Literacy

Edward Higgs

The system for the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths was set up in England and Wales by the 1836 Births and Deaths Registration, and Marriages, Acts (6 & 7 Will. 4, cc.86 and 85). Births and deaths were to be registered by householders and next of kin with local registrars. Clergy officiating at marriages were to keep a register of such events, and send copies of this to the local superintendent registrar on a quarterly basis. Local registrars were to keep copies of these certificates in their local registers. Duplicates of the entries in the registers were also to be sent to the central General Register Office (GRO) in London, which was to have a Registrar General at its head. The latter was to be responsible for the oversight of the local registration system, although the registrars were to be appointed by the local Poor Law guardians. The practice of civil marriage before registrars was also established. Scotland had a similar system of civil registration from 1855 onwards.

Under this system every register of marriage was to be signed by the couples marrying. Those who were able wrote their names, and those who were unable, or who wrote very imperfectly, made their marks. Under the system that preceded civil registration — the parochial registration of marriages by the clergy of the Church of England established by Lord Harwicke's Marriage Act of 1753 (26 George II, c.33) — marriage registers had to be signed by the parties to the marriage and two witnesses (Schofield, 320). But differences in the preservation of local parish registers meant that there are gaps in the national coverage. The establishment of a single civil system in 1836, and the concentration of marriage registration data in the GRO, meant that there was now a single, reliable database of information relating to the ability to sign the marriage register.

From his Second annual report the first Registrar General, Thomas Lister, began to comment on the numbers who signed the register as a means of showing 'the proportion among those married, who either cannot write at all, or write very imperfectly', and thus the state of education respecting writing (Second annual report of the Registrar General, 4). Recent historical research has confirmed that there appears to be a rough correlation between the proportions in a locality of those basically literate, as measured by marriage signatures, and the proportions previously at school there (Stephens, 267). Lister further observed on the basis of the marriage returns, that men were more literate than women, and that literacy rates varied by region, being highest in the Metropolis and lowest in Wales and Bedfordshire (Second annual report of the Registrar General, 6).

The fact that the relative rankings of the counties in 1840 were similar to those in 1839, indicated to Lister that the marriage signature data was a true reflection of relative local levels of literacy, although it may have under-estimated overall levels (Third annual report of the Registrar General, 8–9). That measures of literacy improved steadily over time was also seen by the Registrar General, and by subsequent scholars, as further proof of the reliability of the results (Stephens, 3). It has been suggested that the evidence of signatures was limited because the pressures surrounding the marriage ceremony might cause a literate bride or groom to make a mark out of nervousness, or out of fear of embarrassing an illiterate spouse. But the Registrar General did not think the problem serious, and the frequency of literate/illiterate marriages suggests that the issue of embarrassment was not as acute as observers sometimes suggested (Vincent, 17). Modern scholars such as W. B. Stephens and David Vincent have had sufficient confidence in the data to use it in their own studies as a rough proxy for literacy levels in the pre-First World War period (Stephens; Vincent).

Commentary on the signatures of marrying couples, and tables of relevant data, continued to be published regularly in the Annual reports, both in England and Wales, and in Scotland, after the 1840s. Over time, however, the amount of commentary gradually declined, ceasing entirely in England and Wales during World War I. Similarly, the regular tables showing the proportions of marks and signatures in each registration district ceased after 1884, the data only being given thereafter for the larger registration counties and divisions. This may possibly reflect the progressive decline of the use of marks in marriage registers, with 32.6 per cent of husbands and 48.9 per cent of wives being unable to sign in 1841–5, but only 0.8 per cent and 1.0 per cent respectively by 1914 (Seventy-seventh annual report of the Registrar General (1914), xiv). With the spread of compulsory schooling, the signing of the marriage register had become an inadequate indication of levels of functional literacy and education, and the analysis of the data was probably not worthwhile in the over-stretched conditions of the GRO in the late nineteenth century and during the Great War (Higgs, 90–128, 186).

REFERENCES

Edward Higgs, Life, death and statistics: civil registration, censuses and the work of the General Register Office, 1837–1952 (Hatfield, 2004).

Roger Schofield, 'The measure of literacy in pre-industrial England', in J. Goody, ed., Literacy in traditional societies (Cambridge, 1968), 311–35.

Second annual report of the Registrar General (1838–1839)], BPP 1840 XVII (263). [View this document: Second annual report of the registrar-general ]

Seventy-seventh annual report of the Registrar General (1914), BPP 1916 V (Cd.8206). [View this document: Seventy-seventh annual report of the registrar-general ]

W. B. Stephens, Education, literacy and society, 1830–70: the geography of diversity in provincial England (Manchester, 1987).

Third annual report of the Registrar General (1839-1840), BPP 1841 Session 2 VI (345). [View this document: Third annual report of the registrar-general]

David Vincent, Literacy and popular culture: England 1750–1914 (Cambridge, 1989).