Illegitimate Births seem, by common consent of most writers, to be classed with details of prostitution. In France, it is said by those who profess intimate local knowledge, there is almost a prejudice against marriage, although it can be performed as a legal ceremony. We think Bayle St. John states this fact. In the poorer districts of London, the east end, for example, it is notorious that numbers live in a state of concubinage. Again: in the country, and away from the dense population of towns, a woman of immoral habits may often be found who has had two or three illegitimate children by different men with whom she has cohabited. Such a woman would most probably have been a prostitute in a town; as it is, she is no better; still, she is not a prostitute for hire. But to proceed to details.

The number of illegitimate births in every thousand births in the various counties is as follows:

Cumberland 108
Norfolk 105
Hereford 100
Salop 99
Nottingham 91
Cheshire 89
Westmoreland 87
Suffolk 81
Derby 81
Berks 79
Leicester 79
North Wales 78
South Wales 72
York 71
Stafford 69
Sussex 68
Cambridge 66
Lincoln 64
Middlesex 40

Cumberland is a pastoral and mountainous county, with a thinly-settled population. Norfolk is an agricultural and grazing county, broken up into large farms. Neither county has many large towns. Stafford is a manufacturing county, with a long list of thickly-populated small towns, in which as great indigence and misery can be found as in any part of England. Middlesex contains London. Here, then, we see at once that illegitimacy and prostitution are not the same thing. Where there are no prostitutes there are bastards, but the women in the country are mostly employed; they are obliged to work in the fields, rough country labor, or in some domestic manufacture such as button-making, stocking-making, etc.

An apparent paradox may be here mentioned, although not intimately affecting these investigations. The preponderance of bastards is accompanied by a preponderance of early marriages. This has been accounted for by the theory that both are dependent on sexual instincts precociously or excessively stimulated, which seek marriage when practicable, or illicit intercourse where not.[309]

Illegitimacy is somewhat regulated by the disproportionate number of the sexes. In an excess of females there are few bastards; in an excess of males there are many. Upon this fact, unattended by qualifying circumstances, might be based an argument as to the innate sexual instinct in females. It might have been expected the relations would be somewhat different, namely, an increase of prostitution with an excess of men, but an increase of bastards with an excess of women.

The number of rapes in England seems to be governed by the excess of men over women. Where the number of illegitimate children exceeds the average, rape is less frequent.

The cases of abuse of children between the ages of ten and twelve are three in every ten million of the whole population. There is some difficulty in this matter, arising from a legal technicality on the subject of age. In any case, neither of the last items of criminality is of any value, inasmuch as they include only those cases judicially investigated and proved to conviction. Many are guilty, yet acquitted; and many more are never charged with the offense. Shame prevents parties prosecuting; or, in the case of children, the fact does not transpire, or else it is compromised.

Keeping a brothel is, as we have said, an offense at common law. We have a computation of the number of offenses of this kind based upon every ten million of the population. In Middlesex it was two hundred and ninety-six, in Lancashire one hundred and eighty-three. Both counties include the most populous towns in England. Lancashire contains Manchester and Liverpool. This fact also is of little value, owing to the peculiar administration of the law on the subject. Remote or indirect injuries to the public safety are not noticed in England. The police may be well aware of crime meditated and planned, and of the haunts of crime, but the theory of public justice is cure, not prevention.

Concealment of birth is an offense which, as it emanates from undue sexual intercourse, is generally associated with prostitution. In Hereford and other counties, the proportion of illegitimate births is eighty-eight out of every thousand born, and there were twenty-two concealments to every thousand bastards.