The culture of the Abdomen: Obesity and reducing in Britain, circa 1900-1939

Journal of British Studies

Volumn 44, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 239-273

  Zweiniger Bargielowska, Ina ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846973871     PISSN: 00219371     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/427124     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (310)

1. F. A. Hornibrook, The Culture of the Abdomen: The Cure of Obesity and Constipation (London, 1924), captions of illustrations facing 11, 17
2. F. A. Hornibrook, Without Reserve (London, 1935), inside cover. Recommendations include Leonard Williams, Obesity (London, 1926), 135
3. W. F. Christie, Obesity: A Practical Handbook for Physicians (London, 1937), 180
4. The book is endorsed in a review of Christie's Obesity, British Medical Journal, 27 November 1937, 1071-2
5. and by A. H. Douthwaite, "The Treatment of Obesity," British Medical Journal, 15 August 1936, 344
6. A. P. Herbert, "Mr. Mafferty Keeps Fit," Punch, 2 February 1938, 116-17
7. Sandow's Magazine of Physical Culture (hereafter Sandow's Magazine), November 1900, 368-70, February 1901, 122-4
8. David Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the Beginnings of Body Building (Urbana, IL, 1994), 145, 147
9. Jane Tollerton, Ettie: A Life of Ettie Rout (Harmondsworth, 1992), 224-28, 242-43
10. Presidential Address, New Health, February 1927, 35
11. See Greta Jones, Social Hygiene in Twentieth Century Britain (London, 1986), 29, 50, 75, 81
12. T. B. Layton, Sir "William- Arbuttmot Pane: An Enquiry into the Mind and Influence of a Surgeon (Edinburgh and London, 1956), 123-24
13. National Service medical inspections of 2.5 million men, aged eighteen to forty-one, between November 1917 and October 1918 found that only 36 percent of men were graded Al or fully fit, and grade C3 (unfit for combat) accounted for 31 percent of men examined. See J. M. Winter, The Great War and the British People, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke, Hampshire, 2003), 50-59
14. Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain and the Great "War (Chicago, 1996), 171-75
15. Malcolm Morris, ed., The Book of Health (London, 1883)
16. James Cantlie, Degeneration amongst Londoners (London, 1885)
17. Lord Brabazon [Earl of Meath], ed., Prosperity or Pauperism? Physical, Industrial and Technical Training (London, 1888)
18. See G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency (Oxford, 1971)
19. Lyndsay Andrew Farrall, The Origins and Growth of the English Eugenics Movement, 1865-1925 (New York, 1985)
20. Simon Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860-1940 (Cambridge, 1996)
21. Richard A. Soloway, "Counting the Degenerates: The Statistics of Race Deterioration in Edwardian England," Journal of Contemporary History 17, no. 1 (1982): 137-64
22. Richard A. Soloway, Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Decline of the Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain (Chapel Hill, NC, 1990)
23. B. Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty: A Study of Town Life (London, 1901)
24. Helen Jones, Health and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (London, 1994)
25. John Burnett, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Diet in England from 1815 to the Present Day, 2nd rev. ed. (London, 1979)
26. Derek J. Oddy, From Plain Fare to Fusion Food: British Diet from the 1890s to the 1990s (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, NY, 2003)
27. David Vincent, Poor Citizens: The State and the Poor in Twentieth Century Britain (London, 1991)
28. Charles Webster, "Healthy or Hungry 30s," History Workshop Journal 13 (1982): 110-29
29. Jay Winter, "Unemployment, Nutrition and Infant Mortality in Britain, 1920-1950," in The Working Class in Modern British History: Essays in Honour of Henry Felling, ed. Jay Winter (Cambridge, 1983), 232-55
30. A. James Hammerton, "The English Weakness? Gender, Satire and 'Moral Manliness' in the Lower Middle Class, 1870-1920," in Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain, 1800-1940, ed. Alan Kidd and David Nichols (Manchester, 1999), 176
31. Pat Thane, Old Age in English History: Past Experiences, Present Issues (Oxford, 2000), 37-38, 59-62
32. James C. Whorton, Inner Hygiene: Constipation and the Pursuit of Health in Modern Society (New York, 2000)
33. Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, vol. 2 of The History of Sexuality (New York, 1985), 97-108
34. Thomas King Chambers, Corpulence; or Excess Fat in the Human Body (London, 1850)
35. Watson Bradshaw, On Corpulence (London, 1864)
36. William Harvey, On Corpulence in Relation to Disease: With Some Remarks on Diet (London, 1872)
37. Tomas Dutton, Obesity: Its Cause and Treatment (London, 1896)
38. Nathaniel Edward Yorke-Davies, Foods for the Fat: A Treatise on Corpulency, with Dietary for Its Cure (London, 1898)
39. Frank Trentmann, "Civilization and Its Discontents: English Neo-Romanticism and the Transformation of Anti-modernism in Twentieth-Century Western Culture, "Journal of Contemporary History 29 (1994): 583-625
40. Harold B. Segel, Body Ascendant: Modernism and the Physical Imperative (Baltimore, 1998)
41. John K. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (New York, 2001)
42. George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London, 1936), 179-81
43. William Banting, Letter on Corpulence (London, 1863)
44. Horace Fletcher, What Sense? Or Economic Nutrition (Chicago, 1898)
45. L. Margaret Barnett, "Fletcherism: The Chew-Chew Fad of the Edwardian Era," in Nutrition in Britain: Science, Scientists and Politics in the Twentieth Century, ed. David F. Smith (London, 1997), 6-28
46. Charles Roberts, A Manual of Anthropometry or a Guide to the Physical Examination and Measurement of the Human Body (London, 1878)
47. S. Rosenbaum, "100 Years of Heights and Weights," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, ser. A, 151, no. 2 (1988): 276-309
48. Bryan S. Turner, "The Discourse of Diet," Theory, Culture and Society 1 (1982): 23-32
49. and "The Government of the Body: Medical Regimens and the Rationalization of Diet," British Journal of Sociology 33 (1982): 254-69
50. Mike Featherstone, "The Body in Consumer Culture," Theory, Culture and Society 1 (1982): 18-33
51. Bryan S. Turner, The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 2nd ed. (London, 1996)
52. Michael Anton Budd, The Sculpture Machine: Physical Culture and Body Politics in the Age of Empire (New York, 1997)
53. Bourke, Dismembering the Male, 176-92
54. On a parallel German and American "life reform" movement, see Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890-1930 (Chicago, 2003)
55. James C. Whorton, Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reformers (Princeton, NT, 1982)
56. Department of Health, On the State of Public Health far the Year 1988 (London, 1989), 49
57. Department of Health and Social Security, On the State of Public Health for the Year 1986 (London, 1986), 31-32
58. Ray Fitzpatrick and Taraani Chandola, "Health," in Twentieth-Century British Social Trends, ed. A. H. Halsey and Josephine Webb (Houndmills, Basingstoke, 2000), 101-3
59. Jones, Health and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain
60. Anne Hardy, Health and Medicine in Britain since the 1860s (Basingstoke, 2001)
61. Avner Offer, "Body Weight and Self Control in the United States and Britain since the 1950s," Social History of Medicine 14, no. 1 (2001): 79-106
62. see also Oddy, Prom Plain Fare to Fusion Food, 194, 209, 211-12
63. Hillel Schwarz, Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies and Fat (New York, 1986)
64. Peter N. Stearns, Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West (New York, 1997)
65. Roberta R Seid, Never Too Thin: Why Women Are at War with Their Bodies (New York, 1989)
66. Martin Francis, "The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Masculinity," Historical Journal 45, no. 3 (2002): 652
67. J. A. Mangan and James Walvin, eds., Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940 (Manchester, 1987), 1
68. Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London and New York, 1994)
69. George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York, 1996), 12-13
70. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man
71. Mosse, Image of Man, 107-19
72. Sonya O. Rose, Which People's War? National Identity and Citizenship in Britain, 1939-1945 (Oxford, 2003), 154, 156, 159-68, 195-96
73. Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars (London, 1991), 6-11
74. Frank Mort, Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England since 1830 (London, 1987)
75. See Roderick Florid and Donald McCloskey, eds., The Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. 2, 1860s to the 1970s (Cambridge, 1981)
76. and The Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. 2, 1860s-1939, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1994)
77. Halsey and Webb, Twentieth-Century British Social Trends
78. Sean O'Connell, The Car and British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring, 1896-1939 (Manchester, 1998)
79. Avner Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford, 1989), 39-40
80. Burnett, Plenty and Want
81. D. J. Oddy, "Food, Drink and Nutrition," in The Cambridge Social "History of Britain 1750-1950, vol. 2, ed. F. M. L. Thompson (Cambridge, 1990)
82. Oddy, From Plain Fare to Fusion Food. On family budgets at different income levels see Rowntree, Poverty, for the turn of the century and Sir William Crawford and H. Broadley, The People's Food (London, 1938) for the 1930s
83. Roderick Floud, Kenneth Wachter, and Annabel Gregory, Height, Health and History: "Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750-1980 (Cambridge, 1990), 321, fig. 7.5; see 306-24 for summary of nutritional status, income and health trends from 1850 until 1980
84. John Stevenson and Chris Cook, The Slump (London, 1979), 8
85. See also John Stevenson, British Society, 1914-45 (London, 1984)
86. Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-1939 (London, 1940)
87. Rowntree, Poverty, Maud Pember Reeves, Round about a Pound a Week (London, 1913)
88. Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, Bxport, vol. 1, Parliamentary Papers, 1904, vol. 32, 92
89. Sir George Newman, The Building of a Nation's Health (London, 1939), 348. Newman served as chief medical officer from 1907 until 1935
90. Jones, Social Hygiene, 29, 46-47, 50, 75, 81
91. Layton, Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, 123-24
92. Whorton, Inner Hygiene, chap. 8 passim
93. Bourke, Dismembering the Male, 199, 204
94. Barbara Burman and Melissa Leventon, "The Men's Dress Reform Party, 1929-37," Costume 21 (1987): 75-87. Ar-buthnot Lane, seventy when he launched the society, was the New Health Society's main financial backer. It folded in 1937 when Lane withdrew from its activities at the age of eighty-two
95. Burman and Leventon, "Men's Dress Reform Party." I have no evidence of Hornibrook's involvement in the MDRP, but in his Physical Fitness in Middle Life (London, 1925), 81-83, Hornibrook condemns uncomfortable clothes, and particularly tight collars, belts, and shoes
96. Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, "Foreword," in Ettie Rout, Native Diet: With Numerous Practical Recipes (London, 1926), v
97. and "Women and the Race," in The Golden Health Library: A Complete Guide to Golden Health for Men and Women of All Ages, vol. 3, ed. William Arbuthnot Lane (London, 1930), 868
98. Rout, Native Diet, and Whole-Meal: With Practical Recipes (London, 1927)
99. S. Henning Beifrage, What's Best to Eat (London, 1926), 6 (dedicated to Lane)
100. Jean Frumusan, The Cure of Obesity (London, 1924; translated from French, originally published in 1922), 11-12
101. Leonard Williams, The Science and Art of Living (London, 1924), 9
102. Williams's Obesitywas reviewed favorably in the British Medical Journal, 25 September 1926, 564
103. and The Lancet, 11 September 1926, 560-61
104. Hans Bonde, "I. P. Muller: Danish Apostle of Health," International Journal of the History of Sport 8, no. 3 (1991): 347-69
105. Jorgen Peter Muller, My System: 15 Minutes Work a Day for Health's Sake, new rev. ed. (London, 1922), 32
106. Sandow's Magazine, January 1904, 56
107. Health and Strength, May 1906, 189-94
108. Bonde, "I. P. Muller: Danish Apostle of Health," 347
109. Jorgen Peter Muller, My Sun-Bathing and Fresh-Air System (London, 1927), 17-18
110. Hornibrook, Culture of the Abdomen, 14-17
111. Hornibrook, Physical Fitness in Middle Life, 29-30; emphasis in original
112. Budd, Sculpture Machine, 81-100
113. Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago, 1995), 25, 239, 23-31
114. Newman, Building of a Nation's Health, 270-71
115. Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship 7th ed. (London, 1913), 178; emphasis in original
116. For membership figures see John Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society; British Youth Movements, 1883-1940 (London, 1977), 138-39
117. Tammy M. Proctor, On My Honour: Guides and Scouts in Interwar Britain (Philadelphia, 2002), 35 cites slightly different figures
118. Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society, 138-39, chaps. 1, 2 passim
119. John Springhall, "Building Character in the British Boy: The Attempt to Extend Christian Manliness to Working-Class Adolescents, 1880-1914,"
120. and Allen Warren, "Popular Manliness: Baden Powell, Scouting and the Development of Manly Character," in Mangan and Walvin, Manliness and Morality, Michael Rosenthal, The Character Factory: Baden-Powell and the Origins of the Boy Scout Movement (New York, 1984)
121. On muscular Christianity see Bruce Haley, The Healthy Body in Victorian Culture (Cambridge, MA, 1978)
122. J. A. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School (London 1981)
123. On Newman's moralized medical ideology see Mort, Dangerous Sexualities, 175-79
124. Mariel Grant, "The National Health Campaigns of 1937-1938," in Cities, Class and Communication: Essays in Honour of Asa Briggs, ed. Derek Fraser (Hemel Hempstead, Herts, 1990), 216-33
125. and Propaganda and the Role of the State in Inter-war Britain (Oxford, 1994), 168-93
126. Anne Karpf, Doctoring the Media: The Reporting of Health and Medicine (London, 1988), 32-34
127. British Medical Association, Report of the Physical Education Committee (London, 1936), 1
128. Peter Bartrip, Themselves Writ Large: The British Medical Association, 1832-1966 (London, 1996), 205-10
129. For responses to the report see, British Medical Journal, 16 May 1936
130. The Lancet, 1936, 1: 928-29
131. Health and Strength, 9 May 1936, 545
132. Muller, editorial, Superman, June 1936, 225
133. The Times, 3 October 1936, 7, 12
134. see Grant, "The National Health Campaigns of 1937-1938," 217
135. Mullier, editorial, Superman, November 1936, 29
136. National Fitness Council for England and Wales, Report of the Grants Committee to the President of the Board of Education for the Period Ended 31 March 1939 (London, 1939), 5
137. Board of Education, Physical Training and Recreation (London, 1937)
138. Parliamentary Papers 1936-37, vol. 21
139. National Advisory Council and the Grants Committee for Physical Training and Recreation, National Fitness: The First Steps (London, 1937)
140. National Fitness Council, The National Fitness Campaign (London, 1939), 4-5, 24
141. The Nation's Health (London, 1937)
142. Reprinted from the National Health Number of The Times, 30 September 1937
143. Health and Strength, 26 February 1938, special supplement, reprint of His Majesty's speech at the Guildhall, before members of the National Fitness Council
144. W. F. Christie, British Medical Journal, 28 December 1929, 1198
145. see Graves and Hodge, The Long Week-End, 189-90, 230-31
146. Schwarz, Never Satisfied, 9-19
147. Turner, "The Discourse of Diet," and "The Government of the Body: Medical Regimens and the Rationalization of Diet." Pamphlets published following Banting's Letter include Bradshaw, On Corpulence, John Harvey, Corpulence: Its Diminution and Cure, Without Injury to Health (London, 1864)
148. and Banting's physician, William Harvey, On Corpulence in Relation to Disease
149. Fitzpatrick and Chandola, "Health," 101-3, 113
150. See Stearns, Fat History, 28-29, on the link between concern about obesity and the rise of degenerative diseases in the United States
151. Bartrip, Themselves Writ Large, 201-10
152. Oddy, Plain Fare to Fusion Food, chap. 6 passim
153. Smith, Nutrition in Britain
154. Joan Austoker and Linda Bryder, eds., Historical Perspectives on the Role of the MRC (Oxford, 1989)
155. Thomas King Chambers, Corpulence; Or Excess of Fat in the Human Body (London, 1850), 2-3, 12-14, 55-56, 73
156. Williams, Obesity, 4
157. W. F. Christie, Surplus Fat and How to Reduce It (Heinemann, 1927), 20-21, 24-25, 32-33
158. Herbert I. Coombes, "Obesity: Its Classification and Causation," British Medical Journal, 15 August 1936, 346-47
159. Dutton, Obesity, 5-7, 2-3
160. Coombes, "Obesity: Its Classification and Causation," 347
161. see also H. Gardiner-Hill, The Lancet, 16 February 1935, 378
162. Frumusan, The Cure of Obesity, 9
163. Williams, Obesity, 22, 29, 72
164. Christie, Surplus Fat, 1, 30
165. and Christie, Obesity: A Practical Handbook, 58
166. "Diet and Weight" (leading article), The Lancet, 14 October 1933, 871
167. See also E. P. Poulton, "Obesity," The Lancet, 17 October 1931, 854
168. C. G. Lambie, "Obesity: Aetiology and Metabolism," British Medical Journal, 9 November 1935, 885-889
169. "The Dangers of Thyroid Medication for the Obese," The Lancet, 3 January 1925, 36
170. A. H. Douthwaite, "On the Control of Obesity," British Medical Journal, 21 April 1934, 700
171. H. Gardiner-Hill, The Lancet, 17 October 1931, 855
172. W. F. Christie, The Lancet, 24 March 1934, 656
173. The Lancet, 24 March, 7 April 1934, 652, 746, 9 March, 18 and 25 May 1, 8, and 15 June 1935, 551-52, 1155, 1241, 1301, 1413
174. W. F. Christie, correspondence, The Lancet, 10 June 1935, 1301
175. Cecil Webb-Johnson, Why Be Fat? (London, 1923), 156-62
176. Thomas Inch, Inch on Fitness (London, 1923), 11, 121-23. Inch was a well-known physical culturalist and vice president of the Health and Strength League
177. Jorgen Peter Millier, My System for Ladies (London, 1911). My System for Ladies went through twenty editions with the final edition published in 1957
178. Christie, Surplus Fat, and Practical Handbook, 60
179. See Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, "The Body and Consumer Culture," in Women in Twentieth-century Britain, ed. Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (Harlow, 2001), 183-97
180. Catherine Horwood, "'Girls Who Arouse Dangerous Passions': Women and Bathing, 1900-1939," Women's History Review 9, no. 4 (2000)
181. Sheila Fletcher, Women First: The Female Tradition in English Physical Education, 1880-1980 (London, 1984)
182. Annette Kellermann, Physical Beauty: How to Keep It (New York, 1918), 12-16
183. On Kellermann see Angela Woollacott, To Try Her Fortune in London: Australian Women, Colonialism, and Modernity (Oxford, 2001), 191-94, 203-6
184. Helena Gent, Health and Beauty for Women and Girls: With a Series of Simple Home Exercises (London, 1909). Gent edited the "women's page" of Health and Strength before and after the war
185. Ettie Rout, Sex and Exercise: A Study of the Sex Function in Women and Its Relation to Exercise (London, 1925)
186. reissued in the 6th ed. as Stand Up and Slim Down: Being Restoration Exercises for Women with a Chapter on Food Selection in Constipation and Obesity (London, 1934). The book ran to nine editions and remained in print until the late 1950s
187. Mary Bagot Stack, Building the Body Beautiful: The Bagot Stack Stretch-and-Swing System (London, 1931), 3
188. See Prunella Stack, Zest for Life: Mary Bagot Stack and the League of Health and Beauty (London, 1988)
189. Jill J. Matthews, "'Building the Body Beautiful': The Femininity of Modernity," Australian Feminist Studies 5 (1987): 17-34
190. and "They Had Such a Lot of Fun: The Women's League of Health and Beauty," History Workshop Journal 30 (Autumn 1990): 22-54
191. Inch, Inch on Fitness, 13-15, 24-29
192. Compare Joyce L. Huff, "A 'Horror of Corpulence': Interrogating Bantingism and Mid-Nineteenth-Century Fat Phobia," in Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression, ed. Jana Evans Braziel and Kathleen LeBesco (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2001), 51, who suggests that in the nineteenth century the corpulent body suggested rampant, unchecked consumerism and the abuses of laissez-faire capitalism
193. See Burnett, Plenty and Want, 213-14, 221-39, on lavish middle-class dining before the war, and 307-21, on the interwar years
194. These figures are based on Atwater, see Rowntree, Poverty, 192
195. John Boyd Orr, Food, Health and Income: A Report on a Survey of Adequacy of Diet in Relation to Income (London, 1936), 32-33
196. Medical Research Council (hereafter MRC) [E. P. Cathcart and A. M. T. Murray], A Study of Nutrition: An Inquiry into the Diet of 154 Families of St Andrews, Special Reports Series No. 151 (London, 1931), 27, table 19
197. Boyd Orr, Food, Health and Income, 34, table 7, on food expenditure by income, 24
198. Crawford and Broadley, The People's Food, 154
199. MRC, Studies in Nutrition: An Inquiry into the Diet of Families in Cardiff and Reading, Special Reports Series No. 165 (London, 1932), 6
200. See Rosenbaum, "100 Years of Heights and Weights," 306
201. Offer, "Body Weight and Self-Control," 82, on a survey of working-class and unemployed men between 1929 and 1932 that found weights and heights to be below average
202. MRC, Diet of 154 Families of St Andrews, 24-26
203. On "luxury" consumption see Lambie, "Obesity: Aetiology and Metabolism," 887
204. Seid, Never Foo Thin, 100
205. Schwarz, Never Satisfied, 136, 193
206. For cartoons see, e.g., Christie, Surplus Fat, 32
207. W. F. Christie, "Corpulence," in Lane, Golden Health Library, 3:819
208. Henderson Howe, "Fat People Die Young," Health and Strength, 30 August 1919, 206
209. cartoons by W. K. Haselden published in Daily Mirror, Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature, University of Kent, http://library.kent.ac.uk/ cartoons
210. Men Only, launched in 1935, provides another good source
211. see also Douthwaite, "The Treatment of Obesity," 344
212. For discussion of childhood obesity, which was relatively rare, see The Lancet, 12 February 1921, 329
213. F. S. Langmead and Edwin G. B. Calvert, "Obesity in Children," The Lancet, 29 November 1924, 1111-16
214. R. W. B. Ellis and K. H. Tallerman, "Obesity in Childhood," The Lancet, 15 September 1934, 615-20
215. John Benson, Prime Time: A History of the Middle Aged in Twentieth-Century Britain (London and New York, 1997), 17, 12-18
216. Eugen Sandow, "Concerning Middle Age," Sandow's Magazine, November 1898, 325-28
217. and "The Meridian of Life," Sandow's Magazine, November 1900, 323-29
218. Sandow, Sandow's Magazine, November 1898, 325; November 1900, 326-29
219. Howe, "Fat People Die Young," 206
220. Benson, Prime Time, 9-12, 15, 16
221. George Orwell, "The Art of Donald McGill," in his Critical Essays (London, 1946), 91, 94-95
222. see Elfreda Buckland, The World of Donald McGill (Poole, Dorset, 1984), e.g., 63, plates 105-6
223. Orwell, "The Art of Donald"McGill," 95
224. George Orwell, Coming Up for Air (London, 1938), 3-5, 166
225. An interesting comparison from a slightly earlier period is Charles Footer, discussed in Hammerton, "The English Weakness."
226. Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier, 161-62, 19-20
227. Orwell, Coming Up for Air, 5
228. Christopher Breward, The Hidden Consumer: Masculinities, Fashion and City Life, 1860-1914 (Manchester, 1999)
229. Jill Greenfield, Sean O'Connell, and Chris Reid, "Gender, Consumer Culture and the Middle-Class Male, 1918-39," in Gender, Civic Culture, and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain, 1800-1940, ed. Alan Kidd and David Nicholls (Manchester, 1999), 183, 185-90
230. and "Fashioning Masculinity: Men Only, Consumption and the Development of Marketing in the 1930s," Twentieth Century British History 10, no. 4 (1999): 463-65, 470-72
231. Picture Post, 4, 18, 25 February and 4 March 1939
232. Men Only, May 1936, 145, see also August 1936, 141, January 1938, 135
233. Picture Post, 25 February 1939, 8
234. Men Only, November 1938, 151
235. Body belts were also marketed in Esquire, an American men's magazine launched in 1933; Stearns, Fat History, 99
236. Barnett, "Fletcherism: The Chew-Chew Fad," 9
237. Leonard Williams, Middle Age and Old Age (London, 1925), v-vii
238. see also Newman, The Building of a Nation's Health, 350
239. Dutton, Obesity, 10-11, 23-24
240. Williams, Obesity, 11, 36-7, 58; see 38-59 for a discussion of the various diseases linked with obesity
241. Williams, Science and Art of Living, 54
242. Muller, My System, 14, 26
243. Williams, Middle Age and Old Age, 9-10
244. See also Ernest Edward Claxton, Weight Reduction: Diet and Dishes (London, 1937), 17-18
245. Irving Fisher and Eugene Lyman Fisk, How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science, 9th ed. (New York and London, 1916), 213, 219, 30-32. Excess mortality stood at between 50 to 75 percent excess among the heaviest (fifty to eighty pounds overweight). How to Live, which went through twenty editions in Britain until 1938, became a standard hygiene text in U.S. high schools and colleges in the first half of the twentieth century
246. Seid, Never Too Thin, 85-87
247. Offer, First World War, 43-14
248. Ernest Bulmer, "The Menace of Obesity," British Medical Journal, 4 June 1932, 1024
249. Sander L. Gilman, Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery (Princeton, NJ, 1999), 98, 150-53, 231-35
250. on Greek aesthetics in Enlightenment Western male beauty ideals; see Matt Houlbrook, "Soldier Heroes and Rent Boys: Homosex, Masculinities, and Britishness in the Brigade of the Guards, circa 1900-1960," Journal of British Studies 42, no. 3 (2003): 356, 365-66, on guardsmen as an ideal of manly beauty
251. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man
252. Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent, Budd, The Sculpture Machine. Sandow inspired eulogies in physical culture magazines until the 1930s. There are several Web sites devoted to Sandow
253. Bonde, "Danish Apostle of Health," 148-50
254. Muller, My Sun-Bathing and Fresh Air System, 12-13
255. T. A. Lowe, "Keeping Fit," Men Only, August 1937, 66-69
256. Homibrook, Physical Fitness in Middle Life, 88
257. Eustace Chesser, Slimming for the Million: The New Treatment of Obesity: A Practical Guide for Patient and Physician (London, 1939), 115-16
258. Dutton, Obesity, 23-24
259. Donald Hunter, "Obesity," The Lancet, 28 October 1933, 994
260. Correspondence, British Medical Journal, 2 June 1934, 1007
261. see also Frank Miles, "The Safe Way to Reduce," Health and Strength, 1 April 1939, 490
262. Webb-Johnson, Why Be Fat?, 9, 17, 20-21
263. Claxton, Weight Reduction, 14
264. Christopher Howard, "In Defence of Rotundity," The Lancet, 11 November 1933, 1129
265. Donald Hunter (and F. B. Byrom), The Lancet, 25 November 1933, 1236
266. See, e.g., Susie Orbach, Fat Is a Feminist Issue: The Anti-diet Guide to Permanent Weight Loss (London, 1978)
267. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (New York, 1990.)
268. Franics, "Domestication of the Male," 643
269. O'Connell, and Reid, "Fashioning Masculinity," 467
270. Herbert, "Mr. Mafferty Keeps Fit," 116
271. Chesser, Slimming for the Million, 26
272. Woolf, Beauty Myth
273. Chesser, Slimming For the Million, 19
274. and Physical Fitness in Middle Life, 78-79; emphasis in original
275. Inch, Lnch on Fitness, 13-15, 16-17
276. Foucault, Use of Pleasure, 11
277. On conduct literature see Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse, eds., The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality (New York, 1987)
278. Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys, preface to 7th ed., viii
279. See Rosenthal, Character Factory, 13, on sales and influence of Baden-Powell as a writer
280. Proctor, On My Honour, 101-2
281. Frumusan, Cure of Obesity, 71
282. and Obesity, 77-91, 179-80
283. Claxton, Weight Reduction, vii, 41-47, 51-59, 62
284. The Lancet, 16 October 1937, 910
285. Philip B. Hawk, Streamline for Health (New York and London, 1935)
286. Lewis Robert Wolberg, The Psychology of Eating (New York and London, 1937)
287. The Lancet, 11 January 1936, 92, 29 January 1938, 267
288. and My Sun-Bathing and Fresh Air System, 67-69
289. Inch, Inch on Fitness, 30-32
290. Muller, My System, 24
291. Eugen Sandow, Strength and How to Obtain It (London, 1897); this was Sandow's most popular book, which went through several editions until 1922
292. Whorton, Inner Hygiene, xii, 79; see also 22-27, 77-79, 82-83
293. Layton, Sir William Arbutlmot Lane, 102
294. Williams, Middle Age and Old Age, 64, 282, was critical of this use of paraffin
295. See nn. 46 and 47 above. Rout, Sex and Exercise, discusses the dangers of constipation and the link with obesity along similar lines
296. Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys, 180, see also 181, 200-201; emphasis in original
297. Rosenbaum, "100 Years of Heights and Weights," 280
298. Office of Population Censuses and Surveys [Ian Knight], The Heights and Weights of Adults in Great Britain (London, 1984)
299. Barnett, "Fletcherism," 9
300. Banting, Letter, 29
301. Eugen Sandow, The Power of the Evidence: Reports on Patients Treated (London, 1919), 89-91
302. Hornibrook, Culture of the Abdomen, pictures facing 28
303. The Lancet, 27 April 1918, 611-12
304. Christie, Obesity: A Practical Handbook, 71-73, 85-86
305. Offer, "Body Weight and Self-Control," 102-3
306. Peter Dale, "Weigh Yourself Daily," Men Only, January 1937, 59-61
307. Ina Zweiniger Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption, 1939-1955 (Oxford, 2000)
308. Offer, "Body Weight and Self-Control," 82
309. Department of Health, Obesity: Reversing the Increasing Problem of Obesity in England (London, 1995), 5
310. Social Trends 29 (1999): 122, 33 (2003): 140