The following table, taken from Berhand’s minute on Copenhagen, shows the working of the system there for seven years. The most remarkable feature is the large number who married or went to service, which would seem to indicate a more charitable feeling on the part of the Danes than is usually evinced toward these unfortunates:
| Years. | Prostitutes registered. | Prostitutes abandoned their calling. | |||||||||
| At commencement of the year. | During the year. | Total. | Went to service. | Transferred to the commission for the Poor. | Sent to Prison. | Married. | Left the Country. | Died. | Committed Suicide. | Total. | |
| 1844 | 297 | 34 | 331 | 20 | 13 | 1 | 16 | 2 | 7 | 4 | 63 |
| 1845 | 284 | 43 | 327 | 14 | 27 | — | 24 | 4 | 3 | — | 77 |
| 1846 | 256 | 18 | 274 | 15 | 16 | 2 | 13 | 1 | 2 | — | 49 |
| 1847 | 241 | 22 | 263 | 20 | 17 | 1 | 17 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 62 |
| 1848 | 116 | 27 | 143 | 15 | 16 | 1 | 16 | 2 | 7 | — | 51 |
| 1849 | 208 | 19 | 227 | 17 | 10 | 1 | 9 | — | 6 | 1 | 44 |
| 1850 | 196 | 23 | 219 | 18 | 7 | 1 | 1 | — | — | — | 27 |
By a code of 1734, promises of marriage might be either verbal in the presence of witnesses, or written and certified by two witnesses. Widows acting against the consent of their guardians, and women of bad repute, were excluded from the benefit of this code. A servant pregnant by her master, her master’s son, or any one domiciled in her master’s house, could not plead a promise of marriage. Corroborative testimony was sometimes required in affiliation cases, where the putative father denied his liability on oath.
Divorce was allowed on simple abandonment for seven years; desertion for three years; in case of sentence of perpetual imprisonment; of ante-nuptial impotence; of ante-nuptial venereal disease; of insanity; and of adultery. Divorce by mutual consent might also take place, but three years’ separation from bed and board was requisite as a preliminary. The king had a prerogative of divorce, without cause shown.
Illegitimate children were to be supported by their father until two years old, according to his rank in life. They could not inherit the paternal property, but might take the mother’s. They could be legitimatized by subsequent marriage or adoption.
Infanticide was punished by beheading, and exhibiting the head of the criminal on a spike.
Adultery is punished by law in both husband and wife. Practically it is seldom noticed.
In 1834 a new ordinance was proclaimed fixing all the minutiæ of marriage contracts, parental obligations, and the general laws of sexual intercourse. A man is a minor until eighteen, and under some degree of parental authority to twenty-five, at which age he becomes a citizen. The woman is under tutelage all her life. Guardians are assigned to widows, who control their legal powers, but a widow may choose her own guardian. The laws of divorce are similar to those of France. The practice of formal betrothal is as common in Denmark as in Northern Germany, and implies a real and binding engagement, not to be broken without cause shown, or without discredit to one or both parties. Whether this custom favors illegitimacy is still a disputed point in Denmark.