriages represented 

 the total weddings, I computed Table I. : and as the resulting 

 ratio is 52 per cent., and 410875 weddings have in five years 

 been thus noted, this per-centagc and basal number enable us to 

 rely on the specified unions as exhibiting the true distribution by 



