The Short and the Tall: Comparing Stature and Socioeconomic Status for Male Prison and Military Populations

Abstract

Over the last four decades, historians and social scientists have become increasingly interested in the way in which information about stature might be used to explore the impact of environmental factors on the physical growth and well-being of past populations. A particular problem encountered by many researchers is that height data is only available for selected populations, typically military recruits or those admitted to correctional institutions. Evidence from Australian military and prison records demonstrate how the two social groups, soldiers and prisoners, differed from each other and from the wider population in terms of age, birthplace, occupation, and stature. Different patterns of observable characteristics conceal additional differences in intergenerational experience. We trace male prisoners and soldiers born between 1870 and 1899 in Tasmania to their birth records and thence to the marriages of their parents. This allows us to contrast social and occupational change from father to son for both prisoners and soldiers. We conclude that evidence arising from these institutionalized populations can be used to estimate wider societal trends, although caution needs to be exercised.

Men. Male-biased sex ratios and masculinity norms: evidence from Australia’s colonial past

“…A comparison of the number of volunteers with the number of veterans implies a death rate of 18.3% between enlistment and 1933. This is very close to the actual military fatality rate, estimated for Tasmanian troops in WWI at 19.2% (Inwood et al, 2020 ). The correlation between enlisted volunteers and WWI veterans in 1933 is very high, at 0.95, suggesting limited measurement error.…”

“…Military service in WWI was a risky endeavor. Fatality rates are estimated at 19.2% among Tasmanian recruits (Inwood et al, 2020 ), higher than those in the French military (estimated at around 16% (Gay, 2021 )). Appeals to masculinity and the public shaming of unenlisted young men for their cowardice were key drivers of enlistment (Becker ( 2021 ), see also Fig.…”

“…As a proxy for risk taking, and a measure of intermediary outcomes that helps to ‘decompress history’, we use voluntary recruitment in WWI. Appeals to masculinity, including by public shaming of men not wearing uniforms as cowards, were a key driver of volunteering in WWI, especially in Australia where all recruits were volunteers (Becker, 2021 ; Inwood et al, 2020 ).…”

“…5.8% of men and 0.04% of women in 1933 report service in WWI. Digitized data on WWI enlistment linked to places of origin of volunteers is only available for Tasmania from Inwood et al ( 2020 ). Using the presence of veterans in 1933 as a proxy for voluntary enlistment may suffer from measurement error due to survival bias, reporting bias, and post-war migration, which would be problematic if correlated with the convict sex ratio.…”

Reconstructing a Longitudinal Dataset for Tasmania

“…WWI attestation papers, for example, provide detailed information of next of kin as well as recording age in years and months. This considerably facilitates linkage with birth certificates (Inwood, Kippen, Maxwell-Stewart, & Steckel, 2020). Similarly, criminal justice series routinely contain attributes that lend them to linkage.…”