Ladies from Hell, Aberdeen Free Gardeners, and the Russian influenza: An anthropometric analysis of WWI-era Scottish soldiers and civilians

We analyze data on the height of Scottish men, both civilians and members of the military forces serving in World War I measured in the 1910s, in order to provide another window into the biological well-being of late nineteenth-century birth cohorts. The evidence indicates that rural residents still had a distinct height advantage over their urban counterparts and that military men displayed a slower growth profile than did civilians, but mean heights for the two groups of adults were similar. Mean stature for both groups is well above those found by Floud for British troops born in the 1880s and greater than that of Scottish convicts from the 1830s. Men who were in utero between 1889 and 1893 were slightly stunted, “marked for life” by an encounter with the Russian influenza which struck the region repeatedly.

► Scottish mean rural heights were greater than urban ones among late nineteenth-century birth cohorts. ► Suggestive of an encounter with Russian influenza, men born or who were in utero in 1889 or 1892 were slightly shorter as adults. ► Historic Scottish height advantage over other British sub-populations is corroborated.