centurion Posted 11 September , 2014 Share Posted 11 September , 2014 Infantry of the Line Date/Minimum height Pre war 5ft 3ins 7/8th Aug 1914 5ft 3ins 27/28th Aug 1914 5ft 3ins 11th Sep 1914 5ft 6ins except ex-soldiers 11th Oct 1914 5ft 5ins 23rd Oct 1914 5ft 4ins 5th Nov 1914 5ft 3ins Feb 1915 5ft 2ins May 1915 5ft 1in 31st May 1915 5ft 2 ins I think this is slightly mis leading, the increase in the minimum height appears to have been in response to the initial rush to the colours, they couldn't handle the numbers they were getting so upping the height requirement acted as a sort of choke to slow down the intake, when this had slackened they went back to the pre war standard. The decrease to 5.2 marks the start of the bantams and was as much due to popular demand from shorter men rather than running out of taller ones. These figures have been used very selectively by some less than intellectuality honest writers to try and prove that so high were the casualties that standards had to be reduced (what they do is start the table at the September 1914 figure). Height is a combination of genetics and diet (nature and nurture) the former puts a ceiling on how high you can grow whilst the 2nd determines how high you do grow. There is a secondary and tertiary effect. If there is a sexual selection by height - women (and possibly men) prefer to marry taller partners then taller people may have more children but this selection effect can be dampened if the general diet is poor as fewer people reach their maximum height anyway so the naturally tall people have less advantage in acquiring partners. See The Mainsprings of Civilization by Ellsworth Huntington 1945. However such effects can take many generations to manifest themselves. There was an interesting long term study made of Japanese migrants to the USA and their children and grand children taking only those who married within the Japanese community. The third generation were taller and heavier than their grand parents but the increase in height was beginning to taper off. The conclusions drawn were that a more western standard of nutrition was enabling more to reach their potential maximum height Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted 11 September , 2014 Share Posted 11 September , 2014 JM Winter in The Great War and the British People uses actuarial data and some medical survey data to produce a myriad of tables on health during and immediately after the war. There is overwhelming evidence that diet and health streadily improved. My understanding is that diet is significantly more important than genetics and that sort people don't just have short offspring. If they did we would all be 5 feet tall. Half the genes were coming from the female side of course which immediately dilutes the fantastic arguments. The experience in the developing areas of the world provide a mass of evidence for the correlation (and causality) between diet, health and height. Added to which is the fact that 88% of all men who went to war survived. It seems highly improbable that the sample of 12% who did die were disproportionately taller than average leaving a disproportionate number of shorter than average people to create the next generation. I suspect there isn't a shred of evidence to support the idea that a disproportionate number of taller men died. I Strongly suspect that any sensible Government who went for conscription would ensure that the catchment would span one standard deviation (98%) of the vital stats (height, chest measurement etc) for the simple fact that it needed a mass Army. Putting a height restriction within one standard deviation would seem utter madness and counter to the basic concept of a conscript Army. Just a thought. Happy to be shot down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seaforths Posted 11 September , 2014 Share Posted 11 September , 2014 I have often wondered about the taller men being more likely to be shot in trenches and thought that too might be something of a mythoid (determined to make use of my new word). Certainly in the open, I can see that they would present a bigger target. If Pratchett were to write it up, we might have a Wee Free MacFeegle battalion north of the border in lieu of Bantam Battalions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
centurion Posted 11 September , 2014 Share Posted 11 September , 2014 JM Winter in The Great War and the British People uses actuarial data and some medical survey data to produce a myriad of tables on health during and immediately after the war. There is overwhelming evidence that diet and health streadily improved. My understanding is that diet is significantly more important than genetics and that sort people don't just have short offspring. If they did we would all be 5 feet tall. Wrong I'm afraid, height varies within the population, if there is a natural advantage to being taller so that taller people survive and therefore have more children who survive and have more children etc the population will grow taller on average over time (standard evolutionary principle) but there are natural limitations - being taller require more nutrition, being taller puts more demands on certain parts of the body, the environment may place limitations on the advantages of being taller (this is why we are not a population of giants). Civilisation also dampens some of the effects ( we don't need to be to be taller and stronger to have a natural advantage over the other apes in the tribe, being smarter is often better, laws mean that having a longer reach with a spear no longer means that you can take the main share of the food , have more mates etc.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bootneck Posted 11 September , 2014 Share Posted 11 September , 2014 You will find Roderick Floud, Kenneth Wachter & Annabel Gregory, Height, Health & History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1990) and J M Winter, The Great War and the British People, (2nd edition, 2003) useful books for an overview of the subject. Bootneck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seaforths Posted 11 September , 2014 Share Posted 11 September , 2014 Interesting and I suppose we could be viewed as a population of giants compared to a few hundred years ago. Visiting ancient places; castles and fortified houses etc. the doors are much lower, their clothes and suits of armour are usually much smaller. Some have historically been described as very tall such as William Wallace and Henry VIII based on this it would seem that the average height of the population is very much taller than it was and that the homes and clothes that do survive would have belonged to the well off people of the time, so it follows that their diet must have been much better than average (although vastly different to ours) for the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted 11 September , 2014 Share Posted 11 September , 2014 On 11/09/2014 at 11:15, centurion said: Wrong I'm afraid, height varies within the population, if there is a natural advantage to being taller so that taller people survive and therefore have more children who survive and have more children etc the population will grow taller on average over time (standard evolutionary principle) but there are natural limitations - being taller require more nutrition, being taller puts more demands on certain parts of the body, the environment may place limitations on the advantages of being taller (this is why we are not a population of giants). Civilisation also dampens some of the effects ( we don't need to be to be taller and stronger to have a natural advantage over the other apes in the tribe, being smarter is often better, laws mean that having a longer reach with a spear no longer means that you can take the main share of the food , have more mates etc.) I can't see how these long-term evolutionary spear-throwing factors can outweigh the very big increases in health and nutrition which can impact a single generation immediately - the first generation born after the great war. Developments in medicine and the impact on health and hygiene would have a much greater impact in this short period as well as nutrition - particularly for infants up to the age of 2 (the fastest early growth stage) and health and nutrition during puberty (the second 'fast' growth stage). Populations with poor health and nutrition don't grow to their potential. It follows that dramatic improvements in these factors will impact populations immediately. J M Winter very carefully demonstrates quite substantial improvements in these factors. Of course height varies within populations but there is mean reversion and while exceptionally tall or exceptionally short people may well have offspring that are taller/shorter than the average population, over time they mean-revert. The key is that the mean (average) in these populations is slowly but steadily rising, which simply means (excuse the pun) that the mean reversion is towards a figure that is steadily rising. It is a moving target in developing populations. J M Winter devotes half of his book to what he calls the Paradox of War. Essentially the improvements in civilian health, medical care, health administration and standards of living despite all the disruption and death of the War. There are very tangible and measurable improvements. Interestingly and perhaps surprisingly on Page 263: "But it is important to note the exceptional position of those age cohorts particularly decimated by war losses. The men who suffered the heaviest casualties during the war were born between 1892 and 1900 and were aged between 14 and 22 in 1914. This cohort was substantially smaller than those of younger or older men, born in the late 1880s or after 1900 who were too young or too old to have born the brunt of war losses.." He does not explain why this cohort was shorter than the previous or later cohorts. Interesting nonetheless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Filsell Posted 11 September , 2014 Share Posted 11 September , 2014 Bantams? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted 15 September , 2019 Share Posted 15 September , 2019 The French and British economies were under a lot of pressure after WW1 and didn’t really recover even into WW2, and they had the added cost of administering Empires bloated from the addition of Germany and the Ottoman empires former colonies. WW2 caused a lot of issues because Britain shipped in so much foodstuffs that they had to impose rationing on the population which effected city folk worse than rural people because at least the rurals could grow some stuff in the fields. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Broomfield Posted 15 September , 2019 Share Posted 15 September , 2019 Now that our two main contributors (combatents?) are no longer with us, my thought would be - were all populations shorter after the GW? If we assume wartime rationing would have a deleterious effect on a cohort of babies/children in their early years, coupled with post-war financial deprivation, then height in any urban area may well be affected (assuming all those able to throw spears effectively were killed, of course) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin DavidOwen Posted 15 September , 2019 Admin Share Posted 15 September , 2019 Try this site https://ourworldindata.org/human-height If you click on the UK into the first map it shows you the graph of height vs time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Atkins Posted 15 September , 2019 Share Posted 15 September , 2019 Interesting link, thanks - British men seem to be in a post-1980s decline... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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