Where did all the people (or records) go? (General)

by jhopkins , Sunday, June 10, 2012, 23:39 (4551 days ago) @ Antipodean

My two bobs worth...

You would expect the number of marriage records to be much less than the number of baptisms for a number of reasons:
1. Child mortality being what it was in days past.
2. If people married within the Forest boundary (and most probably did prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine!) then the maximum number of marriages you could expect would be half the number of baptisms.
3. Migration - as an Antipodean like me, you may be aware of the large number of Foresters that migrated to Commonwealth countries and America (as well as internal migration to other parishes in Wales and England). Presumably many migrated prior to marriage, like two of my great aunts and uncles. NZ recruited a lot of single folks in an incessant search for workers (including servants, because hardly anyone who already lived here wanted to be anyone's slave). And there have been other threads on this forum talking about ancestors who migrated within Britain following work opportunities,
4. People not marrying. Presumably there would be a lot of people who did not want to, or could not afford to, or who could not find a suitable partner, or who did not attract an acceptable offer...

As for deaths - 3 above would have an impact there as well.

I wonder if there was much inward migration to the Forest that could have counterbalanced the above factors?