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XXXIV.—On the Variations of the Fertility and Fecundity of Women according to Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2013

J. Matthews Duncan
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Extract

In 1855, when the systematic registration of births in Scotland was established, the schedule used exacted from the public a variety of interesting details in connection with each return,—a circumstance which gives to the registers for that year an extraordinary value. For, in consequence, I believe, of numerous complaints regarding the irksome labour of filling up the document, it was discontinued, and a much less comprehensive schedule has been in use ever since. It is from the registers of births for 1855 that I have extracted almost all the data which have yielded the results I am now about to communicate. Similar data cannot be found in the subsequent registers. The great value of these registers has been distinctly pointed out by Dr Stark, the able assistant to the Registrar-General. I must here acknowledge, with grateful thanks, the assistance and encouragement I have received from Mr Seton and other officials of the Register-House.

Type
Research Article
Information
Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , 1864 , pp. 475 - 490
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1864

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References

page 476 note * See Granville, , Transactions of Obstetrical Society of London, vol. ii.Google Scholar

page 480 note * Vol. ii. p. 582.

page 482 note * In this table, the actual numbers are given as nearly as possible.

The numbers of wives have been arrived at in the following way. We have the population of Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1851 and 1861, and, by calculation, estimate the population in 1855. We have the actual numbers of wives of different ages in 1861, and by an easy calculation of proportions we reduce the numbers of wives of different ages to the numbersgiven for 1855.

The number of wives-mothers extracted from the registers of 1855, is 16,301, bearing 16,500 legitimate children. But the Registrar-General's Reports state the number of children as 16,593. Hence it appears that 93 births are omitted in the extracts. These omissions were made on account of manifest carelessness and inaccuracy in the registers. To these 93 births, corresponds the number of 92 mothers, one being deducted for a twin case. These 92 mothers have been added proportionally to the others, in order to make up the total of 16,393.

page 482 note † The actual number of wives-mothers in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1855 was 16,393. This figure is in the text reduced to 16,386, and seven wives-mothers omitted, because these seven were altogether exceptional, occurring as they did between the ages of 50 and 57, and could only damage the statement of results.

page 483 note * The data at my disposal enable me to give the figures for each year of age up to 20. But the numbers are so small, that little value can be placed on the results drawn from them. They seem to me to indicate that the fecundity of the mass of married women is probably highest shortly after the age of 20 is reached. For although the low fecundity of one in 2.57 at twenty years of age, is absorbed in Table VII. in the period from 20 to 24, yet this latter period shows, on the whole, the higher fecundity of 2.4.

page 485 note * The number of wives married at different ages in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1855, is arrived at in the following manner. The marriages in Scotland in 1855 were 19,680. The marriages in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1855 were 4447. The distribution of the 19,680, according to age at marriage, is given at p. 22 of the Registrar-General's Annual Report for 1861. This distribution requires a correction for the number whose ages at marriage were not known. Calculating on the ages of the whole 19,680, the proportional distribution of the 4447 married in Edinburgh and Glasgow isfound to be as in the table above.

page 488 note * This Table is not prepared so as to show anything more than is described in the text. Especially the figures in one horizontal line shouldnot be compared with those in another horizontal line. To permit this, the table requires large corrections for deaths.

page 489 note * Physiologie, tom. ii. page 117.Google Scholar