HALLAZGOS ESPECÍFICOS DEL ANÁLISIS DOCUMENTAL

Another view of the data is to examine the people who lived in the research area at a stated time, but not limit it to those who were born there. This enables comparisons with other studies that used census data. Figure 4-2 shows the percentage of all people aged 50 or more years who were present on the applicable census night in the research area who were never married42

. The census questions from 1851 onwards explicitly asked about each individual’s marriage status. For the earlier censuses, this was determined during reconstitution. Of individuals aged 50 years or more on census night in 1821 and 1841, fewer than 2% of men and 3% of women had a marital state unknown to the present author.

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 1821 1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 Census Year P ro p o rt io n A g e d 5 0 + y e a rs N e v e r M a rr ie d Males Females

Figure 4-2 : Stourton and Kilmington residents aged 50+ years, never married

42

1821 figures are for Stourton only as this census has not survived for Kilmington. The 1831 census for Stourton only named heads of households, which introduced a bias towards ever married people, so results for

Figure 4-2 shows that women who lived in the research area were more likely to reach the age of 50 years unmarried than men, with the single exception of the census year 1881. For men, with the exception of 1821, the proportion of those never married hovered between about 5 and 10 percent throughout the research period. For women there was much more variability, from a low of 8.8% in 1881 to a high of 21.0% in 1911.

How does this compare with the rest of England? Previous studies of the marriage rate have used the proportion of those aged 45-54 years enumerated on census night. Since marital status was only explicitly stated for each individual from the 1851 census onwards, the results are nationally available only from that year.

Table 4-2 : People aged 45-54 years, never married, 1851-1911: England (%)

Males Females England & Wales Stourton & Kilmington England & Wales Stourton & Kilmington 1851 11.4 8.7 12.4 16.4 1861 10.4 12.2 12.1 8.5 1871 9.6 4.5 12.2 7.3 1881 9.5 5.8 12.1 12.5 1891 9.9 9.7 12.5 23.1 1901 10.9 8.3 13.8 18.2 1911 11.9 15.4 16.0 22.7

England &Wales Source: (Wrigley and Schofield 1981:437) table 10.4,

data extracted from Registrar-General’s Reports for the appropriate years. Raw data for Stourton & Kilmington is at Table B-1 in Appendix B.

Exact binomial tests on each sex and year indicated no statistical difference between England & Wales on the one hand and Stourton & Kilmington on the other

Table 4-2 shows the percentage of never married men and women aged 45-54 years who were enumerated on each of the census nights between 1851 and 1911. With the exception

on 1861, there were lower proportions of unmarried men in this age group in Stourton and Kilmington than there were in England and Wales as a whole. On the other hand, with the exceptions of 1861 and 1871, there were higher proportions of unmarried women aged 45- 54 years in Stourton and Kilmington than there were nationally. Table 4-1 showed the proportion of people born in Stourton and Kilmington who reached 50 years of age unmarried, although they did not necessarily have to live in either of the parishes. Although Tables 4-1 and 4-2 are not directly comparable because they use different categories and the test results for table 4-2 are not statistically significant. Nevertheless, there is a pattern of women being more likely to die unmarried in Stourton and Kilmington than the rest of England and Wales, and men being less likely to do so.

One possible reason for the differences between the figures for this research area and that for England and Wales could be that women who never married, or who were likely to never marry, may have stayed in their parish of birth in higher proportions than women who married, or were likely to marry. This raises the question of whether more unmarried women were born in the parish in which they were enumerated than married women.

A previous study categorised people who were aged 45-54 years at the time of the 1851 census into those who were born in the parish in which they were enumerated (locally- born) and those born elsewhere (migrant) (Wrigley 1994). How did Stourton and Kilmington compare?

Table 4-3 : Never married at age 45-54 in 1851 census, by birthplace (%) Place of Birth Males Females England & Wales Stourton & Kilmington England & Wales Stourton & Kilmington Locally-born 11.2 7.4 15.6 29.6 Migrant 9.5 9.5 9.3 8.9

Source of England & Wales figures: Wrigley (1994:93)

Table 4-3 shows that on the night of the 1851 census, 29.6% of the locally-born women in Stourton and Kilmington who were aged 45-54 years were unmarried, whereas only 8.9% of the migrant women of this age were unmarried. For England and Wales the figures were 15.6% and 9.3%, also demonstrating a large difference between locally-born and migrant women. Women who remained in their parish of birth were less likely to marry. This could explain the differences between the ‘never married’ rates for the research area and England and Wales as whole (Table 4-2). Since few people moved into the research area, but many moved out during the 19th century (Section 2.6), the higher proportion of locally-born women in Stourton and Kilmington contributed to the higher rates of women remaining permanently unmarried in those parishes, compared to England and Wales as a whole.

For men in England and Wales there was very little difference between those locally-born and migrants, with the rates being 11.2% and 9.5% respectively. For Stourton and Kilmington, there was a difference in the opposite direction, but due to the small sample size (see Table B-1 in Appendix B), little emphasis can be placed on this. Suffice it to say that the large differences demonstrated between local and migrant women were not duplicated amongst men in Stourton and Kilmington.

The difference between the national level of those remaining permanently unmarried on the one hand and that for Stourton and Kilmington on the other (Table 4-2) also demonstrates the regional variation of marriage rate in England and Wales. A previous study has shown that in the 1861 census high proportions of men and women were unmarried in agricultural areas of northern England and Wales, whereas there were low proportions unmarried in rural areas of East Anglia and the East Midlands (Anderson 1976:59). Within each region there was variability between the sexes (Anderson 1976:59). Even in 1951 there were significant regional variations: only 5.2% of men aged 50-54 years living in West Yorkshire were unmarried compared to 11.0% in Wales (Registrar-General 1951:7-10).

Civil registration figures show the same regional variability as the census figures. The average annual marriage rate per 1,000 unmarried men aged 20-46 years in 1876-1885 varied from 154 per 1,000 eligible men in Bedfordshire to 80 per 1,000 in Herefordshire (Ogle 1890:267). The current research area is near the middle of this range, with rates of 111 for Wiltshire and 127 and 106 for the adjacent counties of Somerset and Dorset respectively (Ogle 1890:267).

In Germany the proportion ever married also varied widely by region, as each region had its own legal restrictions on marriage. As marriage laws were relaxed in the 1860s and 1870s the regions with the most restrictive laws saw an increase in proportion ever married. By the 1880s, the situation had stabilised. In 1885, for the German Reich as a whole, 86% of both men and women in the age group 35-39 years were ever married (Knodel 1966:288). Although both Germany and England showed significant regional variation in proportion

ever married, the English experience of differential marriage rates by sex was not reflected in the German experience.