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150
II. TH B SWEDISH PEOPLE.
Respecting the moral condition of the city of Stockholm,
exceedingly gloomy descriptions are not seldom to he found in foreign
literature. When these accounts do not contain actual inaccuracies or
exaggerations, it may be taken as a rule that they are based upon
the conditions of earlier periods and that they altogether neglect the
changes for the better which have taken place during the last few
decades.
In the years 1851/60, 43*4 % of the children born alive in Stockholm were
born out of wedlock; in the years 1891/95 this percentage had fallen to 28’6.
To every thousand unmarried women, in the ages 20/45 years, there correspond
now in Stockholm about 62 illegitimate births annually; we may recall the fact
that the mean figure for the whole of Western Austria is 66, and we will add that
for Bavaria it is 72, and for the kingdom of Saxony 90. Respecting Stockholm
it. should also be remarked that no small number of the total of mothers giving
birth to illegitimate children, consists of women who have betaken themselves to
the capital merely for concealment of birth. — The number of still-born children
in Stockholm has fallen from 55’5 °/w>, for the years 1856/60, to 28"7 °/oo, for the
years 1891/95. We have before mentioned the decline in the number of
prostitutes. — As concerns the consumption of spirits, it may be mentioned that
when, in 1877, the sale of alcohol was taken over by a company, in accordance
with the «Gothenbfirg system», it disposed of about 13 litres of alcohol per head
of the Stockholm population during its first year of activity, while nowadays it
sells but 8 litres per head. And in the years 1871/75 there were treated in
the city 32 cases, per hundred thousand inh., of alcoholic diseases, while for
the years 1891/95, the figure was but 18.
That the death-rate in Stockholm has undergone an unparalleled diminution,
has been already mentioned. For the years 1851/60 the whole death-rate
amounted to 41’5 °/oo annually; for the years 1891/95 it was but 20 °/oo, and for
1896/1900, about 18°/oo. Only few great cities can nowadays compete with
Stockholm in lowness of death-rate. — Finally, it may be added that during the
last few decades both the frequency and the fecundity of marriage have increased.
If it be also remembered that, during the last fifty years, the population
of Stockholm has trebled in numbers, and that its administration and public
institutions of all kinds have, during this period, reached a standpoint which has
often been acknowledged as exemplary, it may with truth be said that the capital
of Sweden is, nowadays, something quite different to what it was during the first
half of the century, and that a work of reform and regeneration has been carried
out, to which for scope and strength it would be difficult to find a parallel.
Criminality.
Of all the branches of statistics, there is assuredly none of which
the results are so difficult to judge correctly as criminal statistics, and
yet investigation is compelled to return to it, over and over again, to
endeavour to gain at least some light upon the gloomy problems
presented by it to the human race. Concerning the statistics of
criminality in Sweden, some chief data for older and newer periods are
collected in Table 28. These figures are, no doubt, both fallacious and
not fully commensurable with each other, but they give, in any case,
the best information that can be gained on the subject.
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