In 2009, Horrell, Meredith and Oxley used trends in body mass to argue that poor London
women in the later 19th century suffered declining access to household resources over their lifetimes. The authors evaluated competing models of household behaviour, rejected the unitary model of equal distribution throughout the household, saw some support for a safety-first model, but on the whole concluded that resources were allocated in accordance with bargaining power linked to the economic worth of family members. As (particularly married) women's labour-force participation fell, so too did their share of the food diminish, and with this they lost weight. This unequal distribution was supported by a moral economy of the family: a set of shared values about obligations and entitlements which protected earners and prioritized the needs of children secured by maternal sacrifice. The current paper explores further the role of power in the family. The contention of a bargaining household can be examined through a very different but contemporaneous case study: the modern industrial town of Paisley. The paper juxtaposes a service economy (Wandsworth near London) with a modern manufacturing sector (Paisley near Glasgow) in order to contrast how economic form and opportunities in the market sector shaped relations and outcomes in the household sector. Again, our measure is lifetime nutrition and our data are drawn from prisons. This, then, is a tale of two cities, of blood and bone, of flesh and families.
