Both the District and Maryland permit one party of a proposed marriage to take out a license without the consent or knowledge of the other. Sometimes overly-eager ones take out these licenses (which are published) as a means of bringing final pressure on the other person. Recently a 21-year-old Marine shot himself to death after a minister refused to marry him and an unwilling maiden who had not been aware a license was issued.
Washington men are the choosiest in the country when it comes to picking wives. The marriage rate is falling yearly. In 1950, 10,729 licenses were taken out compared to 10,885 the year before and 12,156 in 1948. Meanwhile other cities are reporting increases. These figures are even worse than they read. Many transients come to wed in the District, to avoid blood tests elsewhere or to boast they were hitched in the nation’s capital.
Medical
Osteopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths and other such unorthodox healers are permitted both in the District and Maryland and are allowed to precede their names with the honorific “Dr.” Many Washington residents from Los Angeles, the Southwest and the moronic regions where faith healers, layer-oners-of-hands, herb doctors and other such quacks are common, are now living in Washington and provide a boom market for the irregular curers.
One of Washington’s biggest medical problems is V.D., because of the shifting, transient nature of the population and the unusual Negro percentage. Last year, more than 16,000 cases of gonorrhea were reported, and 507 new cases of syphilis. Fifteen people died of unchecked syphilis.
Midday Manners
Both as a world capital and as an Eastern city, Washington’s manners and modes, on paper at least, could be supposed to resemble those of New York. But it is in a warmer belt and much of its resident population originated in other sections of the country, where habits are different, so some compromise of customs is common.
Washington women generally follow the New York style of not wearing hats. But the men wear lids all year around, even on the hottest days.
The women wear suits for daytime in winter and print dresses in summer. Men wear dark suits in winter, but, because of the deadly heat, don such tropical outfits as Palm Beach, seersucker, crash and linen in summer. Like most yokels, a sharp crease in the sleeve means a well-pressed suit.