40 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Bess. 
VI. — A Further Study of the Diets of Labouring Class Families 
in Glasgow in War Time. By Margaret I. H. Ferguson, from 
the Department of Physiology, University of Glasgow. Com- 
municated by Professor D. Noel Paton. 
(MS. received January 26, 1918. Read February 4, 1918.) 
Throughout 1915 and 1916 a study was made of the dietaries of forty - 
seven labouring class families in Glasgow, and in February 1917, shortly 
after the publication of the Devonport Voluntary Ration, ten of the original 
families were investigated for a second time. The results of all these 
studies were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of 
Edinburgh, vol. xxxvii, p. 117, 1917. 
In November 1917, after nine months of voluntary rationing, after the 
price of bread had been reduced from 5^d. to 4|d. per 2 lbs., and just before 
the introduction of the Rhondda Voluntary Ration, the diets of eight of the 
families were studied for a third time. 
The food purchasable per penny changed little in the nine months 
between the two latter studies. Bread, meat, and potatoes were cheaper 
in November than in February, but the price of milk had risen from 3d. to 
4d. per pint, and eggs, vegetables, and many other commodities were also 
more expensive. 
The method of study and the source of the food analyses used are 
explained in the account of the dietary studies of the same class which 
Miss Lindsay carried out in Glasgow in 1911 and 1912. 
As is usual in making such investigations, the food requirements of 
each member of the family were expressed in fractions of the needs of a 
man for a single day, the allowances made for women and for children of 
different ages being those first used by Atwater and afterwards generally 
adopted in this country. The needs of the family are thus expressed as 
equivalent to so many “men per day.” 
The study extended in each case over a period of seven days. 
The following short account of each family shows that most of the 
families studied had more than an average number of children. The ages 
of the children refer to the period of the last study. 
M. 62. — A soldier’s wife, with four children, aged 10, 7, 3, and years. The 
father, a man of very intemperate habits, was a labourer before enlistment. Two 
members of the family died between the first and second studies. The older 
