CELIBACY AND THE SINGLE FEMALE

Celibacy and the single female

Celibacy and the single female

IT is to be regretted that the schedule of our English death-register does not afford the means for the calculation of such statistics as Dr. Bertillon has recently published, with a view to determining the relative effects of celibacy and marriage on the death-rates, and inversely on the health, of males and of females, at different ages in England.

The English registration schedule does indeed supply the data for ascertaining the relative rates of mortality among married and single women, but this inquiry has hitherto found no place in the reports of the Registrar-General.

With regard to males the English death-register gives no clue to civil condition at the time of their decease. This subject was, however, carefully and elaborately investigated by Dr. Stark in the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Annual Reports of the Registrar-General for Scotland (1861-4), the Scotch registration-schedule affording greater facilities (especially as regards the deaths of males) than does the English schedule. The conclusions at which Dr. Stark arrived did not materially differ from those recently published by Dr. Bertillon, and may be summarised in the following manner :-

In the Tenth Annual Report a table was published showing the deaths of married and unmarried men in Scotland during the two years 1863 and 1864, at each quinquennial period of age from twenty to one hundred, showing also the proportion of deaths at each group of ages to the numbers living at the same ages, both married and single. It may be stated that the widowers were in these calculations classed with the married men, and not with the unmarried men, which heading signified bachelors. We are not aware that similar investigations had been attempted previously to those of Dr. Stark, who found that "the influence of marriage on the mortality of the male sex, instead of being inappreciable, as generally assumed, is of a most potent kind." He further expressed himself convinced by his researches that "bachelorhood is more destructive to life than the most unwholesome trades, or than residence in an unhealthy house or district, where there has never been the most distant attempt at sanitary improvement of any kind." The table shows that during the two years 1863 and 1864 the annual rate of mortality in the whole of Scotland among husbands and widowers aged twenty to twenty-five did not, exceed 6'3 per 1000, whereas among the unmarried men of the same ages the rate was equal to 15-0 per 1000. Thus at these ages the proportional mortality among the comparatively small number of males married was considerably less than half that which prevailed among the far larger number of males who were unmarried at those ages. Marriage of men, especially at these early ages, may to some extent be taken as evidence of sound and vigorous health(Abbott, 2006).

It is a well-known fact that the rate of mortality among the insured, at every age, in the first year of their insurance is very considerably ...