Anthropometric measures of living standards and gender inequality in nineteenth-century Britain

Local Population Studies

Volumn , Issue 79, 2007, Pages 66-74

  Horrell, Sara ^a,b   Meredith, David ^c   Oxley, Deborah ^d,e  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

^b New Hall ^*  (United Kingdom)

^c UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES   (Australia)

^d UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^e ALL SOULS COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BODY MASS; GENDER DISPARITY; HEIGHT; LIVING STANDARD; NINETEENTH CENTURY; NUTRITIONAL STATUS; PUBLIC HEALTH; WEIGHT;

ANTHROPOMETRY; ARTICLE; FEMALE; HISTORY; HUMAN; MALE; PRISONER; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIOECONOMICS; UNITED KINGDOM;

ANTHROPOMETRY; FEMALE; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HUMANS; MALE; PREJUDICE; PRISONERS; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS;

EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 37249042638     PISSN: 01432974     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (44)

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4. Robert W. Fogel; Stanley L. Engerman; Roderick Floud; Gerald Friedman; Robert A. Margo; Kenneth Sokoloff; Richard H. Steckel, T. James Trussell; Georgia Villaflor; Kenneth W. Wachter, 'Secular changes in American and British stature and nutrition', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 14(1983), 445-81.
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6. See, for example, N.F.R. Crafts, 'Cliometrics, 1971-1986: a survey, Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2 (1987), 189.
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24. For more recent work, see C. Linares and S. Dejun, 'Body mass index and health among Union Army veterans: 1891-1905', Economics and Human Biology, 3 (2005), 367-87.
25. For a theory of technophysio evolution, see R.W. Fogel and D.L. Costa, 'A theory of technophysio evolution, with some implications for forecasting population, health care costs, and pension costs', Demography, 34 (1997), 49-66;
26. R.W. Fogel, The escape from hunger and premature death, 1700-2100: Europe, America, and the Third World (Cambridge, 2004).
27. S. Nicholas and D. Oxley, 'The living standards of women during the industrial revolution, 1795-1820', Economic History Review, 46 (1993), 723-49.
28. J. Humphries, 'Bread and a pennyworth of treacle: excess female mortality in England in the 1840s', Cambridge Journal of Economics, 15 (1991) 451-73;
29. K. McNay, J. Humphries and S. Klausen, 'Death and gender in Victorian England and Wales: comparisons with contemporary developing countries', Department of Applied Economics Working Paper 9801, Cambridge University (1998).
30. S. Horrell and D. Oxley, 'Crust or crumb?: intrahousehold resource allocation and male breadwinning in late Victorian Britain', Economic History Review, 52, (1999), 494-522.
31. R. Floud, 'Height, weight and body mass of the British population since 1820', National Bureau of Economic Research Historical Working Paper, 108 (1998).
32. B. Harris, 'Gender, height and mortality in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain: some preliminary reflections', in John Komdos and Joerg Baten eds, The biological standard of living in comparative perspective (Stuttgart, 1998), 443.
33. The National Archives (TNA), Prison Commission Series 2: PCOM2/230-289.
34. For notes on adjustments for clothing and shoes and details of how accurate the measurements taken were see S. Horrell, D. Meredith and D. Oxley 'Measuring misery: body mass among Victorian London's poor', Explorations in Economic History (forthcoming). We believe prisoners were weighed without clothing and thus err towards overstatement of weight if there exists a bias in our results.
35. In only 20 cases were prior convictions recorded for men.
36. Reproduced in H. Mayhew and J. Binny, The criminal prisons of London and scenes of prison life (London 1862),532.
37. P. King, 'The rise of juvenile delinquency in England 1780-1840', Past & Present, 160 (1998) 116-66;
38. H. Shore,'The idea of juvenile crime in 19th century England', History Today, 50(6) (2000), 21-7.
39. National Centre for Social Research, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Royal Free and University College Medical School, Health Survey for England 2003 (London 2004).
40. 2 respectively for men and women aged 19-64 years: tables 2.3 and 2.4 (includes Scotland and Wales).
41. This problem, if not identified, creates the impression of Irish men having greater mass than English men, as Irish men reached terminal height at an earlier age.
42. TNA, Prison Commission Series 4: PCOM4/50.
43. Unlike the Wandsworth women, the women for whom we have release licences were serious criminals. They were usually older, a median of 32 rather than 23 years old, and they had committed more serious crimes, from larceny to murder, and were imprisoned from between 5 years (53 per cent) and life (2.4 per cent). The mean duration of conviction was 8.64 years. However, these records provide some useful geographical and socio-economic comparisons. The women came from across the nation. They were convicted in, for instance, Middlesex, Durham, Liverpool and Worcester, among many other places: 16.5 per cent were born in London, 36.6 per cent were born in an industrial town, 20.5 per cent in a village, and most of the remainder were born in a small town, with a few born overseas. The women listed 77 different occupations: 23 per cent had no occupation. For those with an occupation popular ones were servant (8.1 per cent), charwoman (9.3 per cent), factory hand (9.7 per cent), hawker (7.7 per cent), laundress (6.8 per cent), prostitute (4 per cent), but they ranged up to professional occupations, such as a post office servant.
44. National Archives of Scotland, Home and Health Department series: HH21/ 39 Register of Criminal Prisoners in Paisley Prison.