Adult stature has become a widely used indicator of childhood nutritional status in historical populations and may provide insights into health inequalities that are not discernible in mortality rates. However, most pre-twentieth-century British data on heights suffer from selection biases. Here we present unique evidence on heights of adult males by occupation from an unbiased sample of adult males in Dorset in 1798–99. The mean height of fully grown (married) men was very similar to that of older military recruits, and our sample therefore confirms the taller stature of English males relative to males of other European countries in the same period. In contrast to previous evidence of negligible or U-shaped socio-economic gradients in mortality in this period, we found a fairly linear gradient in height by socio-economic status, that is similar in magnitude to class differences in adult height among English males born in the mid-twentieth century.

Supplementary material for this article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2020.1823011

成年身高已成为历史人口中儿童营养状况的广泛使用指标，并可能提供对死亡率中无法辨别的健康不平等的见解。然而，大多数 20 世纪前的英国身高数据都存在选择偏差。在这里，我们从 1798-99 年在多塞特郡的一个无偏见的成年男性样本中提供了按职业划分的成年男性身高的独特证据。成年（已婚）男性的平均身高与年龄较大的新兵非常相似，因此我们的样本证实了英国男性相对于同期其他欧洲国家男性的更高身材。与之前关于这一时期死亡率的可忽略或 U 形社会经济梯度的证据相比，我们发现社会经济地位的身高梯度相当线性，

本文的补充材料可在以下网址获得：https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2020.1823011