INTRODUCTION

The long-term trends in the average height of the British population tell only half the story. Just as, in conventional studies of the economic welfare of populations, descriptions of changes in average income are paralleled by analysis of its distribution among different groups in the population, so we can also use height statistics to explore the differences between the experiences of different groups. Indeed, it is such differences which, because they are immediately apparent to even the casual observer, have stimulated much interest and enquiry into the phenomenon of height; differences between groups within European populations gave rise to the enquiries of Villermé, stimulated the comments of Chadwick and the factory inspectors, impelled the European recruitment officials to record the average heights of men from different districts or social classes and, most recently, have been a focus of interest in modern sample surveys.

There are four sets of data that make it possible for us directly to observe differences in height between social or geographical groups within Britain and Ireland. These are: first, the records of Sandhurst and the Marine Society in the first part of the nineteenth century; second, the enquiries of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in the 1870s and 1880s; third, the sample survey of adult heights and weights conducted in the 1980s; last, the evidence of the samples of British Army and Marine recruits.