"Bread and a pennyworth of treacle": excess female mortality in England in the 1840s
Humphries, J.
Cambridge Journal of Economics 15(4): 451-473
1991
ISSN/ISBN: 0309-166X PMID: 12344004 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.cje.a035183Document Number: 322028
The author analyzes excess female mortality in nineteenth-century England. She concludes that such mortality was affected by the economic environment and that "much literary evidence points to unequal access to food and a resulting susceptibility to epidemic and respiratory diseases as the transmission mechanism converting dependence and discrimination into relatively high death rates." Women were also adversely affected by harsh labor conditions, in addition to the heavy duties involved in motherhood and housework.