ABSTRACT
To these numerical estimates can be added various statements, such as Engels’ observations of the food of the Manchester working classes;10 Jefferies’ notes on the Wiltshire labourers’ diets of the 1870s, which show little change from those reported by Davies and Eden almost a century before;11 Eliza Acton’s comment that ‘it is no unusual
circumstance for the entire earnings of a poor hard-working man to be expended upon bread only, for himself and his family’ (‘without their being nourished as they ought to be, even then’);12 conclusions from Edward Smith’s dietary surveys, for instance that for indoor and outdoor workers alike ‘bread was undoubtedly the principal food of all the groups he investigated’;13 and Davies’ own conclusion that ‘bread makes the principal part of the food of all poor families, and almost the whole of the food of all such large families . . .’14
