Since there's no help, come let us kiss & part...

My father prefers a funeral to a wedding. This isn't out of Scroogely soorness. He finds consignment rituals more sincere than the puff and forced jollity of nuptials, with their clutter of disconnected relatives and rather ghastly tendency to turn into an apotheosis of me.  If you share this leery attitude towards weddings, you can cheer up your early New Year with these Divorces and Dissolutions in Scotland 2009-2010 statistics, published just before Christmas, narrating the nation's ends of love.  As with the other official statistics I've plucked out here before, the very ubiquity of marriage and perceptions about divorce rates can bely their actual incidence.  To put the subsequent figures in context, early last year, statisticians confirmed that 27,524 weddings took place in Scotland in 2009, down from the 28,903 marital bonds which were forged in 2008. With the institution of same-sex civil partnerships, marriage statistics - formed and - are now supplemented by new information. So how many folk have availed themselves of the chance to form civil partnerships in Scotland? A little digging reveals that since the Civil Partnership Act 2004 came into force in early December 2005, the official statistics are as follows:

• 2005 ~ 84 partnerships (53 male & 31 female).
• 2006 ~ 1,074 partnerships (580 male & 467 female).
• 2007 ~ 688 partnerships (339 male & 349 female).
• 2008 ~ 525 partnerships (245 male & 280 female).
• 2009 ~ 498 partnerships (219 male & 279 female).

So how many of these marriages and partnerships unravelled last year? Best guesses, ladies and gentlemen? According to the bulletin, 10,173 divorces were granted in 2009/10. To contextualise the figures a little, this is 10% fewer than in 2008-09 and represents the lowest number of divorces to be granted the last decade.  27 civil partnerships were dissolved 2009-10, up from 17 in 2008-09. The first dissolutions of civil partnerships occurred in 2007-08, with two partnerships ending in that year. In total, since their inception in 2005, 46 same-sex civil partnerships have been dissolved.  Below you can see how the the number of Scottish divorces has changed across the last ten years:

The bulletin also contains these two interesting  graphs. The first records the age at which those who were divorces this year got married.

By contrast, here is the distribution of 2009/10's divorcees, by their age at divorce.

Historically, the General Register Office for Scotland has recorded the number of divorces granted by our Courts, having now accrued over 150 years worth of data. From a handful in 1855, it was not until 1878 that more than 50 divorces were granted. If we stick to our decimal prejudices, we see that the number of Scottish divorces hit three figures for the first time in 1888, four figures in 1942 and five in 1980. Interestingly, the highest ever number of divorces was recorded in 1985 with 13,365. Fascinating, how these demographics have shifted over time and how generations have echoed Michael Drayton's lines from The Parting:

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part ~

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;

And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,

That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,

And when we meet at any time again,

Be it not seen in either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain.

For those with a fierce interest in the topic and the marches and countermarches of marital concord through the years, here are the official divorce statistics for Scotland from 1855 to 2009, rendered as a graph of my own hasty construction, following the helpful suggestion of a diagrammatically minded reader. Those looking for the original figures published here can find them below or as a .pdf on the General Register Office for Scotland website.

Year	Divorces
1855	11
1856	16
1857	18
1858	12
1859	24
1860	23
1861	27
1862	26
1863	9
1864	2
1865	4
1866	4
1867	5
1868	13
1869	7
1870	17
1871	11
1872	12
1873	25
1874	38
1875	33
1876	40
1877	29
1878	66
1879	55
1880	80
1881	71
1882	69
1883	65
1884	87
1885	76
1886	97
1887	80
1888	107
1889	100
1890	87
1891	107
1892	118
1893	112
1894	120
1895	117
1896	133
1897	142
1898	135
1899	176
1900	144
1901	158
1902	204
1903	194
1904	182
1905	167
1906	173
1907	200
1908	189
1909	192
1910	223
1911	234
1912	249
1913	250
1914	347
1915	242
1916	267
1917	297
1918	485
1919	829
1920	776
1921	500
1922	382
1923	363
1924	438
1925	451
1926	425
1927	474
1928	504
1929	519
1930	469
1931	569
1932	488
1933	510
1934	468
1935	498
1936	642
1937	649
1938	789
1939	890
1940	782
1941	764
1942	1,020
1943	1,317
1944	1,739
1945	2,227
1946	2,934
1947	2,533
1948	2,057
1949	2,447
1950	2,204
1951	1,955
1952	2,737
1953	2,376
1954	2,226
1955	2,078
1956	1,891
1957	1,747
1958	1,791
1959	1,704
1960	1,828
1961	1,830
1962	2,042
1963	2,245
1964	2,455
1965	2,691
1966	3,576
1967	3,038
1968	4,803
1969	4,246
1970	4,618
1971	4,812
1972	5,531
1973	7,135
1974	7,221
1975	8,319
1976	8,692
1977	8,823
1978	8,458
1979	8,837
1980	10,530
1981	9,895
1982	11,288
1983	13,238
1984	11,915
1985	13,365
1986	12,841
1987	12,123
1988	11,473
1989	11,634
1990	12,281
1991	12,400
1992	12,487
1993	13,292
1994	12,601
1995	12,292
1996	12,313
1997	12,241
1998	12,354
1999	11,872
2000	11,139
2001	10,651
2002	10,860
2003	10,864
2004	11,275
2005	10,913
2006	13,076
2007	12,813
2008	11,513
2009	10,371