This chapter will present some historical evidence that indicates a longstanding geographical dimension to what we call class differentials in health and inequality. It will also offer some initial thoughts on how these influences of place and region may assist in understanding the long-run sociopolitical history of health inequalities during the last two centuries. These cannot be explained through any straightforward account. A number of important studies have shown both a remarkable persistence of health inequalities during the twentieth century and also no linear pattern of either gradual decline or gradual improvement. Thinking about the interactions between class and place and their associations with regional interests and identities in recent British history may provide a helpful way to begin to examine the possible influence of the nation's changing political and ideological climate of opinion. It may also provide a link with the most recent development in this literature examining the relationship between health, inequality and social capital.

A series of contemporary class differential statistics on mortality do not exist for the nineteenth century. Although there were a number of attempted forays in this direction from both government officials and others, which have left some scattered indicators, I have written at length elsewhere about the reasons for this relative absence of attention to systematic class measures of health in the nineteenth century. The British Association's innovative Anthropometric Committee created a scientific tool in the early 1880s that demonstrated the class distribution of heights among teenage boys, and that set the important methodological precedent of defining social classes primarily in terms of male occupational categories.