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Abstract
This is the first study in Dutch anthropometric historiography that describes and analyzes the development of the biological standard of living of girls and young women from the perspective of female adult stature. It is shown that adult stature of women, imprisoned in the second half of the nineteenth century and born between 1815 and 1865, slightly increased, approximately 1cm. From 1850 onwards stature of women born in the cities notably increased. Development of female adult stature was compared to that of male stature; both were quite similar. No circumstantial evidence was found that girls or young women were on a disadvantage with respect to nutrition and (medical) care.
Notes
1 John Komlos introduced the concept of the ‘biological standard of living’ to bring together under one term various aspects of the quality of life from a biological point of view; aspects such as general health, nutritional status as indicated by stature and/or weight, the frequency and duration of illnesses, exposure to pathogens or age-specific life expectancy (Komlos, Citation1993a, Citationb).
2 A nice example illustrating interaction between environmental and biological factors comes from a study (Klein et al., Citation2008) showing that girls benefit more than boys from the protective effects of breast milk, but also that girls fed with baby formula are more likely to fall victim to a respiratory or lung infection than their siblings of opposite sex. The study population consisted of very low birth weight infants in the age of 30weeks.
3 There is not yet scientific consensus on sex-related differences in susceptibility to tuberculosis. See Holmes, Hausler and Nunn (Citation1998).
4 In linear regression terms: women's height=137.26+0.01*kilocalories per day (R 2=0.55). Men's height=146.80+0.01*kilocalories per day (R 2=0.67) (Moradi & Guntupalli, Citation2009, ).
5 For corresponding conclusion, see Harris (Citation1998).
6 For men's heights, see, among others, Drukker and Tassenaar, Citation1997; Tassenaar, Citation2000; de Beer, Citation2001; Maat, Citation2003; de Beer, Citation2004; Haines, Citation2004.
7 For the relation between the economic situation and food prices, see: see Knotter and Muskee (Citation1986), ‘Conjunctuur en levensstandaard in Amsterdam 1815–1855. Een onderzoek op basis van plaatselijke accijnzen’ [‘The economic situation and living standards in Amsterdam 1815–1855. Research based on local excises’], Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis [Journal of Social History] 12 (1986), 153–181.
8 Keurling is the Dutch word for boys or young men at that time who were tested for their suitability for military service.
9 Here, I make use of data from Drukker and Tassenaar, Citation1997, Table 9A.1. For twenty-year-old keurlingen, they calculated a height of 165.9–166.1cm (for those born between 1814 and 1816) and 166.4–166.9cm (for those born between 1864 and 1866).
10 Sources: Utrecht Municiple Archives — The archive of the Director of the prison on the Wolvenplein: inv.no. 283–315 (admission years 1861–1900); Tresoar, Archive of the House of Arrest, inv.no. 730, 737–739, 743–745 (admission years 1839–1842, 1863–1886), Archive of the House of Detention: inv.no. 867 (admission years 1891–1896), Archive of the auxiliary Convict Prison: inv.no. 933–935 (admission years 1888–1916), Archive of the House of Detention: inv.no. 815 (admission years 1863), inv.no. 866–876 (admission years 1888–1924), Archive of the House of Correction: inv.no. 864 (admission years 1879–1887), Archive of the House of Arrest inv.no. 746, 751 (admission years 1840, 1864–1885); State Archive of Noord-Holland, Archive of the House of Detention, Haarlem: inv.no. 135 (admission years 1873–1876), Archive of the House of Detention, Den Helder inv.no. 1–4 (admission years 1860–1869) inv.no. 7–8 (admission years 1880–1883), inv.no. 12–15 (admission years 1891–1901), House of Arrest, Alkmaar: inv.no. 148–150 (admission years 1883–1887), House of Detention, Alkmaar: inv.no. 180 (admission year 1883), Hoorn prisons: inv.no. 475–476 (admission years 1839–1844), 483–485 (admission years 1874–1886), 520–524 (admission years 1885–1888), Archive of the House of Detention, Purmerend: inv.no. 5 (admission years 1860–1861); Brabant Historical Information Centre, Archive of the prison for convicted offenders: inv.no. 306 (admission years 1862–1863), 310–330 (admission years 1863–1885), 425–427 (admission years 1890–1892), 450–451 (admission years 1898–1899), 482–486 (1908–1910).
11 For every admission register, the data were used of the first male detainee to be registered, and then the thirteenth, etc. For female detainees, data were taken relating to every female whose data we came across in separate registers of female detainees, or in registers combining the data of both male and female detainees.
12 The registers mainly state whether it is a relapse or not. Furthermore, the family name, initials, and date of birth were checked to eliminate any ‘administrative twins’.
13 In the report of the Committee for Statistics for the year 1892, a warder in Roermond was praised for pioneering an instrument to measure the height of prisoners. Cited in Eggink, Citation1958, p. 112–113.
14 In 1965 the (average) height of a 21-year-old Dutch woman was 166.3cm. Women's height increased by about 1cm a decade in the years that followed. See Fredriks et al., Citation1997, p. 1–13.
15 Oppers (Citation1963, p. 48) reports of an unnamed institution that the carpenter, who attached the measuring rod against the wall, fixed it for convenience onto the skirting-board. This skirting-board was 5cm in height. Consequently, the heights of groups of Dutch people measured and registered there over a two-year period were 5cm smaller that their actual heights.
16 The criterium for identifying a suspected systematic measurement error is an increase or decrease in the average height of more than 2cm within a period of 5years. This is based on the observation that, in the collected material, 5-year averages usually differ less than 2cm from each other.
17 Data were collected from a total of 7139+1248=8387 adult detainees.
18 Keurlingen, who had passed the suitability test for military service, were then conscripted into the armed forces by lottery.
19 De Vries Robbé, Citation1870–1872, p. 314–452 and State D.
20 Elsewhere in the text, it is shown that, in general, detainees come from the lower social strata. Conscripts were taken from all sections of the population. This doesn't necessarily weaken the comparison, as long as the social composition of the municipalities from which the detainees and conscripts came (see footnote 20) are more or less comparable.
21 Elsewhere (De Beer, Citation2001, p. 176–177), I have devised a number of formulas for comparing the height of a 19-year-old conscript with his fully-grown adult height. In these formulas, a linear connection is assumed between (1) the percentage of conscripts who were smaller than 157cm and the height of the average conscript at the age of 19years, and (2) the height of the average 19-year-old conscript and the extent of their growth to fully-grown adult height. To illustrate this, I include the following figures. If the average height of the conscripts was 157.5cm when they were 19years old, then one can expect their fully-grown adult height to be 165.6cm. However, should conscripts of the same age have an average height of 163.4cm, then one can expect their fully-grown height to be 168.1cm. A difference of 8cm at 19years of age will be reduced to a difference of 2.5cm in their final adult heights. So there is evidence of catching-up on growth, but this is insufficient to compensate completely for the difference in height. Because the estimated fully-grown adult height is a linear transformation of the percentage of conscripts smaller than 157cm, and the extent of the growth, the correlation coefficient given in the text should also apply, if we had used the estimated fully-grown adult height of the conscripts, instead of the percentage of conscripts smaller than 157cm.
22 It concerns the following municipalities: Alkmaar, Amersfoort, Amsterdam, Arnhem, Breda, Delft, Den Bosch, 's-Gravenhage, Den Helder, Deventer, Dordrecht, Gouda, Haarlem, Kampen, Leiden, Nijmegen, Rotterdam, Schiedam, Tilburg, Utrecht, Zaandam, Zutphen, Zwolle. The discussion is restricted to these municipalities because they had populations of over 10,000 inhabitants in 1859, and these, as mentioned later in the text, are over-represented in the sample.
23 See also De Beer, Citation2001, passim.
24 The category of workers includes (land)workers, farmhands, porters, polder and dike-workers, fishermen, sailors, boathands, workmen, factory workers, and applies to the period before 1849.
25 The following procedure was adopted to determine the social status of an occupation. The occupations were coded using the Citation Historical International Standard Coding of Occupation (van Leeuwen, Maas & Miles, 2002). The codes used can be found in the document: hiscostructure.rtf. These codes were then recoded using the document: [email protected]. An unspecified occupation, such as ‘worker’ was coded again as ‘unskilled worker’ or as ‘unskilled farmhand’ according to whether the birthplace of the detainee was in an urban or rural area. The above-mentioned documents can be found on http://historyofwork.iisg.nl/(12 June 2007). The social status of the detainee's occupation is used as an indicator of the social status of the family in which this person grew up. It was assumed, thereby, that there was very little occupational mobility from one generation to the next at that time. Only the occupations practised by at least 100 detainees in our samples are included in .
26 The estimates of the heights of managers and professionals with a higher education are not very accurate. This can be seen from the wide confidence intervals.
27 See de Beer, Citation2004, Fig. 3. The cities are: Groningen, Assen, Goes, Roermond, Nijmegen, Leiden, and Rotterdam.
28 In calculating the relevant percentages in , only Leeuwarden is included in the province of Friesland.
29 Citation Uitkomsten der 4de tienjarige volkstelling in het Koningrijk der Nederlanden op den 31sten December 1859. When comparing both percentages, it must be borne in mind that what is being compared are the places of residence (of the national population) and the birth places (of the detainees). Due to the increasing movement of population from rural areas to the towns and cities during the second half of the nineteenth century, the difference between both of these percentages would have been greater.
30 A t test was used to test the difference between avarages. Levene's test of the assumption of the equal variance of both distributions was insignificant (F=3.56; p=0.059).
31 A t test was used to test the difference between avarages. Levene's test of the assumption of the equal variance of both distributions was significant (F=12.73; p=0.000). This is taken into account when determining the lower and upper limits of the confidence interval.
32 We base this on figures given in the Citation Geregtelijke (Gerechtelijke) statistiek van het Koningrijk der Nederlanden voor de jaren 1855t/m 1860, 1861, 1863, 1864t/m 1866, 1868t/m 1881, 1890, 1892, 1894 [(Judicial) statistics of the Kingdom of the Netherlands for the years 1855 up to and including 1860, 1861, 1863, 1864 up to and including 1881, 1890, 1892, 1894]. Theft includes (1) simple theft and (2) aggravated theft.
33 With respect to selection bias, we focus on a situation where a sample is not representative of the entire population; in this case, the lower social strata. The drop in the number (of charges for) offences such as theft and begging, can also be indicative of less efficient action on the part of the police and the courts.
34 The Spearman correlation coefficient and the annual fluctuations in the number per 1000 of the population of men charged by the district courts for theft, vagrancy or begging (including boys under 16years of age) and women (including girls under the age of 19years) is 0.833 (p<0.001). This refers to the years listed in footnote 30.
35 For more information on the higher mortality rates in urban areas, see van Poppel, Citation1985.
36 The ANOVA test is used to investigate whether there are general height differences between people from different provinces (excluding the towns and cities). For men: F=6.005, p=0.000; for women: F=7.230, p=0.000. The Scheffé test is used to investigate which provinces appear to give deviating heights for men and women.
37 According to Landes (Citation1993, p. 161) the use of cotton underwear was a substantial advance as far as hygiene was concerned. The woollen underwear that was worn prior to this caused skin irritation, and regularly scratching the irritated areas in turn led to transferring pathogenic microbes from the hands and from food into the stomach and intestinal canal.
38 See also van Zanden (Citation1991, p. 41–42).
39 ANOVA test: F=3.856, p=0.000 (men); F=3.289, p=0.000 (women).
40 The beta coefficient – the standardised regression coefficient – is −0.137 for women and −0.187 for men. Strictly speaking it is not correct to compare the regression coefficients of both regression models because not all variables are similar. However rerunning the regression analysis while omitting the dissimilar variable (Experienced worker and Farmer's wife) produces the same results.
41 2.1cm is the product of the regression coefficient in (−0.330) and the standard deviation of the reference group (6.5); 1.3cm is likewise the product of −0.186 and 7.1.
42 The beta coefficient is −0.121 for women and −0.072 for men.
43 Calculation is the same as is explained in footnote 42.
44 The most important determinants were identified from the size of the standardised regression coefficients.
45 Correlation coefficient is 0.63 (p=0.009, N=16). If we leave out the mortality data in the year 1860 then the correlation coefficient is 0.98 (p=0.000, N=15).