It turned out that marriage between first-degree cousins more than doubles the chances of having a child with life-threatening defects. In order to be able to estimate what proportion of these marriages can be randomly attributed, I received the “Annual Report of the Chancellor General” for 1853, in which the frequency of the different surnames is indicated. I discovered here that almost 33,000 surnames were registered, and the fifty most common names included 18%. of the entire population. It seems that one in 73 is a Smith, one in 76 is a Jones, one in 115 is a Williams, one in 148 is a Taylor, one in 162 is a Davies, one in 174 is a Brown, and the last in the list is a Griffiths in 529. Now it is clear that in one of the 73 marriages, one of the parties will be a blacksmith, and if there was no reason to marry people of the same surname, there would be one of the 732 or 5,329 marriages in which both parties were Smith`s. Therefore, the probability of a Smith-Smith marriage by chance is similar to the probability of a Jones-Jones, Davies-Davies, and Griffiths-Griffiths marriage. And the sum of fifty of these breakups would give the probability of a fortuitous marriage between people of the same surname who possessed one of these fifty most common names. The sum of these fifty fractions I find 0.0009207 or 0.9207 per thousand. It could be pointed out, however, that if more than fifty common names were taken, this proportion would increase considerably.
I therefore drew a straight horizontal line, and at equal distance I erected ordinates proportional to The upper ends of these ordinates were in a curve of great regularity, remarkable as a rectangular hyperbola, of which my horizontal line was an asymptote; and the ordinate corresponding to Griffiths was extremely short. Noticing the great regularity of the curve, I continued it with one eye beyond the fiftieth name until it reasonably coincided with the asymptote, at a place where the one hundred and twenty-fifth name would have been, then I cut out the whole (drawn on thick paper) and the part corresponding to the fifty surnames. and the alleged party. It was found that the alleged addition weighs slightly more than one tenth of the other party; and since the probability of marriages of the same name is proportional to the areas divided, I think I can confidently say that in England and Wales there is about one marriage in a thousand in which the parties have the same surname and have not been affected by any relationship between them which brings them together. Now it will appear that much more than one marriage in a thousand is between people of the same surname; And since I do not claim to have obtained results of a comparable accuracy of 0.1%, I am entitled to say that marriages of the same name, when they take place, are due to the consanguinity of the parties. However, if it allowed such precision, the method followed would imply compensation for this disturbing cause. This does not mean that cousins who marry have not been criticized. If this is applied to the Pall Mall Gazette`s percentage of 1.25, we get 3.54% or 31/2% as the share of first-degree marriages in all middle-class marriages. If applied to the title of nobility, we get 4 1/2% and for the landed nobility 3 3/4% and for both together. In summary, the direct statistical method up to percentage, or only classes (1) and (2), composed of uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters, gives percentage, the indirect method percentage. However, there is reason to believe that the proportion among landing classes is actually higher.
There is a significant discrepancy between direct and indirect methods with regard to the proportion of marriages with the same name and marriages, making the results significantly invalid. OK, so it`s not really illegal, but the RAC reports that it would be if your feet were wet. Oh, for God`s sake, stop being disgusting and wear shoes. A BBC report spoke of Pakistanis in the UK, 55% of whom marry a first cousin. [222] Given the high rate of these marriages, many children are the result of repeated generations of marriages with first cousins.
