APPENDIX II.
That the customs of courtship in many parts of the United Kingdom at the
present day, are precisely what they were in some parts of New England,
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, fifty years ago, is evident from the
revelations of the _Royal Commission on the Marriage Laws_, in the year
1868. Dr. Strahan, a physician and surgeon, who for nearly forty years
has practiced in the Scottish county of Stirling, testifies before the
commission, that his attention was first drawn to the subject in
consequence of observing the very great extent of immorality among the
working classes, not only as evidenced by the large number of
illegitimate children, but also by the still larger number of marriages
after the woman was with child; and the number of children born within
eight months of wedlock. He found, to his astonishment, that among the
working classes (i.e., the agricultural laborers), nine out of ten
women, when married, either had had illegitimate children, or were
pregnant at the time of marriage. "I have," he says, "a large midwifery
practice, and I very rarely attend a woman with her first child, where
the child is not born within a few months of wedlock, or else she has
had an illegitimate child before.
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