Labouring bodies: living standards and the distribution of food in Britain, 1850-1914

This dissertation analyses the social relations of distribution upon which the 'production' of cheap food in Britain between 1850 and 1914 came to rest. It argues that these relations of distribution were essential to the realisation of the potential for the mass of cheap food reaching its shores after 1870. Through a study of the dynamics surrounding key actors (e.g. public markets, street sellers, shopkeepers, co-operative stores, multiples) of the food distributive chain, I demonstrate that food distribution during this period was a turning point in the political economy of food and a crucial element in rising real wages and working-class living standards. The dissertation makes two fundamental claims. The first is that the study of food cannot be reduced to quantitative measures alone and that the changing quality and physical and nutritional properties of food need to be analysed to understand people's health and well-being. My second claim is that the notion of distribution must be understood in its wider sense as a social and material process through which food is unevenly distributed in time and space amongst the members of the society and the household. In this respect, the dissertation documents the close relationship between living standards and the distribution of food, and the ways in which food is embodied in socially differentiated ways.