The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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2:24pm on Sunday, 31st March, 2013:
Comment
Some of the comments I've got back regarding my Lizzie Lott book 2 mention the fact that she's 15 and living in Victorian England. Shouldn't she be looking to get married soon?
Well, the modern perception of Victorians is that they did get married early by today's standatrds and so at age 15 Lizzie should indeed be starting to worry about being left on the shelf. I thought perhaps I ought to check, though.
So, what I did was look through my and my wife's family trees for ancestors who got married in the Victorian period. My lot are assorted agricultural labourers, coal miners, tailors and servants; my wife's are agricultural labourers, horse grooms and servants. Now I don't have complete trees for the period and some of the dates I have aren't necessarily exact, and there are some anomalies such as people marrying twice or not getting married at all, but I nevertheless have reasonable data for 47 individuals.
The breakdown is as follows.
Mine:
14 male ancestors aged 20-32, mean age at marriage 26.50.
15 female ancestors aged 19-28, mean age at marriage 24.27.
My wife's:
9 male ancestors aged 21-30, mean age at marriage 24.89.
9 female ancestors aged 17-29, mean age at marriage 22.67.
The average age at which they got married was 25.87 for men, 23.67 for women, 24.75 years overall.
Hmm. So it looks as if Lizzie doesn't have to make any hasty decisions, then.
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Copyright © 2013 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).