ABSTRACT
The population of Britain tripled between cl770 and 1870: prima facie evidence of an industrial revolution, and also, prosaically, of the provision of an adequate, if unvarying and often sparse, mass diet in which the wheat loaf predominated.1 The scale of the achievement is impressive: a roughly fourfold increase in volume and fivefold increase in value of wheat bread consumption during the century in review. And the proximate consequences were considerable, affecting the develop ment of agriculture, commerce, transport, milling, and baking.
