BOY AND GIRL MARRIAGES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 396, 23 May 1910, Page 8

BOY AND GIRL MARRIAGES

A CANKER AT THE HEART OF ENGLAND. A few d'ays since (writes a contributor to tihe Daily Express), as I entered a London police court—surely the saddest plate on earth— a, young girl was being charged with, disorderly conduct in the streets in the early hours of the morn-1 ing. She seemed to be a mere slip 01 a child, and, indeed, she gave her age as sixteen. But-Hind this is the serious fact which should make tttie most easygoing of people pause and reflect—she described! herself, and described iherslf truly—as a widow. Upon another occasion, when present at the same police court, I had heard a husband defend' himself upon a summons for maintenance. The complainant was hi© wife, wilio carried' a 'baby in iher anna. But—and here again is the cardinal feature of the situation—the 'husband was only eiigjhteen, and the wife and mother seventeen years of age. The story in this case was just the same odd story which is always cropping up in these dismal courts. They had married upon a combined capital of seven shillings and sixpence; the bits of rubbish they called furniture had been secured on the hire system by the payment of ia shilling on account; the girlwife knew nothing of the duty of the housekeeper—she could neither cook nor sew, nor iwiash, but she could, and did, lie in bed until the afternoon; and the lad, who had apparently married to secure 1 someone who would care for and conduct this most primitive and hopeless of homes, and ihad quickly discovered his dismal failure, cleared out of the place, and, as ia. fact, deserted her within three months of the ■marriage. iSuch a ghastly tale as this is no exception. There are hundreds—nay, there are thousands—of mob, marriages made every year. There are, to-day, in this great London of ours—this centre, mwe soy, of the world's civilisation—some 14,000 married persons who are under twenty yeans of age—Nor is it London alone which as to blame, In the gTeat provincial cities and in the huge industrial districts of .the Midlands and the North! .the same evil is spreading. There are in England and Wales alone 83,000 married persons who are under age. In London, here, we may tolerate or Mush for the wives land widows of fifteen and sixteen years, and the 10,000 wives and widows who aire under twenty. So, too, with the husbands who embrace matrimony rait sixteen and number thousands before they are twenty-one; but what of their influence on the England of to-morrow and of next year, and the year to follow? For, unfortunately, it is just those who are fleast able to earn a living who marry at the earliest ages. It is among the unskilled laborers that we find the premature husbands; among the thriftless girls the immature wives. The poverty areas exhibit this to demonstration. In Lambeth, for example, there are 200 married couples aged nineteen, 550 aged twenty, and 6500 aged twenty-one; in Islington 250 aged nineteen, 670 aged twenty, and 8000 aged twenty-one; while in Stepney there are #0 aged nineteen, 1000 aged twenty, and 10,000 aged twenty-one. What is the result of this linking or the young together in improvident and premature marriage? What other results can we expect to find than that which we do find ? In London's workhouses and in London's gaols you meet with these child-wives and boy-husbands. In the prisons, indeed, out of a total of 850 persons who are under ag«, more than 200 are married. Not only in the prisons and workhouses do they expiate their unhappy folly—though at the latest enquiry it wa9 found that all the husbands of sixteen were either in hospital or in gaol! But they separate ias readily as they come together, and with leas ceremony. Of the London husbands who a.re under age, more than 2000 are not living with their wives. Work at a distance may be responsible .or a percentage of these; but crime and poverty can claim the great majority. And both husbands and urives separate to form other alliances. Nor as I have already said, in London alone <loes this social error prevail. In Lancashire and Cheshire there are 10,000 married persons under age, in Yorkshire SOOO, and in the Midlands 7500. In fact, the provinces prove on analysis to be more reckless even than London, for while in the metropolis mole minors from, 4.5 per cent of the total marriages and female minors 16.5 per cent., in the provinces the male minors supply 5.5 par cent, and! the female minors'lß per cent, of the total marriages. What can be done to. stem this social disease—contracted in. improvidence and ignorance, developed in prisons, workhouses, and hospitals, and penetrating, with a cancerous growth throughout the I poorer classes of the country? Social .reformers 'bewail it; doctors point witu. warning fingers to the new generation such marriages iwill produce; and patriots fling up their hands in despair at the prospect. But still there remains hope. The most recent figures reveal a slight checik in the practice; slowly and ?m----perfectly education is making of the girl something of a housewife—but how slowly and imperfectly it does it!— technical training is being timidly oliered to m small percentage of the" young men, and the cleansing of the shims il at least a policy if not a practice. But, still, there remains this serious problem, hideously widespread, and as long as n stands unassailed, just so long must we admit that in this 'respect, as, indeed, in some other respects, we are a nation diseased. Is it not possible to take a leal out of the book of our Continental neighbors, and impose some legislative .restriction on those marriage, which, if they do not spell race-suicide, at least ensure race-decay?