Examines the height of Georgian convicts and concludes that their height declined beginning with the birth cohorts of 1835. The economic transition brought about a decline in their nutritional status.

Reviews the evidence on early-industrial height cycles and shows why the economic transition put downward pressure on the nutritional status of the European and American populations.

Argues that the improvements in nutritional status of the English population in the 1730s was instrumental in the demographic and industrial revolution that started a generation later when those birth cohorts reached adulthood.