Interpreting adult stature in industrial London

This study examines adult stature and its association with risk of mortality in two skeletal collections from industrializing London, taking sex and socioeconomic status into account as potential sources of heterogeneity in frailty.

Mean femur and tibia lengths and the distributions of short femora and tibiae were examined in adult skeletons from the cemeteries at Lower Saint Bride's (low status) and Chelsea Old Church (high status). Cox proportional hazards models were used to determine if stature was associated with risk of mortality and how that relationship varied with sex and socioeconomic status.

High-status females had significantly longer femora, but not tibiae, on average, than low-status females. There were no status-based differences in mean element lengths among males. There were sex and status based differences in the distribution of short femora and tibiae, and there was a significant negative association between tibia length and risk of mortality in high-status females.

The results may be explained by differences in subadult mortality, potentially due to variation in infant feeding practices. Low-status infants were more likely to live in pathogenic environments and less likely to be breastfed, leading to both stature and immunological deficits, thus minimizing the association between adult stature and mortality, as the shortest individuals did not survive into adulthood. The ways in which migration and repeated epidemics of plague may have shaped stature variation during industrialization are also discussed, highlighting the importance of context in understanding the association between stature and mortality.