16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, February 6, 1912: Am trying to get ready for monthly exams. They come tomorrow and the day after. I have sad hopes and misgivings for one study especially.
Source: Durrell's School Algebra (1912)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I’ve recently posted many of Grandma’s diary recent entries which indicated that she was working very hard on her algebra.
And, I’ve provided a lot of background information about algebra a hundred years ago. When I got ready to write this post, I wondered what else I might write about algebra.
To get inspiration, I flipped through a 1912 algebra textbook —and I happened to notice that one of the problems in the book was about the average height of males and females.—and it included a data table with heights for selected ages between 3 and 21.
This reminded me that I’ve heard that on average people are taller now than they were a hundred years ago—and the next thing I knew I was headed off on a tangent.
Average Height by Age and Gender, 1912 and 2012
Click on graph to enlarge.
Click on graph to enlarge.
I found recent Centers for Disease Control data on average heights in the US. Since 2012 data are not yet available, I assumed that it is the same as it was in recent years. I also assumed that the data in the algebra book was correct for 1912.
On average, three-year-old children are much taller now than they were 100 years ago. Three-year-old boys are almost 4 inches taller; girls about 3 and 1/2 inches.
By age, 21, males now are, on average, more than 1 1/2 inches taller than they were a hundred years ago. In 1912 the average 21-year-old male was 68.25 inches (5 feet 8.25 inches) tall. Now the average male in the US is 69.9 inches (5 feet 9.9 inches) tall.
Females are about 1/2 inch taller now than they were a hundred years ago. In 1912 the average 21-year-old female was 63 .75 inches (5 feet, 3.75 inches) tall. Now the average 21-year-old female in the US is 64.3 inches (5 feet 4.3 inches) tall.
Filed under: Statistics Tagged: | 100 years ago, 1912, diary, hundred years ago
I know that some of my ancestors were shorter than those averages and a few were taller. Thinking of my grown children, I both the boys are over 6 feet. One is 6 feet 4. Nobody else in the family to my knowledge has been that tall. One of my daughters is 5 ft. 7 in, as I was before i started shrinking. My female ancestor were all shorter, except for one tall aunt. Wish I had the exact height of my grandmothers and great grandmothers. I just heard the ones I never met were short. Interesting the 3 years olds are so much bigger.
I’m surprised at the more recent heights. The majority of our family are well above these heights not it’s now, but as long ago as grandparents. not sure how tall my 5 yr old grandaon is, but head and shoulders aove his class.
Maybe Aussie sunshine breeds ‘em tall? Will have to see idmI can find some stats.
I wonder if what we are eating has anything to do with it.
I’ve read that it’s because of better nutrition and better overall health since there are fewer endemic diseases now. I also was really surprised that the largest differences in height were in young children–but many small children may have been sickly years ago and not have thrived in the early years.
Yes, for some reason, everyone in our family thought of my grandfather as being tall but on his passenger list he is only 5’9″. Then I looked at my grandmother standing next to him and thought “Wow, she must have only been 5′. Of course, everyone seems tall when you’re a kid. My mom used to always say “It’s those vitamins they give you girls nowadays!” lol
Maybe it is the vitamins!
One of my common thoughts as I research is ” How did these women ever survive the deaths of their children?” Almost all the women in my family lost one if not more. It is just so hard to conceive. An child’s death, infant or not is a real calamity today!
These women also needed to worry about whether they would die in childbirth. I couldn’t do it. They must have been tough.
Many of those deaths are avoided now by the fact that corsets, (and the damage they did to muscles of the torso) have fallen out of favor. Add to that the knowledge of germ theory…..
Interesting. . . I’d previously heard that corsets were bad for women, but I hadn’t realized that they may have been a cause for some of the deaths from childbirth.
But remember these are averages. I went to an exhibition at the Museum of London called London Bodies. People in Tudor times were short – HenryVII was deemed a giant at about 5 ft 8 inches, but some of the Normans were well over 6 foot tall. I think the first few generations in america were really strong and healthy – when families in European cities were struggling to maintain their numbers, recent emigrants were having huge numbers of children reaching adulthood. Bring on the fresh air and sunshine. Also, there is a thing called the milk generation. In Britain and I think in Japan, average height has peaked because until about 2 decades ago there was an emphasis on high milk diet. In England, shcools provided it free. Brits are shinking agaiin.
I’ve also heard that some people were very tall in the past. At least two early US presidents were quite tall. George Washington was 6 feet, 2 inches; and, Abraham Lincoln was 6 feet, 4 inches.
It’s interesting that heights in England peaked several decades ago. I wonder if a similar phenomenon is occurring in other countries.
With economic problems, I am sure the children born now will be smaller and weaker than their parents. There is a problem in Ethiopia that the women born during the famine had poor bones, so pelvic problems in childbirth now. Averages ignore the huge infant mortality rates – some families in English cities failed to produce a single adult. From the 16th century till proper water supplies in the late 19th century, English cities failed to maintain their population – that was done by inward migration from the countryside. Tehre are all kinds of myths about family sizes etc. Monasteries used to act as a check on population, then to an extent that was taken over by large estates. There was one case of a single aristocrat having 50 servants, all local people, very few of whom would have kids/marry. Hence populations were cotrolled before the cities became so filthy. The risks in childbirth were often due to stupid practices – the birthing room was sealed off to prevent bad humours getting in, and nothign was washed for the same reason, so this is why so many women died. Then there were sailors – problems with fresh water, so they added rum to it, they lived on salt bef & dry biscuits. They also had open fermented beer which in the tropics bred salmonella so they got food poisoning. How did anyone survive at sea?
Whew, there are lots of things to consider when thinking about factors that affect height and infant/child health in general.
People tend to only see as far back as the 19th century, when big, ofen extended families, were the norm. Before that, things were very different.
It is suspected that Lincoln suffered from Marfan’s syndrome, though, and that may mean his height was the result of disease process, not normal growth patterns.
Wait until I show this to my kids!
We’re getting taller over time!
My Mom’s side of the family was very short but my Dad’s mom was a Giant at 6’4′…. no really all her cousins etc were small, even her sisters. Dad and his brothers were all tall.
I would like to but a link to your page on mine if you do not mind.
I also had some tall ancestors. My grandfather was 6 ft. tall. None of his children were that tall.
You’re welcome to link to my page. It’s always wonderful to hear when someone enjoys this blog.
I am short by both standards…but closer to the average 100 years ago. At 5’0″ I’m taller than my mom and sisters! Thanks, Sheryl for the research and for an intersting post!
I’m taller than my mother; and my daughter is taller than me (though my husband is quite tall so that might explain why my daughter is taller than me).
Well I feel tall here! Lol! at 17 years old I’m 5’7 3/4 — although my dad (of German decent) is easily 6’4 now having been 6’6 at the age of 18. His whole family aside from his mother and sister are very tall, where as everyone on my moms side of the family seems average (which I always thought was short!) now that I’ve read this chart! My grandfather comes in at 5’8 (back in the day) my grandmother 5’5 (now 5’2) and my mother 5’3.5. I’m the giant! Lol. Even taller than my moms brother! Jeesh do I feel out of place LOL! Good thing I wasn’t born in 1912
Interesting how people get shorter as they get older. I don’t think that I’ve started to shrink yet–but probably will any day.:)
What about all the hormones in foods? Look at the abilities of our athletes, the size AND WEIGHT of people, earlier puberty, larger (un-augmented) breasts…
I think it’s mostly about having a reliable source of good food that makes us taller now. If people were tall in the past, it suggests they were doing very well.
Interesting info. Seems logical it’s related to diet and general health of people today. No telling what’s coming though- too much McDonalds!
Could be–Is there a relationship between height and weight?
I’m 15 and I am 5′ 9.5″ (still growing)… This makes me feel like I am way too tall. Haha. Good thing I love it!
Tall women have more fun.
Christine. I am 58 yrs. Old and in junior high about age 14 or going into my freshman year at high school, I am 5’10 and a half. Ihated in school in the 1960′s. But my mother said one day you will love your height. She was right and I’m comfortable ” in my own skin ” so to speak since my mid to late twenties I began to love being tall and carried myself differently when I accepted and began loving my height. I never had a problem with guys asking me out AFTER high school and many were 5’6 to 5’10 but never cared about the height difference. All adults in my family are at least 5’6″ . A tall woman or teem or girl can wear just about anything and look so much better than our shorter sisters. I wouldn’t trade it for anything now. But in Jr. High and high school it was very very difficult. I was really bullied ( I realize now) and made fun of. I am so glad you like being tall. Don’t ever slouch and walk with pride and style. It makes a huge difference when you ” show” that you are confident and comfortable with a not average height Still for women. So I have been 5’10 and a half since age 14. And I was very thin and willowy. About 115 lbs. Not so now
150lbs. But I look great between 150 and 160. Just doesn’t show. My granddaughter is 13 and 5’8″ . Doc. Says she’ll maybe hit 5’10. She loves it too. I hope tall girls aren’t getting picked on constantly in school now. My granddaughter says she isn’t picked on but kids can be mean as hell. Anyway just happened onto this website and felt compelled and am interested in how taller teens and women 5’9″ and over REALLY feel about their height these days? Any replys from tall med short? I’m genuinely interested. I wonder because my sisters in law all 4 are between 4’11″s and 5’3″ and they compliant all the time that I can spare some of my height for them kiddingly but really they hate being shorter and all say they would love to be 5’8″ and taller. Surprised me. B.
Thanks for your very helpful and thoughtful comments.
I don’t think that any of the people who have written comments have mentioned that they are very short–I wonder why.
Has the average size of human beings changed over time?…
Yes and yes. Average height doesn’t appear to have increased much between the stone age through the beginning of the 19th century, but after that, people generally got taller.* [1] The largest difference between a century ago and 2012 is in childhood …
Must be all the good food and vitamins. Or growth hormones in food. Yikes! My boys are 6’5″ and 6’4″
Kids do seem to be getting taller! My children are tall, too.
I’ve noticed that the door frames in older houses are much lower than they are now and thought this was to accommodate shorter people.
I’ve also noticed this. My husband is fairly tall and he often has to stoop to get through doorways in old houses.
I think my son is going to have the same affliction.
Interesting comments here! I live the discussion. I feel compelled, however, to dispell two common myths. First, shorter doorframes and lower ceilings were not due to shorter heights. Rather, the very practical consideration of cost was the culprit. The price (and sometimes scarcity) of building materials coupled with the cost of heating a home were the primary reasons for lower ceilings and doorframes. Particularly costly fuels in remote, less-forested areas (or the Northeast US after 1800, which had been almost denuded of trees from generations of settlement and construction, along with the longstanding mast trade and use of wood fuel) resulted in the need to conserve resources. Fireplaces and small stoves are not terribly efficient, so lower ceilings serve to keep heat in. In general, only those wealthy enough (and house-proud enough) to have unused space in their homes had tall ceilings and large, infrequently-utilized rooms. A fancy parlor or high ceiling meant you were well-off, as did having extra chairs or spare beds. It is hard for us to conceive of it, but most people shared a bed with someone their entire life from toddlerhood through the death of their spouse. Almost no one lived alone, either, regardless of age. These luxuries of space are modern conventions which few people prior to the mid-20th Century experienced.
The second myth is that if the corset. I have been presenting first-person history for several years and have studied historic clothing of the last several centuries for several years as part of my programming. I wear custom-made historic reproductions and am on my third corset. (I portray 1890s). Corsets in and of themselves are not nearly as uncomfortable as you may think, and, duebtobthe nature of lacing the entire length of the back, are very much adjustable. Women wore them for centuries to protect their ribcage and back as well as support their breasts while working. It is only after the Civil War that tight lacing became a fad and (thanks to images in Godey’s and other fashion plates) women of high income and high fashion began lacing to extremes. There is ample evidence that consistently excessive tight lacing will cause damage to anyone’s body, but most women did not do this daily. The few who did could be equated to women who today wear six-inch heels…they find very quickly how impractical and uncomfortable such garb is for regular life and either restrict the habit to occasional practice or abandon it altogether. In the case of corsets it is important to note that the tight lacing fad was brief and largely anecdotal.
Regular corsets were supportive garments that no woman could generally forego entirely; some manner of support was necessary and worn daily. The lacing was NOT usually done with anyone’s help. Just as everyone learns to tie their own shoes or wash their own hair, every woman could lace her own corset. The tightest lacing can be done by then wearer herself, but this requires a lot of extra time (30 minutes or so if you don’t usually lace very tightly but want to try it). Most women probably didn’t see much benefit in the practice and kept to lacing at whatever level felt right to them. Lacing any corset changes then wearer’s breathing pattern and very tight lacing will make for difficulty in breathing and digestion. Pregnant women sometimes wore specially-designed “mother’s corsets” which had adjustable gussets at each side to accommodate a burgeoning belly and of course supported the belly while relieving the strain on her back. Such a garment was probably very useful when sleeping in the last trimester! But overall, I do not think corsets had much to do with maternal death or infant mortality. Multiple in-depth studies have demonstrated that 19th Century birthing practices became more deadly when the shift to male MDs (who had only brief instruction on labor & delivery) began replacing experienced midwives and more women went to hospitals…hotbeds of germs for some time after the introduction of germ theory!…the rate leveled off and declined to more normal levels after obstetrics became a specialty.
Working women often wore homemade stays during heavy tasks around the home and farm, and whale or steel boned corsets per se were often reserved for social occasions, church, visiting, and other “dressy” times.
When properly sized, a corset supports the body and prevents or lessens potential injury when lifting heavy objects. Because it restricts the waist’s angle of motion, it forces the wearer to bend at the knee with one foot forward and the other a few inches back, thus encouraging the kind of “lift with your legs” action that modern workers in manual labor jobs are reminded of in every training video!
The information about corsets is very interesting. I can remember my mother telling me similar things about them when I was a child.
And, I knew that there was a lot of concern about the destruction of forests in the US in the early 1900s–and that there was an interest in environmentalism, but I hadn’t thought about how that translated the lower ceilings due to the high cost of wood.
Thanks for sharing this information with us.
Well, the environmental concerns of the forest destruction took a long time to kick in, but at least they did finally happen in rheb20th Century…but the high cost of wood was a problem for centuries. England was deforested so badly in the 16th and 17th centuries that one of the major exports in the American colonies was trees for shipbuilding. Shipyards sprang up along the Atlantic coast and the mast trade was vital to keeping up the British Navy…many colonial governors including my own New Hampshire’s Benning Wentworth found ways to satisfy the demands of the King while making friends in New England by skimming off the top and letting their local friends have some of the tallest, straightest, highest-quality trees for their own use regardless of royal decree. The King didn’t necessarily know what he wasn’t getting and Wentworth’s pals around here kept his secret in exchange for various land grants and the like.
So…even by 1800, wood was scarce. And, as our population moved into the frontier, the trees were different and of fewer number in the more western regions.
No matter, the construction cost was always a factor, and even if lumber was abundant, people didn’t want to be wasting their fuel of any kind to heat several feet of dead space near the ceiling. It made little sense to most ordinary people to expend the money and time and labor to construct something with such extravagance. Remember too there were few who could hire a professional house builder and his crew, and trading labor was an obligation to be met as seriously as any monetary debt…so people didn’t just take on laborers with vague promises or a couple of meals. Everyone kept account books and knew who was owed what for their work. It is easy to buy into a myth that everybody just threw a work party when a house or barn had to be built but the reality was much more complicated. Ultimately, if ten people came to help you build the barn or thresh the wheat and you didn’t have cash to pay wages, then you owed each man the equivalent in your own labor for the work he performed for you…no matter how great your wife’s cooking!
So…would you really want to build a house with 10′ (+) ceilings and a bedroom for each person? And if you did, who was going to chop, haul, and/or pay for all the wood? And who was going to tend all the fires? Or maintain the chimneys and douse the flames when the sparks ignite the roof? You’ll notice too that many early homes and businesses (especially those which predate heating stoves and more modern fireplaces) had a door on every room…helps to keep heat in just the rooms you’re using at the moment.
Us modern folk with our central heating and readily-available fuels hardly ever think about the size of our living space and probably take it for granted. Many of us envy the neighbors with the bigger better everything (as did any previous generation) but we forget how spoiled most of us in modern “first-world” cultures are today, even when compared with our own grandparents. My last grandparent died in early 2012, just 6 months shy of her 100th birthday…and she grew up sharing a bed with at least of one her three sisters until the day she married! So much has, indeed, changed drastically in just a century. And getting back to trees…many parts of New England have exponentially more trees growing today than were left in 1913. So even if we’re very spoiled in the modern age, we have done *something* right.
Great info and website! I would like to go back 100 years sometimes, a simpler vanished time.
My genes must be 100 years old.
Sadly, I am short and my poor kids didn’t fare any better!
My dad is 6 ft 1 and my mom is 5 ft 4. I am 18 and i am like 5 ft 10.5 i wish i was at least 6 ft tall. My brother is the tallest in my family. He is 16 years old and he is 6 ft 2 and still growing. He is suppose to be 6 ft 4 or 6 ft 5 when he is done growing.
There are advantages and challenges of all heights–whether short, average, or tall.
Terribly interesting. I love these sorts of facts and charts.
I also enjoy looking at data and statistics.
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Children are born BIGGER, they are developing faster as well due to different diet ingredients, etc. However, fact is that people were indeed TALLER back in the history if they were given just a more decent diet containing enough meat and proteins that even poor folks consume today. Why is that so? Because children definitely enter puberty EARLIER in our modern times, and that is affecting both sexes, though it might affect females a bit more than males.
When you compare yourself with your ancestors, you should know that they didn’t have proper diet at all, their lives were much more stressful with wars and much more serious dieseases, they often had to work as early as 5 years old, believe it or not… and working conditions were horrible. Pregnancy during the time that your body grows also counts in, and you should also add famines… plus they didn’t have any treatment for their body to avoid not only general health problems, but the deteriorating of their height as well, due to certain habitual and health issues. When you watch your mother and father, you should add at least a few inches to their height, that’s their prime height at the age of puberty if no other health condition affected it even more. If you had a grandfather who is 175cm tall (69 in), you should add about three inches to his height loss form mere aging to get his height when he was in his 20s, without any other health factors included, or taking environmental influences. Lots of old folks indeed get affected by various conditions that will lower then height even further.
During middle ages, an age for adult person was 10 years old in many places and you were considered as a man/woman at the age of 15. In fact, females were considered to stop being children very soon after their first menstruation. Pay notice how absurd it is, when we know that they would just be entering puberty at that moment… and boys with 15 years old will still be in a time period when their beard didn’t start to grow and will not start for a few more years. This is why beard and menstruation were the symbol of age/adulthood at the time, NOT the height or even age itself. It was culturally and socially acceptable display of adulthood.
I’m a researcher on this topic, I’ve participated in research of height of people in middle ages (among other things) and it’s relationship to nutrition, biology and even other things such as wars, poverty and life conditions in general, etc. There is a network of researches which still continues to do this research and it spans across several countries in Europe and I’m just a piece of that network.
Most of the things that we “found” are well known and obvious reasons that no sane person will dispute, however there is one breakthrough discovery that certain people still try to dispute.. and that is the fact that females and males weren’t really dwarfs during middle ages, main reason being that females entered puberty at average of 14-16 years, while males entered even later than that.
There is a noticeable correlation with DELAYED PUBERTY and height, not just the height at certain age. It was believed that children who are taller will stay taller after puberty, regardless of the time they enter puberty. But this apparently isn’t true and with more than two decades of research I’m 99,9% certain of this – earlier puberty results in shorter stature and it’s universal for both genders.
Children who enter puberty later tend to stay in prolonged period of growth during their growth sprout, because the bones form at much slower rate! This is often enough to catch up and outgrow other children who were taller even before they entered their early puberty. Most probable reasons for earlier puberty are genetic food modifiers and additives in food such as milk, growth hormones, etc, and this is why some people tend to sabotage our findings which are very consistent, because it may cause panic in minds of some other people regarding “food safety”, which our research never contested at all. However, this finding has gained some momentum worldwide and it’s been taken as a fact by many researchers in recent years, due to the extent of research and comprehensive work of many people that was invested to know more about lives of our ancestors during middle ages.
What could be the cause of earlier puberty? For now, it’s more of a guess, but they claim it’s “female hormones” that people consume in their food.
“Female hormone” estrogen (actually both males and females have it) is known to help the girls to grow faster than boys due to inner body composition. I’m not a biologist but that’s how i was told by biologist experts who participated in our research. You may ask why do females tend to be shorter… it’s because estrogen also tends to “form” the bones much faster, so the growth tends to stop afterwards. It makes more sense when you listen to biologists though, I’m historian. But this is why girls tend to have sharper growth during puberty while boys tend to enter puberty later and have delayed growth over longer time. Since estrogen is connected with fertility in women, this is why women with more estrogen tend to be more fertile and have much less problems with fertility than those who lack it, but also tend to be shorter than average due to entering puberty earlier.
Oh and by the way. Tall normans is a myth. In fact, it is a myth that stems from roman interpretation of invaders in most cases. Each time you fight an opponent, you tend to claim there were more enemies than there were, you claim that they were bigger and taller than usual, more cunning and bloodthirsty, more horrible than what others can imagine. It’s similar with how greeks described their first contact with whale, claiming it to be 80 meters in today’s measurements. Then the scholars of their time tended to discuss their findings and concluded that it couldn’t have been longer than 50 meters with the way they described it, with mere claim of “being as long as from one ship up to the other”. Nordic people tended to be average or even shorter than other people measured, while tallest people in 19th century were thought to be American Indian natives, by confirmed measurements. Pay attention that only a few Western European, Nordic and American societies measured their people, and standardized measurements started with obligatory military conscription. Determining height wasn’t easy in every day’s life because men were supposed to wear some sort of hat or headcover in almost every culture. You’d be surprised to know that almost every male wore a hat just 100 years ago, or that even vast majority of western women wore headscarfs or hats, something that you can mostly see only in exotic societies in the middle east or far east and india in today’s world.
Sheryl, what an interesting study, and the comments generated are just as intriguing as your work!
Excellent comparisons! If you really want an eye-opening set of measurements, take a class in Historical Perspectives On The Standard and Control of Female Beauty. I took the class years ago as part of a graduate program, and there I learned the techniques developed to keep female feet small (binding), “form” their bodies to keep the waists tiny (night corsets), etc. Measurements and statistics reveal so much of cultural attitudes.
[...] Average Height for Males and Females in 1912 and 2012 [...]
Very interesting; going to the shoe store I wonder if their feet are getting bigger as well?
I believe the bigger difference in size of children 100 yrs ago is likely because of growth hormones. As far as the difference in the height of adults, I believe that is because of selective breeding. When I was dating, I found the most frequent criteria women indicated for an acceptable partner was height – taller being preferred. Many women who were well under average height, yet required that men they date be well above average height for a man. So taller men are more likely to procreate than shorter men. Men on the other hand don’t seem nearly as concerned with the height of women they date, though many prefer their woman be their own height or shorter, it doesn’t make up for the number of woman rejecting men of below average height.
My sons are a perfect example of this statistic. One is 6’5″ and his younger brother probably will be, my others sons are 6’1 or more. One of my grandfathers was listed on his Civil War records as 5’5″.