Review by Choice Review
Degeneracy meant, to 19th-century Britons, that "stature declined, disease expanded, and things were getting worse decade by decade." The belief that smaller stature and poorer health were passed along biologically to future generations compounded the fear of degeneracy. Jordan (Univ. of Missouri--St. Louis) continues his interest in children, established in his, Victorian Childhood (CH, Apr'88). He assembles evidence from throughout the 19th century of reformers' concerns about the effects that urbanization, work, disease, poverty, and housing had on laborers and their children. As statistical information became more common after 1880, it bolstered these concerns but did not create them. In fact, what little systematic evidence existed did not support the belief in degeneracy and historians have not clearly substantiated it, either. Like Jordan's earlier work, this book contains a vast amount of information and large bibliography, with the material presented almost incoherently. Many readers will have great difficulty sorting their way through the information or avoiding the conclusion that life, being horrid, was always getting worse. Graduate; faculty. A. Horstman; Albion College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
