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lived with her lover until pregnant and then married him; she was always strictly faithful to him while living with him, but if no pregnancy occurred the couple might decide that they were not meant for each other, and break off relations. The result was that for a long period of years no illegitimate children were born, and few marriages were childless. But when the Portland stone trade was developed, the workmen imported from London took advantage of the "island custom," but refused to fulfil the obligation of marriage when pregnancy occurred. The custom consequently fell into disuse (see, e.g., translator's note to Bloch's _Sexual Life of Our Time_, p. 237, and the quotation there given from Hutchins, _History and Antiquities of Dorset_, vol. ii, p. 820). It is, however, by no means only in rural districts, but in great cities also that marriages are at the outset free unions. Thus in Paris Despres stated more than thirty years ago (_La Prostitution a Paris_, p. 137) that in an average arrondissement nine out of ten legal marriages are the consolidation of a free union; though, while that was an average, in a few arrondissements it was only three out of ten. Much the same conditions prevail in Paris to-day; at least half the marriages, it is stated, are of this kind. In Teutonic lands the custom of free unions is very ancient and well-established. Thus in Sweden, Ellen Key states (_Liebe und Ehe_, p. 123), the majority of the population begin married life in this way. The arrangement is found to be beneficial, and "marital fidelity is as great as pre-marital freedom is unbounded." In Denmark, also, a large number of children are conceived before the unions of the parents are legalized (Rubin and Westergaard, quoted by Gaedeken, _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, Feb. 15, 1909). In Germany not only is the proportion of illegitimate births very high, since in Berlin it is 17 per cent., and in some towns very much higher, but ante-nuptial conceptions take place in nearly half the marriages, and sometimes in the majority. Thus in Berlin more than 40 per cent, of all legitimate firstborn children are conceived before marriage, while in some rural provinces (where the proportion of illegitimate births is lower) the percentage of marriages following ante-nuptial c
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