The Living Standards of Women during the Industrial Revolution, 1795-1820

Author(s): Stephen Nicholas and Deborah Oxley

Source: The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Nov., 1993), pp. 723-749
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Economic History Society
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 Economic History Review, XLVI, 4(I993), pp. 723-749

The living standards of women

during the industrial revolution,
I795I-82O0
By STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

Interest in the effects of industrialization on the living standards of English

women arises from two influential historiographical debates, one dealing
with working-class living standards generally, and the other concerned with
the changing position of women in the family and labour market as traditional
forms of production declined. Both debates are severely circumscribed by
their sources. The chief protagonists of the impact of industrialization on
working-class living standards remain polarized into the 'optimists' and the
Cpessimists'.2 The optimists' case for improving living standards of worke
during the industrial revolution rests on rising real wages of male workers
in the modern sector.3 Although Crafts's recent work revises post-1821
growth downwards, it has also uncovered substantial rises in real wages
between I78i and i82I, further bolstering the optimists' case.4 While it has
been assumed that the wages of women, self-employed workers, domestic
servants, and children correlate with the real wages of men in formal
employment, the pessimists have argued cogently that this assumption is
unwarranted.5 The shrinking traditional sector of the self-employed artisan
and cottage industry worker, who was often female, is evidence enough
that wage rates varied between the modern and traditional sectors. The
protagonists' reliance on real wage series which are incomplete, display
regional variations, and disguise gender differences in pay, makes it difficult
for either party to explain women's living standards.
Debate on the changing roles of women in the family and the labour
market has centred around the question of whether industrialization enhanced
or diminished the position of women. Again, opinion has been divided.
Marx and Engels forecast the disintegration of oppressive family obligatio
and John Stuart Mill argued that industrialization opened up more
economic opportunities for women than it did for men.6 In contrast, Mary

' We would like to thank Carol Bacchi, Dianne Betts, George Boyer, John Komlos, Joel Mokyr,
Richard Steckel, and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.
2 Crafts, 'Real wages'; idem, British economic growth; idem, 'English workers' real wages'; Botham and
Hunt, 'Wages in Britain'; Schwarz, 'Standard of living'; idem, 'Trends in real wages'; Von Tunzelmann,
'Trends in real wages'; Williamson, British capitalism; idem, 'Urban disamenities'; Williamson and
Lindert, 'English workers' living standards'.
3 Williamson and Lindert, 'English workers' living standards'.
4 Crafts, 'English workers' real wages', pp. I39-44.
Mokyr, 'Life in the pessimist case?', p. 87; idem, 'Industrial revolution been crowded out?', p. 317.
6 Marx and Engels, Manifesto, p. 56; Marx, Economic and philosophic manuscripts, p. i68; Mill,
Subjection.

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724 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor, Anna Wheeler, and William Thompson

believed that an unequal sharing of unpaid family responsibilities prevented
women from competing equally with men, intensifying female oppression
in an era of individual competition.7 Arguments by historians have split
along similar lines. The pessimists' case for a diminished role for women
emphasizes declining job opportunities, seasonal and intermittent employ-
ment, poor working conditions, unfavourable wage rates compared with
men, and increasing non-remunerated tasks, including marketing and
budgeting.8 Typical is Eisenstein's view that industrialization intensified
women's family roles, creating a sphere of women's work that was unpaid
when beyond the market place, and low paid when in it.9 More optimistic
historians believed that the impetus of technology, science, and medicine
freed women from biological constraints, opening up new job opportunities.'0
Pinchbeck argued that factories 'meant higher wages, better food and
clothing and an improved standard of living. This was especially so in the
case of women."' More recently, McKendrick pursued this positive theme,
suggesting that by engaging in industrial production women and children
earned their financial independence, boosting household disposable income
to a point adequate to support a consumer society.12
Both debates remain unresolved since hard evidence on women's wages
and their position in the family has not been easily found. Data on stature
offer a new source of information about women's living standards during
the industrial revolution. 13 To assess female living standards this article
employs data on the heights of English and Irish women and men transported
to New South Wales before i840. In section I, the reliability and
representativeness of our sample are tested. Section II explores the profile
and timing of changes in height, considering differences between urban and
rural, English and Irish, and female and male stature. Composition effects
and regional variations are tested in sections III and IV. The conclusion
summarizes how these data help to explain the gendered nature of economic
change during English industrialization.

There is a need for improved measures of living standards in the past.

Not only are data concerning traditional per caput income and real wages
inadequate or non-existent for women, but they also neglect morbidity,
unemployment, and physical exertion on the job. In the first anthropometric
history of the UK, Floud, Wachter, and Gregory regretted that they were

7Wollstonecraft, Vindication; Thompson, Appeal (inspired by Wheeler). Mill claimed that Taylor
was the real author of Enfranchisement of women, in Okin's introduction to Mill, Subjection, p. x.
8 Alexander, 'Women's work'; Snell, 'Agricultural seasonal unemployment'; idem, Annals; for a
discussion of marketing see Berg, Age of manufactures, pp. I59-75. For a review of the debate see
Thomas, 'Women and capitalism'.
9 Eisenstein, 'Capitalist patriarchy'.
10 Fox-Genovese, 'Placing women's history', pp. 2I-2.
" Pinchbeck, Women workers, p. 3II.
12 McKendrick, 'Home demand'.
13 Floud et al., Height, health and history.

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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, I795-I820 725

'able to say virtually nothing about the heights of women'. 14 The commonest
source of height data, military recruitment records, excludes women. Military
records are also plagued by minimum height standards which seriously
complicate estimation and interpretation.' Our data on women's heights
were taken from 2,926 English-born and 3,370 Irish-born females transported
from the UK to the penal colony of New South Wales between I826 and
i840.16 For comparative purposes, the heights of I2,528 English-born and
7,358 Irish-born males transported between i8I7 and i840 were also
analysed. The distributions of the heights of the male and female convicts
were free of truncation bias, a problem which typically infects army records
due to minimum height standards for recruits. The absence of truncation
in the lower tail and of overloading in the upper tail of the female height
distributions indicates the absence of any twisting or distortion of the
distributions. Jarque-Bera tests found that the male English and Irish and
female urban Irish distributions were normal or Gaussian, but the female
English and female rural Irish distribution were not. '7 The non normality
was due to heaping, the concentration of measurements at the whole or half
inch for the English females and rural Irish women. The height of females
was measured to the quarter inch, and the heaping was largely symmetrical
around the half inch. Heaping affects many studies of height, including
modern ones, and while not a desirable quality is not uncommon. 18
Simulations suggest that heaping on the half inch is a relatively minor
adverse effect in the estimation of mean heights because they tend to cancel
out one another. '9
The convict indents which accompanied each shipload of transportees
documented name, age, education, religion, marital status, number of
children, place of birth, up to four occupations, crime, place of trial, date,
sentence, and prior convictions, as well as height, for each individual. These
data allow the representativeness of the convicts to be assessed. The
occupational structure of the female convict sample was compared with the
female occupations in the I84i English and Irish censuses. Employing
Armstrong's social-skill classification as a common 'yardstick', 78 per cent
of English female convicts and 83 per cent of English women workers were
in the skilled and semi-skilled categories.20 Similarly, almost three-quarters
both of Irish women workers in the census and of convict women transported
from Ireland were skilled or semi-skilled. The predominance of skilled and
semi-skilled women among the convicts is not surprising since most women

14 Ibid., p. xx.
15 Komlos, 'Secular trends'.
16 State Archive Office of New South Wales 4/4003-40I9, Convict indents of prisoners transported
to New South Wales; 4/7076-7078, Irish indents and associated papers. The larger number of Irish
than English women transported to N.S.W. in our sample reflects transportation policy which sent Irish
female convicts to N.S.W., but split the English women transports between N.S.W. and Van Diemen's
Land (now Tasmania): Moore, 'Convicts of Van Diemen's Land', p. 4I.
17 The Jarque-Bera tests were: English urban females I4.70; English rural females I9.05; Irish
females 3.82; Irish rural females I2.I5 with a critical value at 95 per cent confidence of 5.i9. For the
male Jarque-Bera see Nicholas and Steckel, 'Heights and living standards'.
18 Fogel et al., 'Secular changes'.
'9 Steckel, 'Stature and living standards'.
20 Armstrong, 'Information about occupations'.

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726 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

Table I. Occupations of women convicts, 817-I840

Samplea Stock of skills

Occupation (per cent) (per cent)

Housemaid 28.4 20.2

Allworkc 25.4 i8.i
Kitchenmaid II.0 7.8
Nursemaid 9.7 6.9
Cook 8.7 6.2
Laundress 8.3 5.9
Dairymaid 7.5 5.4
Needlewoman 6.9 4.9
Country servant 5.6 4.0
Laundrymaid 3.9 2.8
Washerwoman 3.3 2.3
Children's maid 2.9 2.0
Country allworkc 2.2 i.6
Dressmaker i.8 I.3
Nurse I.3 0.9
General house servant I.0 0.7
Barmaid I.0 0.7
Farm labourer o.8 o.6
Housekeeper 0.5 0.4
Thorough servants 0.5 0.4
Other I0.5 6.9

Notes:
a Percentage of sample engaged in given occupation. Due to the listing of multiple occupations,
the total exceeds ioo%.
b Percentage of stock of skills (combined multiple job listings) accounted for by given occupation.
c Allworkers, also known as maids of all work, and thorough servants were workers, who,
because they were employed in single servant households, had to perform all of the duties
divided among specialist servants in larger households.
Source: convict indents.

convicts were employed in domestic service, classified mainly as a skilled

or semi-skilled occupation according to the Armstrong scheme. Unfortunately,
the aggregation of the skilled and semi-skilled occupations disguises the
complex distribution of female skills and trades. The problem lies with the
i84I censuses which lump together one-half of all working women into one
amorphous 'domestic servant' category. In contrast, the convict indents
provide a fine detail of women's occupations including over i6o distinct
jobs. In order to make comparisons with the I84I census, we were forced
to collapse most of these carefully listed trades of the English and Irish
convict women into one aggregate 'domestic servant' category, which
combined skilled and semi-skilled jobs. While this aggregation showed that
the convict data were broadly coincident with the I84I census, to assess
further the representativeness of our data the occupational variety of female
convict employment is investigated.
For many women in our sample, two or more skills, such as housemaid
and kitchenhand or country allwork and dairymaid, were listed in the
indents. As table I shows, Irish and English female convict employment
fell into roughly a dozen major categories. Two-thirds of the convict women
had held jobs as housemaids, allworkers or kitchenhands, and 86 per cent
were employed in the first I2 occupations in table I. Compared with the
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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, I795-I820 727

i84i English census, the convict sample was broadly coincident with the
working population, except for the over-representation in the number of
domestic servants and agricultural workers and under-representation in the
number of textile workers among the convicts. In part this arose from the age
distribution of the convict women who were disproportionately young (with
75 per cent of the English and 79 per cent of the Irish convict women below
3I years), and single (59 per cent of the English and 65 per cent of the Irish).
Our data show that with increasing age the number of women employed in
domestic service declined from 82.4 per cent for English convict women under
20 years to 68 per cent of women over the age of 20. Employment in domestic
service required women to be single, and the high percentage of single women
among the transportees also explains the high percentage of domestic servants
in our sample. The under-representation of textile workers probably reflects
some over-representation of southern and London workers.
For our analysis of living standards it is important to show that the
women were representative of the English and Irish working classes, not
that they were representative of the age distribution of the population. Our
sample contains sufficient observations to estimate accurately terminal height
(height when fully grown) in each year. The concentration of female convicts
in the under 3I age group is not a problem since terminal height was
attained at the time by women at the age of 2I, which marked the end of
the growing years. Height did not change between 2i and 49 when shrinkage
occurred, which led us to exclude all women older than 49 from our analysis.
The inclusion of a greater number of women aged 3I-49 would not have
altered our findings.2'

Table 2. Skills of the English workforce of i84i and convicts (i817-i840)

compared

Convict females Convict males i84i English males

Armstrong classification (per cent) (per cent) (per cent)

Professional 0 0.3 I.7

Intermediate 0.3 3.I 9.2
Skilled 49.8 45.6 45.2
Semi-skilled 27.9 26.3 25.7
Unskilled 22.0 24.7 15.5

Source: convict indents.

The occupations of female convicts can also be compared with those of

the male transporters. Table 2 shows that the female convict skill structure
was broadly similar to that of the male transportees and the male convict
sample was representative of the men in the English working classes. Over
iooo distinct male occupations were standardized into i83 major occupations
and coded, using Armstrong's scheme. As shown in table 2, the major
difference between the i84i English census and the male sample of convicts
was that over three times as many English men as convicts were in

21 The concentration of young women in our sample is not as marked as the concentration of young
men in the army recruitment data.

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728 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

Armstrong's professional and middling categories. However, the proportions

of skilled and semi-skilled convicts corresponded very closely to those in
the English population. A Spearman's rank correlation between 83 Occu-
pations with over 50,000 workers in the i84I census and the convict indents
was 0.714, suggesting a close match between the sample occupations and
those of the English workforce.
Details of i83 Irish convict occupations in the i84I census and the convict
sample were grouped into labourers, textile workers, farmers, other artisans,
white collar workers, and others used by Mokyr and 0 Grada.22 The indents
and the census differed in terms of labourer (7I per cent in the indents and
55 per cent in the census) and farmers (i. i per cent in the indents and
20.7 per cent in the census). A similar discrepancy was found by Mokyr
and 0 Grada in their comparison of occupations in the census with those
in the shipping lists for Irish emigrants to the United States. The differences
are not as great as they might first appear. In pre-industrial Ireland, the
border line between farmer, cottier, and farm labourer was not well defined.
Mokyr has noted that, 'Both the rich and the poor were landholders in
Ireland, and terms like "farmer" and "labourer" had become fuzzy'.23 Many
'farmers' had no capital, owned little land, and frequently worked as wage
labourers. Combining labourers and farmers, 72 per cent of the Irish convicts
and 76 per cent of the i84I Irish male population fell into this aggregate
group. Irish female workers were concentrated into two categories, labourers
(34 per cent) and textile workers (6o per cent), while the female convicts
were domestic servants and therefore classified as labourers (92 per cent).
These apparent differences disappear once it is remembered that female
textile workers identified in the census worked at home as domestic workers
and were classified as female farm servants (labourers) in the Mokyr and
o Grada scheme. Generally, the Irish convicts, like their English counter-
parts, were broadly representative of the Irish working class at home.
The representativeness of our data can be assessed further by utilizing
the indent information on literacy. The convicts in the indents and the
population at home had similar levels of literacy. While less than half of
women marrying between i825 and i840 could sign the marriage register,
45 per cent of convict women tried in England could read and a further
34.6 per cent could write also.24 Of course, the tests are not identical, since
the indent information is questionnaire data while the marriage registers
provide a test of practical literacy. But other questionnaire-style data exist
for paupers and migrants. Compared with the literacy rate of only 50 per
cent for adult paupers in i838, 8o per cent of the female convicts were
literate.25 Only i I per cent of paupers could read and write while one-third
of the convict women could do both. English convict literacy (8o per cent
could read and/or write) was also very similar to the literacy rate of free
female migrants to Australia in i838 (79 per cent).26 England's convict

22 Mokyr and 0 Grdda, 'Emigration and poverty', p. 379.

23 Mokyr, Why Ireland starved, p. I7.
24 Laquer, 'Literacy and social mobility', p. 98.
25 S. C. on Education (P.P. i838, VII), p. 42.
26 Penglase, 'Enquiry into literacy', pp. 43-9.
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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, I795-I820 729

women seem less like paupers, and more like workers generally. Male
English convict literacy was 74 per cent, significantly higher than the
Registrar-General's average of 58 per cent able to sign the marriage regi
and Schofield's average of a little over 6o per cent able to sign the registers
in a random sample of 274 English parish registers between 1790 and
i820.27 In a sample of politically conscious prisoners involved in a rising in
the manufacturing districts of Lancashire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire,
Webb found that 73 per cent were literate, virtually the same rate (74 per
cent) as that for English male transportees for these counties.28 A rank
correlation of 0.92 between Sanderson's sample of occupations by literacy
for Lancashire in the I83os and the convict sample provides additional
evidence for the robustness and representativeness of our data.29 From the
I84I Irish census, where literacy was measured in the same way as in the
indents, 54 per cent of the Irish male population was literate while 67 per
cent of the male transportees could read and/or write. Irish female convicts
and Irish women were much alike with less than half of both groups literate:
48 per cent of convicts compared with 45 per cent of adult Irish women
could read and/or write. The Irish transportees were at least as literate as
the Irish left at home.
There has been considerable debate among Australian historians on the
class origins of the convicts. The nationalist interpretation of the convicts
as 'innocent and manly' unfortunates fighting for freedom and social justice
was attacked by Clark for 'grossly distorting Australia's past'. 3O He argued
that the transportees were persistent thieves engaged in a life of crime; they
were by choice and training members of a professional criminal class. This
view of the convicts as a criminal class, separate and distinct from the
working class, dominated Australian convict historiography until Nicholas
argued that the transportees to New South Wales were not members of a
criminal class, but were working-class men and women who stole.31 The
majority of transportees had no previous convictions, all reported workplace
skills, and many crimes were work related.32 While this new interpretation
is not without its critics, it has attracted considerable support.33
The case for the transportees as ordinary working-class men and women
also gains support from recent work by historians of crime who reject the
idea of a separate nineteenth-century criminal or dangerous class, born and
bred to a life of crime and operating as organized gangs.34 While not 'honest
men and women', British and Irish criminals were mainly working people,
who supplemented their incomes by theft. For Black Country criminals,
Philips found that the great majority of crimes were committed by ordinary

27 Schofield, 'Dimensions of illiteracy', p. 445.

28 Webb, 'Working class readers', p. 335.
29 Sanderson, Education, economic change.
30 Wood, 'Convicts'; Clark, 'Origins'.
31 Nicholas, Convict workers.
32 Ibid.; Oxley, 'Female convicts'; idem, 'Women transported'.
33 See Shlomowitz, 'Convict workers'; Nicholas, 'Understanding'; Garton, 'Convict origins debate'.
34 Beattie, Crime and the courts; Emsley, Crime and society; Jones, Crime, protest, community; Philips,
Crime and authority; Rude, Criminal and victim.

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730 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

men and women, who worked at jobs normally, but also stole on occasion.35
Beattie, Emsley, and others have related the late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century crime rates to economic distress, arguing that most
criminals were people in employment pushed into crime by hard economic
times.36 There can be little doubt that the transportees were typical of such
British criminals. Compared with offenders in the Black Country, transported
convict workers had a similar occupational breakdown: 59 per cent and
53 per cent respectively were unskilled and semi-skilled, 38 per cent and
44 per cent skilled, and 3 per cent middle and upper class. They had
committed the same types of offences, less than 3 per cent against persons
and the rest property offences, mainly larceny.37 The rank correlations
between the occupations of the transported male convicts and the male
prisoners held in Pentonville Gaol was o.go8.38 On the basis of all these
tests, it seems fair to argue that the convicts transported to Australia were
broadly coincident with the skill composition of the English and Irish
working classes.
Height-for-age, the change in height between successive ages (velocity or
rate of growth), the age at which final height is reached, and final
adult height are reliable indices of a country's health and nutrition.39
Anthropologists, biologists, and nutritionists have found each of these
measures of stature to be sensitive indicators of nutritional inputs and
environmental impacts during the growing years. The health and the average
nutritional status of a country's citizens are a good guide to its standard of
living. In a sample of developed and underdeveloped countries, average
height was found to be highly correlated with the log of per caput income,
which suggests that factors correlated with poverty such as poor diet, hard
work, and poor medical care are major sources of nutritional deprivation
and slow growth.40 While height is now accepted as one measure of living
standards in the past, the connection between heights and per caput income
should not be pushed too far. Mokyr and 0 Grada have reminded us that
the Irish recruits in the East India Company army born around i8io were
taller than their counterparts in England, although England was a much
richer economy. Komlos has argued that the positive correlation between
height and per caput income for market economies was not always true for
pre-industrial economies.4' He found that the populations of Lower Austria
and Bohemia, the most economically developed regions of the Habsburg
empire, were generally the shortest, while those of Hungary and Galicia,
the least developed provinces, were taller.42
It is exactly in this connection between heights and industrialization that

3 Philips, Crime and authority, p. 287.

36 Beattie, 'Criminality of women', pp. I02-3; Emsley, Crime and society; Davey, Lawless and immoral,
p. x; Gatrell and Hadden, 'Criminal statistics', p. 382; Jones, Crime, protest, community, p. I3.
37 Philips, Crime and authority.
38 Similar comparative statistics were not available for women or the Irish.
39 Eveleth and Tanner, Worldwide variation, p. I; Fogel et al., 'Secular changes'.
40 Steckel, 'Height and income', pp. I-7.
41 Mokyr and 0 Grdda, 'Poor and getting poorer?', pp. 227-9; Komlos, Nutrition and econ
development.
42 Komlos, Nutrition and economic development, pp. 96-7.

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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, 1795-I820 73I

our English-Irish height comparisons are particularly useful. Ireland at the

time was a control economy, largely unaffected by the industrial transform-
ation taking place in England. Of course, Ireland was not simply England
without an industrial revolution. There were strong interdependencies
between the eastern counties of Ireland and Britain, and Belfast's industrializ-
ation was as 'dramatic and thoroughgoing as anything happening in Preston
or Middlesborough'. Yet the differences between the two economies
overshadow the similarities, leading Mokyr and 0 Grada to declare that
Ireland experienced nothing like an industrial revolution.44 It was not
surprising, then, that backward agrarian Ireland could provide as high or
even higher nutritional standards, reflected in a taller population, as the
industrializing and urbanizing English market economy. The trends in
heights between England and Ireland provide one comparative measure of
the impact of industrialization on the living standards of women in England.
Height data, used in conjunction with information on wages, mortality,
and morbidity, offer a new way of assessing English and Irish living
standards. Poor nutrition, revealed during wartime shortages, may slow
growth, and disease may also retard growth by impeding the absorption of
nutrients and diverting nutrition to combat infection. Malnutrition and
illness may interact to produce an effect on height larger than the separate
effects of each in isolation.45 Catch-up growth (where velocity exceeds the
average rate for a given chronological age) may follow brief periods of
malnutrition, but if environmental conditions are unsatisfactory, growth
may resume at no more than the normal rate. Prolonged but moderate
malnutrition tends to delay and diminish the adolescent growth spurt and
postpone the age at which adult height is attained. Malnutrition that is
severe and chronic may substantially erode the typical growth pattern and
result in permanent stunting.46
Height provides a net rather than a gross measure of nutrition, and
depends on the nutrition available for physical growth after claims made by
body maintenance. Clearly, the economic historian must investigate work
intensity, the disease environment, and the state of public health, as well
as nutritional inputs, if the growth spurt and average heights are going to
be used to proxy changes in female living standards in the past. This article
deals with the height of birth cohorts because access to food, environmental
disadvantages, and work intensities affected women during their growing
years from birth to attained final height at the age of 2I. Unfortunately, it
is not possible to determine precisely when during their growing years
women were affected by changes in their living standards, but environmen
factors predominate. While genes are important determinants of individual
height, studies of genetically similar and dissimilar populations under various
environmental conditions show that differences in average heights across
most populations are due to environmental, not genetic, factors.47

43 0 Grdda, Ireland, pp. 25-7.

44Mokyr and 0 Grdda, 'Poor and getting poorer?', p. 2IO.
45 Scrimshaw, 'Interactions', p. 22.
46 Steckel, 'Stature and living standards'.
47 Ibid., p. i6; Fogel et al., 'Secular changes', pp. 5-8.
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732 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

II

The average height by age, and the timing and extent of the adolescent
growth spurt, are sensitive both to nutritional factors and to the external
environment, providing a good indicator of living standards experienced by
women. While sample sizes were small before the age of I5, Irish and
English women in figure i experienced a growth spurt which began around
the age of I4 and lasted until i6.5 or I7.5. The growth spurt for girls living
through the industrial revolution began later, and continued about four
years longer, than that for well-nourished girls today, whose spurt begins
at the age of I0.5 and continues until the age of I 3.48 As a result, Irish a
English women reached terminal height at 2I, well beyond the modern
average at about the age of I7. This longer period of growth for women
reflected 'catch-up' growth after a period of insufficient food intake or
because adverse environmental conditions delayed the growth spurt. The
growth spurts in figure i indicate that women experienced 'hard times'
during early childhood or adolescence or both.

62

. 6o-

= / ~~~~~~ / _ ___ _ ~~~~~Irish urban

= 58- _ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Irish rural

58

I4 i6 I8 20 22

Age

62

6o

bO / _ _ _ __ ~~~~~~~~~English urban
58 ol English rural

56 _- - I l l I l l I
I4 i6 I8 20 22

Age

Figure i. Height by age of Irish and English females

Source: convict indents

48 Tanner, Growth, p. i.
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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, I795-I820 733

Figure I aggregates data on height by age for the whole period. Most
women were aged at least I5 before transportation, so the growth spurt
data relate mainly to those born between i8io and i825. We disaggregated
the data, plotting height by age for women born before and after i8I5.
Plots of the pre- and post-i8I5 growth spurts displayed the same late spurt
until the age of I6.5 or I7.5 and the same continued growth to the age of
2I, as shown in figure I. The absence of any changes over time in the
timing of the spurt means that aggregating our data for the whole period
in figure I is valid.49
The delayed and much longer spurt experienced by Irish and English females
was also typical of Irish and English males, who spurted between the ages of
I4 and I5 (one year later than well-nourished male children today), and
continued to grow until the age of 23, well beyond the modern standard of
attained final height at about the age of i9.50 This suggests that poor nutrition
and adverse environmental conditions during the growth period were general,
affecting males and females, Irish and English, and rural and urban born alike.
But the effect was not equal. English urban females in figure I were at least
half an inch shorter than rural girls during their growth spurt, resulting in a
statistically significant difference in terminal heights shown in table 3. English
urban born females were not exceptional; urban born English men were also
significantly shorter than their rural counterparts during their growth spurt
and at final attained height (see table 3).

Table 3. Terminal height and t-test differences in terminal heights of English

and Irish workers

English English Irish Irish

rural urban rural urban

Females

Height (inches) 6i.65 60.75 6i.29 6i.I4

English rural I0.7 a 5.7 a 4.i8a
English urban 8.44a 3.68a
Irish rural 0.73

Males

Height (inches) 65.96 65-44 66.io 65.82

English rural 7. I2a I .94 I.39
English urban 8.i6a 3.57a
Irish rural I.09

Note: a significant at the o.o5 level

Source: convict indents.

While the urban-rural height differential was statistically significant for

English women, urban-born Irish women were the same height as their
rural sisters during adolescent growth and at final attained height in figure I.
This is consistent with the male data. Being born in a town implied different

49 Similar tests for period effects using data on the male convicts also revealed no changes in the
timing of the growth spurt.
50 Nicholas and Steckel, 'Height and living standards', p. I2.
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734 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

conditions depending upon whether a woman was born in England or

Ireland. Shielded from the full force of the urban transformation occurring
in England, those born in Irish towns, except Dublin, escaped many of the
worst features of overcrowding, poor housing, and inadequate public health,
typical of the burgeoning towns in industrializing England. The smaller size
of Irish towns and their closer links to the countryside also meant that the
urban Irish had better access to food supplies than women workers in
London or Manchester.

64-
X ~~~~~~~~~~~~~Irish rural
--_ --Irish urban
62 - /

I790 I795 i8oo i8o5 i8io i8I5 i820 i825

Year of birth

64 2 English
=~~~~ ~ ~~~~ I0 rural
I I l l I(

detm 62 e l for- w

58E w l f m l t t
betweenurban
I790 I795 i8t 2 I805 i8ia i8I5ad
i820ruralf
i825
Year of birth

Figure 2. Height profiles, Irish and English females (five-year moving average)
Source: convict indents

Moving averages of terminal heights in figure 2 provide additional evidence

of the rural location advantage, with a persistent and significant height gap
between urban and rural female English birth cohorts between I791 and
i820. But urban location was not the whole, or the most important, factor
determining deteriorating living standards for women. The height of rural-
born English women fell further, and more rapidly, than the average height
of urban women in the 25 years after I795. From a peak of 6i.75 inches
in i 8oo, figure 2 shows that the height of birth cohorts born in a rural
location fell to just under 6i inches by i8I5. Urban-born English women
experienced a similar, if less dramatic, decline in height of about 0.5 inches
between I795 and i8I4.
Deteriorating living standards of English women contrast with the
increasing heights of Irish women in figure 2. From the late I790S the
average height of Irish women increased, with the height of urban Irish
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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, I795-I820 735

women rising 0.5 inches, about twice the rate of that of Irish rural females.
Urban Irish women maintained a significant height advantage over the urban
English, and Irish rural-born women, who began the period shorter than
the rural English, ended it significantly taller than their English sisters.
This pattern of rising average Irish female heights was mirrored by Irish
male heights which rose from about i8oo. Our Irish height profiles support
an emerging consensus view among Irish economic historians that the pre-
Famine Irish economy was not sliding inevitably and unavoidably towards
Malthusian catastrophe. Schooling, literacy, and the consumption of luxury
goods all increased before i84I, suggesting that pre-Famine Irish living
standards rose, at least for the top half of the population.5' Irish recruits
to the East India Company army between i802 and i809 were significantly
taller than British recruits, and this is consistent with our evidence on male
heights in table 3 and with the evidence that Irish female heights increased
in the early nineteenth century, giving Irish women a height advantage over
the English by I815 .52
Ireland was a regional economy. The pre-Famine Irish potato diet differed
significantly from that of England, and yielded a high caloric content,
estimated at I,400 calories per caput per day based on the consumption of
I2 lbs. of potatoes per day per person.53 While lacking variety, the nutritious
Irish potato diet, supplemented with oatmeal, a little fat, and milk, meant
that the Irish peasant was often better fed than the English labourer.54
Ireland was also fortunate before i840 in that the various subsistence crises
tended to be localized cereal famines, which shielded the population from
any serious long-term food insult.55 In addition, rising agricultural incomes
due to the export of food to Britain must have allowed families to augment
their food intake. The Irish diet explains why the moving averages of Irish
male and female heights moved together and how the 'backward' Irish
economy registered increases in mean heights for women and men when
the population was increasing. This evidence suggests that the agrarian and
backward Irish economy did not fall behind the English in terms of
nutritional status.
English women suffered not only for being born in England, but also for
their gender. Urban-born English women were nearly I inch shorter than
their rural-born sisters, while English men born in urban locations were
only half an inch shorter than the rural-born (see table 3). These estimates
are obtained, of course, by averaging heights across our whole sample.
Moving averages of mean heights of Irish and English female cohorts in
figure 2 reveal the trend in female heights over time which was sharply
downward. While following the same profile as that for Irish and English
men due to environmental factors which impacted on both sexes, the heights

51 Mokyr and 6 Grnda, 'Poor and getting poorer'; 6 Grnda, Ireland, pp. I-23.
52 Mokyr and 6 Grnda, 'Poor and getting poorer'; J. Mokyr and C. 0 Grida, 'The heights of the
British and Irish, c. i8oo-i8I5: evidence from recruits to the East India Company's army', unpub.
typescript, i990.
53 Mokyr, Why Ireland starved, p. 7.
54 Burnett, Plenty, p. 20.
55 Dickson, 'Gap in famines', p. I05; 6 Grnda, Ireland, pp. 2-I2.
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736 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

of rural-born English women fell significantly faster than the heights of

English males. Women born in rural locations began the century at 6i.75
inches, falling to under 6i inches for cohorts born around i8I5. In contrast,
rural-born English male cohorts were only one-quarter of an inch shorter
in i8I5 (65.75 inches) than in i8oo (66 inches). How do we explain the
deterioration of living standards of English women, particularly those born
in the country, relative to Irish women and English men?
War, blockade, and harvest failure caused deficient food inputs into the
English diet, reflected in the higher prices of food relative to manufactured
goods.56 The number of harvest failures was significantly higher between
I790 and i8i5 than either before or after that period, with weather the
major factor causing wheat prices to jump in I795, i8oo, and i8I2. The
Napoleonic wars closed or disrupted England's grain trade with continental
Europe and only the remarkable elasticity of supply of food from Ireland,
which was providing 44 per cent of Britain's imports of grain, meat, and
butter by the early I790s, saved England from severe food shortages.57 Of
course access to food supplies was easier for those living in rural England,
who were better insulated than town and city dwellers from the worst effects
of harvest failure and food shortages. War, blockade, and harvest failure
help to explain the fall in English heights after I790, but provide little
explanation of the reason for the fall in rural female heights relative to the
heights of urban females or rural males.
Besides access to food, the quality and composition of the diet is a key
determinant of nutritional intake and the height of a population. Not only
did those living in towns have poorer access to food supplies, but the quality
and caloric content of the urban diet was reduced by adulteration, and by
consumption of shop-baked wheaten bread and food bought in stores.58
Shammas argued that in the I780s and I790S the calories furnished by the
food from shops seldom provided the energy needed to perform manual
labour.59 For this reason alone urban heights might fall during periods of
rapid urbanization and industrialization.60 This was the experience of urban-
born women in England. But the composition of the diet varied by
geographical region, and there were significant differences in heights by
region. Sample diets drawn from the English countryside suggest that white
bread diets typical of rural southern and eastern England were inferior to
rural northern diets which depended on oatmeal, rye, barley, and potatoes,
with a little milk and cheese.6'
We are left with the anomaly of English rural female heights falling more
rapidly than urban female heights and, significantly, than rural-born male
heights. Why should it be that country girls fared worse than their rural

56 See Mingay, Agricultural revolution, p. II 3; Jones, Agriculture; Olson, Economics of wartime shortage;
Hueckel, 'Relative prices'; idem, 'War and the British economy'; Mokyr and Savin, 'Stagflation';
Williamson, British capitalism.
57 Thomas, 'Food supply', pp. I4I-3.
58 Burnett, Plenty, pp. 72-8i.
59 Shammas, 'English diet', p. 266.
60 Williamson, 'Urban disamenities'; idem, 'Was the industrial revolution worth it?'; idem, British
capitalism.
61 Thomas, 'Food supply', pp. I39-49; Shammas, 'English diet', p. 258.
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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, I795-I820 737

brothers? The distribution of resources within households has not usually

been a subject of interest to economic historians, who implicitly assume
that the standard of living of females has been the same as that for males
in common households.62 However, as early as i825, William Thompson,
a utilitarian, cooperative socialist and 'feminist', drew attention to the
inaccuracy of the belief that women shared household resources equally
with men.63 Recently, development economists studying the intrahousehold
distribution of resources have uncovered significant differences between
genders in access to resources.64 In Africa and Asia today, women are
disadvantaged in their access to food and health care, a fact which is
reflected in the low ratio of women to men in the population and the higher
mortality rate for women in many developing countries.65 This work on the
intrahousehold distribution of nutrients in low-income countries suggests
that gender-based nutrient inequality reflects labour-market opportunities
between men and women.66 Labour productivity, especially for energy-
intensive work, requires high levels of caloric inputs both to perform work
and to maintain the body in good health. In developing countries today,
household members claim extra food when their occupations require high
levels of calories and paid work takes place outside the home. This has
been confirmed by econometric studies demonstrating that the bias in favour
of males in the allocation of nutrients was due to expected labour market
outcomes.67 Did women and children in early nineteenth-century England
have unequal access to food and can this be related to gender-based labour-
market opportunities?
There now exists considerable evidence that women and children ate less
well than men. Oddy reported that women and children ate less meat than
men, and that women acquiesced because 'the husband wins the bread and
must have the best food'.68 In the nineteenth century, Charles Booth noted
the same fact and more recently Shorter argued that women got smaller
proportions of everything because men worked harder.69 This emphasis on
work requirements and unequal access to food is consistent with the model
of the family household as an economic maximizing unit where 'parents
controlled resources vital to their children's future standard of living'.70 In
this model, allocation of nutrients was determined by expected differential
labour-market returns on parental investments in boys and girls. It was
control over their children's inheritance and their immediate employment
opportunities which consolidated the parents' power over intrahousehold
resources. Such power meant that working children frequently turned over
their wages to parents who determined how the family used this additional

62 Pateman, 'Patriarchal welfare state', p. 242.

63 Thompson, Appeal; Pateman, 'Patriarchal welfare state', p. 242.
64 Pitt et al., 'Productivity, health and inequality'; Sen, 'Ioo million women'.
65 Sen, 'i00 million women'.
66 Pitt et al., 'Productivity, health and inequality', p. II39; Sen, 'i00 million women', pp. 6i-3;
Boserup, Women's role.
67 Behrman, 'Intrahousehold allocation'.
68 Oddy, 'Nutritional analysis', p. 220.
69 Shorter, Modern family, pp. 54-5; idem, Women's bodies, p. 2I.
70 Anderson, Western family, p. 5I; Pahl, Divisions of labour, pp. 20-I.

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738 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

income. Even where parents did not directly control employment, by

distributing food inputs within the household they influenced their children's
job prospects since strength determined opportunities for manual work.7'
Evidence that labour-market opportunities were declining for English
women from the I780s reinforces our case that the gender-based, work-
related distribution of intrahousehold resources disadvantaged women.72 In
pre-industrial and agricultural economies, gender inequalities were less
pronounced than in modernizing societies.73 Women were partners with
men, both at home (as managers of children and household financial
resources) and in outside work and paid employment. Evidence from
developing countries suggests that proto-industrialization and industrializ-
ation worsened the economic and social position of women and children,
limiting their employment opportunities, restricting the range of jobs open
to them, and segmenting them into 'unskilled' work with low pay. These
gender divisions occurred mainly in the agricultural sector, but also to a
lesser extent in manufacturing, transforming the traditional role of women
and children in the labour market and the household.
There is considerable qualitative evidence that work relations between
men and women were changing during early industrialization in England.
In agriculture, shifts from livestock to grain production intensified the
gender specialization of agricultural work, restricting the participation of
women in the agricultural workforce; they went into low-paid and unskilled
summer and spring work, such as picking stones and clearing ground.74
The shift to heavier technology associated with grain harvesting further
restricted women to non-harvest work.75 The sexual division of labour in
agriculture was partly a consequence of the expansion of grain production
and new technology, but also a result of discrimination as male agricultural
workers opposed the employment of females.76 From I780, at least in the
east, restricted job opportunities for women and children saw female wage
rates decline.77 The gender division of labour had important implications
for household income: while males may have experienced more stable
employment in well-paid harvest work, the loss of female earnings impacted
negatively on family income. At the same time, enclosures and the loss of
common rights led to a change in the economic role of women and children,
the primary exploiters of the commons. The elimination of sources of family
income not deriving from wages, such as gleaning, gathering and scavenging,
and tending pigs and cows, all traditionally 'women's work', increased the
household's dependency on wages and wage-earners.78 The loss of paid
employment opportunities meant that women went into low-paid 'female

71 Anderson, Family structure, p. II2.

72 See Richards, 'Women'; Thomas, 'Women and capitalism'; Berg, 'Women's work'; Rose, 'Gender
at work'.
73 Ehrenreich and English, For her own good, p. 7; Smock, 'Conclusion', p. 4i8: Sen, 'ioo million
women', pp. 62-3.
74 Snell, Labouring poor, pp. 5i-62; idem, 'Agricultural seasonal employment', pp. 4II-23.
75 Roberts, 'Sickles and scythes'.
76 Snell, Labouring poor, p. 6i; idem, 'Agricultural seasonal employment', p. 433.
77 Snell, Labouring poor, p. 59; Pahl, Divisions of labour, p. 37.
78 Snell, Labouring poor, p. 62; Humphries, 'Enclosures', pp. 39-4I.
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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, I795-I820 739

jobs' which devalued and undervalued the unpaid household work undertaken
by them. Anderson argued that the newly emerging definition of men as
the family wage-earners legitimized the irregular employment and below
subsistence wages for female agricultural workers.79
Loss of common rights made women and children more available for
domestic, proto-industrial, and industrial work, but even here the range of
jobs for women was reduced and they were obliged to take the lowest paid
and worst of the 'sweated' trades.80 The textile factory, which did increase
the job opportunities for women and children, was not the 'typical' form
of female employment.8' Most women worked as domestic servants, laundry
workers, charwomen, and agricultural labourers, and those women and
children employed in producing textiles, clothing, boots and shoes, nails,
and metal goods usually worked in their own homes or in small workshops.82
Slop or sweated workers were disadvantaged by the industrial revolution,
and those urban trades employing women involved irregular employment,
long hours, and poor pay. Women now rarely entered into the 'mysteries'
of the trade, and were only infrequently employed in trades which required
formal apprenticeship.83 The industrial revolution limited the employment
chances of women and children, creating a secondary labour market
segmented by gender both in agriculture and in manufacture.
Declining job opportunities in the paid labour market diminished the
power of women in the family, limiting their 'rights' to intrahousehold
resources, particularly nutrients.8' The fall in heights of English women
relative to men is consistent with the increasing gender inequality in
intrahousehold food allocation. The heights of females born in rural areas
fell more rapidly than those of urban-born women because there were fewer
job opportunities in rural areas. Children in the rural household had little
or no alternative but to accept their allocated share of resources if they were
not to jeopardize their life chances in the long run (through loss of inheritance
or the right to live in the family home) and in the short run (through loss
of employment).85 Anderson has examined the greater independence from
family control and a more equal access to intrahousehold food which urban
job opportunities gave children.86 The exclusion of women from many jobs
in the labour market, with the resultant loss of access to intrahousehold
food resources, is consistent with the relative fall in female compared to
male rural heights. Since rural job opportunities for women decreased more
than urban job opportunities, rural female heights fell relative to urban
female heights. Not surprisingly the heights of women fell in England but
rose in Ireland because Ireland was not experiencing industrialization which
limited the job opportunities of women. Moreover, the Irish diet was

79 Anderson, Western family, p. 83.

80 Humphries, 'Enclosure', p. 4I.
81 McKendrick, 'Home demand', p. I53.
82 Pinchbeck, Women workers; Alexander, 'Women's work'; Thomas, 'Women and capitalism'.
83 Berg, 'Women's work', pp. 7I-2; Snell, Labouring poor, pp. 27I-3I9.
84 Thomas, 'Women and capitalism', p. 535; Sen, 'Ioo million women', pp. 63-5; Giele, 'Introduction
pp. 9-II.

85 Anderson, Family structure, p. III.

86 Ibid., pp. II2-35-

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740 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

particularly nutritious, protecting women and children from short-run food

insults.
Did the distribution of other intrahousehold resources also discriminate
against English women and girls? Education is an investment in human
capital, budgeted by households between family members, and relative to
other inputs such as food, clothing, and housing. According to Burnett,
what the English labouring family spent on bacon, beer, and white bread
was spent by its Scottish counterpart on the education of their children.87

8o 8 _ _ Irish urban
t' ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Irish rural

40
I790 I795 i8oo i8o5 i8io i8I5 i820 i825

Year of birth

6o

- _ _____ English urban

40- ok, 40 1 ~~~~~~~~~English rural

20
X 20

0- , I I 1 1
I790 I795 i8oo I805 i8io i8I5 i820 i825

Year of birth

Figure 3. Illiteracy of Irish and English females (five-year moving average)

Source: convict indents

From a listing of the inhabitants of Cardington (Bedfordshire) in I792,

Schofield found that boys typically attended school until the age of i i while
girls had only a one in three chance of schooling.88 Not only are female-
male literacy rates a measure of the distribution of intrahousehold resources,
but literacy is a partial measure of living standards.89 Illiterate societies are
likely to be poor and slow growing, less able to adjust to structural change
than literate ones. Literacy, of course, is valued in its own right: it releases
people from ignorance and prejudice and also enhances their ability to find
work and attain occupational and social advancement.

87 Burnett, Plenty, p. 22.

88 Schofield, 'Age-specific mobility', pp. 265-6.
89 Nicholas and Nicholas, 'Male illiteracy'; Mokyr and 6 Grnda, 'Poor and getting poorer',
222-7.

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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, I795-I820 74I

The convict indents contained information on whether each transportee

could read and write, read only, or neither read nor write, allowing us to
define literate individuals as those claiming the ability to read or to read and
write. In figure 3 both rural and urban-born English females experienced rising
illiteracy from I795, while Irish urban-born females had declining illiteracy
and rural Irish women experienced no significant change.90 The tendency for
height and literacy to move together suggests that when households reduced
their expenditure on food intake they also invested less in expensive schooling.
Male illiteracy also rose after i8oo, which provides additional evidence that
declining English male and female stature may have been caused by financial
stress on families which also registered in lower investments in schooling.9'
Our data on literacy and heights point to hard times for English women
between I790 and i820, but slow progress for the Irish.

III

Heights may vary by occupation. This happens where women are

apprenticed or encouraged to work in the same trades as their mothers and
when strength is important for the job, channelling tall women into certain
occupations. To the extent that intergenerational correlations exist for
occupations of mother and daughters, then income, wealth, housing, and
work conditions of parents impact directly on the height of children.
To test this hypothesis, regressions were run on height allowing for
occupation and birth by quinquennia. Occupational dummy variables
were constructed for four broad occupational groups: rural unskilled,
manufacturing and transport, domestic service, and the excluded category
of all other occupations (unskilled urban, professional and dealing, construc-
tion and building, and public service). To test for period effects, we created
dummy variables for quinquennia, excluding the pre-I795 period. Since the
height profiles in figure 2 showed different trends for the same quinquennium
in the heights of rural and urban women, separate regressions were run for
the rural and urban born. The regressions in tables 4 and 5 show that
composition effects by occupations were important only for rural Irish
women. Irish females who worked in rural unskilled and domestic service
jobs were almost one-third of an inch taller than the excluded group. These
jobs required extra strength and endurance, and there is evidence of some
self-selection in terms of stature by Irish rural women who sought unskilled
and domestic employment. Since employment in domestic service (especially
as general servant, chambermaid, laundress, and kitchenhand) and rural
unskilled jobs (dairyhand and farm servant) accounted for the overwhelming
number of opportunities open to rural Irish females, there is little evidence
that there were significant shifts across occupational categories. Therefore

90 While Schofield discovered a declining trend in illiteracy for the whole period I750-i840, for
women born between I795 and i8i0 illiteracy rates based on the ability to sign parish marriage registers
rose. To calculate year of birth from Schofield, 25 years must be subtracted from the year of marriage
and i0 years must be subtracted from the year of leaving school: Schofield, 'Dimensions of illiteracy',
p. 445.
91 Nicholas and Steckel, 'Height and living standards'.

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742 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

Table 4. Regression model for composition effects by occupation

for English female convictsa

Rural Urban
age 2I + years age 2I + years

Unskilled rural o.63 0.62

(i.8i) (I.OO)
Manufacturing and transport -o.i6 0.24
(-6.43) (0.79)
Domestic service o. i6 0.04
(0-58) (0.Ig)
Birth I795-9 -0. I7 0.03
(-0.5I) (o.o8)
Birth I 800-4 -0.004 -O.IO
(O- 04) (-0.34)
Birth I805-9 0. Io 0.07
(0-36) (0.24)
Birth I8I0-4 -0.47 -0.30
(-I.83) (-i.o8)
Birth i8Is+ O.I7 -0.25
(0-53) (-0-75)
Constant 6I.55 60.69
(200.33) (2 I 9.59)
R 2 0.02 O.OI
DW 2.04 I.89
N 767 747

Note: a t-statistics in parentheses

Source: convict indents.

Table 5. Regression model for composition effects by occupation

for Irish female convicts a

Rural Urban
age 2I + years age 2I + years

Unskilled rural 0.32 0.03

(2.24) (o.o6)
Manufacturing and transport -0.07 -o.69
(-0.34) (-I.* I I)
Domestic service 0.3I -0.2I
(2-53) (-o-5o)
Birth I795-9 -0-004 0.48
(-0.28) (o.89)
Birth I 800-4 0. I4 0.49
(0-94) (0-95)
Birth i805-9 0.05 0.59
(0.03) (i. i 8)
Birth I8IO-4 0. I I I.02
(0.74) (2.22)
Birth i8Is+ -0.I7 0.24
(-I.05) (0-50)
Constant 6I.02 60.73
(42 5. I 3) (I I 3.22)
R 2 0.002 0.03
DW i.88 I.99
N 2,528 249

Note: at-statistics in parentheses

Source: convict indents.

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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, I795-I820 743

the height profiles of Irish rural females in figure 2 were not artefacts of
changes in the occupational structure of the convict sample.
The regressions in table 4 also display the period effects which are evident
in the quinquennial moving averages in figure 2. The fall in the average
height of English cohorts after i8oo is clearly evident in the negative
coefficients on the i800-4, i8I0-4, and i8i5 + dummies for urban-born
women and the negative coefficients for the I795-9, i800-4, and i8I0-4
birth periods for rural English females. For example, English women born
in rural locations in i810-4 were half an inch shorter than rural cohorts
born before I795. Further, the results in table 4 for each quinquennium
are consistent with the movements in heights in figure 2. These regression
results confirm falling heights and living standards for women born in
England. The Irish quinquennial dummies in table 5 reflect the increasing
heights of Irish females, both rural and urban born, which are also evident
in figure 2.

IV

Historians agree that living standards varied by region, and that English
and Irish diets differed in their nutritional input by geographical area.
Regressing the final attained height by county, region, and urban-rural
location provides a powerful new test for uncovering regional patterns in
living standards. Figures 4 and 5 present a set of nested hypotheses regardi
attained height and location. In the most general model, at the top of
figure 4, final attained height depends on whether a woman was born in an
urban or rural part of a specific English county, while the model at the
bottom predicts one height for all of England. Formally the figure tests
whether the coefficients on the additional variables in the more general
models (but excluded from the less general models directly below) are
significantly different from zero. If the coefficients in the more general
model are not significant (i.e., the F value is less than the critical value in
brackets immediately beneath), the reader should proceed to the next, less
general, model. When the F value is greater than the critical value in
brackets immediately beneath, the coefficients in the more general model
are significant and should be accepted. The most general interaction model
on the left in figure 4, which predicts that female English heights depended
on whether a woman was born in a rural or urban part of a particular
English county, should be rejected. Similarly, the non-interaction model,
which tests whether height depended on the county of birth and the urban-
rural location of birth, can also be rejected. This is also true of the Irish
models in figure 5. The absence of significant differences in height by
individual counties is not surprising since employment, industrial, and wage
and cost regimes spanned county boundaries.
Counties were grouped together into specific regions based on Hunt's
agricultural wage areas of England: London and the Home Counties; the
south; midlands; the north and the fringe (including Cornwall, Devon,
Cumberland, 'Westmorland, and Northumberland) and regions used
Mokyr and 0 Grada for Ireland (Dublin and east Ulster; west Ulster;
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744 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

Interaction Non-interaction

Rural/ Rural/ C
urban urban County-specific

F 0.63I9 F 0.52I7
(I .32) (I .39)

Rural/ Rural/ Region-specific

urban urban

F = i.67I0 F I.7I93
(i6o) /(2.2I)

Country
urban

,F 8.9I
(3.84)

One

Height

Figure 4. Regional regression model of English female convicts

Note: The critical value of the F0.5 test is given in parentheses. When the F value is less than the critical value the
model is rejected. See text for further explanation and for a breakdown of the regions. Number of observations:
English = I,522.
Source: convict indents

Connacht, Kerry, and Clare; Munster excluding Kerry and Clare; and
Leinster excluding Dublin).92 The preferred model for England is the non-
interaction regional model, where height depended on whether a woman
was born in a particular region and whether the location was rural or urban.
For Ireland, the regional models were not significant. Irish female heights
depended on whether a woman was born in a rural or urban location.
The regression models uncovered regional patterns in English women's
living standards. Rural-born women in the north and south were the tallest
in our sample, while those born in the Home Counties were the shortest.

92 Hunt, Regional wage variation; Mokyr and 0 Grnda, 'Heights of the British and Irish' (cited a
n. 52), p. 28.

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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, I795-I820 745

Interaction Non-interaction

Rural! Rural! County-specific

urban urban

F 0.7356 F I.2606
(1 .I*32) I (I .39)

Rural/ Rural/ Region-specific

urban urban

F o.6350 F 0.9705

Xi /o (2.2I)

| Rural/ | Country
urban

IF I3.78
(3.84)

height l

Figure 5. Regional regression model of Irish female co

Note: see fig. 4. Number of observations: Irish = 2,790.
Source: convict indents

The urban pattern was slightly different. Those born in the south,
midlands, and fringe were the tallest, with the towns and cities of the
north and London producing the shortest women. These data support
the view that urban disamenities (poor housing and disease environment),
together with regional differences in diet and workloads in the industrializ-
ing and urbanizing regions reduced the living standards and quality of
life for women. The absence of regional height differences for Irish
women is consistent with Mokyr's dual economy hypothesis that the cash
and the subsistence economy were intertwined and mutually dependent
rather than being two geographically separate sectors.93 If the subsistence
and cash economies were continuous, living alongside each other, then

93 Mokyr, Why Ireland starved, p. 20.

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746 STEPHEN NICHOLAS and DEBORAH OXLEY

urban-rural differences, not regional differences, would have had the

most important effect on Irish women's stature.

Understanding female living standards and the position of women in

the family and economy during the industrial revolution has been severely
circumscribed by our dependence on wages data. Information on the
height and literacy of convict women and men transported to Australia
between i826 and i840 provides a new way of assessing the impact of
industrialization on working-class women. The late timing of the growth
spurt (which began around the age of 14), the longer duration of the
spurt (until about i6.5 or I7.5), and continued growth (until the age of
2I) suggest that during childhood, or adolescence, or both, women who
lived during the industrial revolution faced 'hard times'. This is confirmed
by declining average heights of English female birth cohorts between
I795 and i820. Our data show that the average height of rural-born
English women fell by more than 0.75 inches, and that of urban-born
English women by 0.5 inches, between i8oo and i8I5. The illiteracy of
English women also increased. Only i0 per cent of transported women
born in I795 were unable to read, while over 20 per cent of those born
in i820 were totally illiterate. During the early years of industrialization,
our data on height and literacy indicate that English women experienced
falling living standards.
Ireland was a control economy. It provided a model of co-dependent
family-based production similar to that operating in England prior to
industrialization. Urban-born Irish women were as tall as their rural-born
sisters, and the average heights of Irish female birth cohorts rose slightly
between I 8oo and i820. All family members worked, each was vital in the
creation of the final output, so each had a claim on the resources generated.
Sharing the work was associated with sharing the rewards of labour; in this
case, access to food and nutrients which afforded Irish women enough
nutrition to guarantee growth.
A different story was unfolding in England. Interdependent family
labour processes broke down as industrialization and modernization forced
production beyond the capacities of individual households. Labour-market
opportunities for women declined. Women were pushed out of farm work
by technological change, the replacement of livestock by arable farming,
and discrimination by male agricultural workers. Except for factory workers,
most women employed in handicraft and traditional industry experienced
fewer job opportunities. Faced with shrinking labour-market opportunities
for women in paid employment, controlling family members made utility-
maximizing decisions on the intrahousehold distribution of resources which
gave males favourable access to nutrients and education. Female heights
declined, absolutely and relative to English men and Irish women. The
convict data tell a tale of slowly improving nutritional standards in Ireland,
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 LIVING STANDARDS OF WOMEN, I795-I820 747

lower and declining living standards in urban England, and a polarizing

English country community where women bore the highest costs of
industrialization.

University of Melbourne
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