Poverty and Physical Stature: Evidence on the Standard of Living of London Boys 1770–1870
Poverty and Physical Stature: Evidence on the Standard of Living of London Boys 1770–1870
复制标题
贫困与身材：1770-1870 年伦敦男孩生活水平的证据
作者：
R. Floud;K. Wachter
对于许多历史学家和他们的大部分学生来说，工业革命对英国穷人的影响问题已经变得混乱，这是一场《双城之战》的辩论，统计学上的复杂性越来越大。这是一个遗憾，因为“英国经济史上持续时间最长的一次争论”仍然有而且应该有能力激发和唤起人们的想象力，就像它对那些在世纪上半叶开始英国状况辩论的人所做的那样（Mathias，1975：vii; Taylor，1975：xi）。对于弗里德里希·恩格斯、埃德温·查德威克、约翰·斯图尔特·穆勒或沙夫茨伯里勋爵，以及许多作为政府检查员或地方统计学会成员提供证据的人来说，工人阶级的状况是有形的，可以在曼彻斯特或伦敦的街道上看到，可以在那些走在街道上、在车间和工厂里工作的工匠和工人的脸上和身体上得到证明。恩格斯、查德威克、沙夫茨伯里、巴纳多和其他许多人在世纪所感受到的道德义愤，不仅来自于看到肮脏的生活条件，而且来自于看到穷人自己营养不良的身体。
To many historians, and to most of their students, the question of the impact of the Industrial Revolution upon the poor of Britain has become confused, an arcane debate of ever greater statistical complexity. This is a pity, for “the most sustained single controversy in British economic history” still has, and should have, the capacity to excite and rouse the imagination, as it did for those who began, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the Condition of England debate (Mathias, 1975: vii; Taylor, 1975: xi). For Friedrich Engels, Edwin Chadwick, John Stuart Mill, or Lord Shaftesbury, and for many who as government inspectors or members of local statistical societies provided the evidence, the condition of the working classes was something tangible, to be seen in the streets of Manchester or London, demonstrated in the faces and bodies of the artisans and laborers who walked those streets and worked in the workshops and factories. The moral outrage felt by Engels, Chadwick, Shaftesbury, Barnardo, and many others in the nineteenth century came from the sight not only of squalid living conditions but of the malnourished bodies of the poor themselves.