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recorded as light, medium, and dark.7 Inmate enumerators recorded a broad continuum
of occupations and defined them narrowly, recording over 200 different occupations,
which are classified here into four categories: merchants and high skilled workers are
classified as white-collar workers; light manufacturing, craft workers, and carpenters are
classified as skilled workers; workers in the agricultural sector are classified as farmers;
laborers and miners are classified as unskilled workers (Tanner, 1977, p. 346; Ladurie,
1979; Margo and Steckel, 1992; p. 520). Unfortunately, inmate enumerators did not
distinguish between farm and common laborers. Since common laborers probably
encountered less favorable biological conditions during childhood and adolescence, this
potentially overestimates the biological benefits of being a common laborer and
underestimates the advantages of being a farm laborer. To make meaningful
comparisons across the soldier and prisoner samples, only white males are included in
this analysis, and age, nativity, and birth-cohort characteristics are restricted in each
sample to only males born between 1800 and 1849 in the same states and between the
ages of 15 and 59.
Soldier and Prisoner Summary Statistics
Because the height distribution is itself a function of the age distribution, a height
index is constructed for both soldier and prisoner samples to determine if statures were
distributed symmetrically and whether there were arbitrary truncation points imposed on
soldier and prisoner statures, either by military recruitment standards, law enforcement,
7 I am currently collecting 19th century Irish prison records. Irish prison enumerators also used light,
medium, dark, fresh and sallow to describe white prisoners in Irish prisons from a traditionally white
population. To date, no inmate in an Irish prison has been recorded with a complexion consistent with
African heritage.