The investigation of the Fabian Society of London brought to light the fact that “the decline in the birth-rate appears to be especially marked in places inhabited by the servant keeping class. The birth-rate of Bethnal Green--the district in London in which there are fewest non-Londoners and in which fewest of the inhabitants keep domestic servants fell off between 1881 and 1901 by twelve per cent and that of Hampstead, where most domestic servants are kept, fell off by no less than 36 per cent. The birth-rate for 1901 of five separate groups of metropolitan boroughs arranged in grades of average poverty gave the following interesting result. The small group of three ‘rich’ boroughs have, for 100,000 population 2,004 legitimate births; the four groups comprising 19 intermediate boroughs have almost identical legitimate birth-rate between 2,362 to 2,490 for 100,000 whilst the poorest group of 7 boroughs has a legitimate birth-rate of no less than 3,078, or 50 per cent more than that in the ‘rich’ quarters.”[90] The pathological reason for the decline in the birth-rate is presented by The National League for the Protection of the Family. “Since the discovery of the germ of what was formerly considered the milder and less harmful of the two chief sexual diseases, and more especially since the numerous ramifications and effects of this milder form, hitherto little suspected to exist, have been found and studied, there has been a strong tendency towards agreement among medical authorities that this disease is the real cause of a large part of the decline in the birth-rate everywhere. While the difficulty of getting accurate statistics on the subject is fully recognized by the authorities upon it, they seem to agree that nearly or quite one-half of the cases of sterility among the married are due to this milder of the two diseases, and some would put it much higher. The more recent investigations also go to show, so the medical authorities say, that a large number of what they call ‘one-child marriages’ must be accounted for by the effects of this milder of the two diseases.”[91] Thorndyke suggests that the opinion that the decline in the birth-rate is psychological rather than physiological may be “as wide of the mark as the common belief that unwillingness is the main cause of the failure of the women of the better classes to nurse their children”. As a contradiction of natural selection, he says, “I may suggest that the existence, amount and result of the elimination of types by their failure to produce of their kind is after all a problem which only statistical inquiries can settle and that if the doctrine is to be used as an excuse for reading certain obvious facts in human history it is perhaps time that it should be questioned.”[92]