Dark-Haired English Aristocracy?

Charles E. Woodruff, in Expansion of Races, 1909, Chapter VIII reports the results of a study by Havelock Ellis of portraits of the National Portrait Gallery in London. An index is caluclated for the relevant prevalence of blonds and brunets for different occupational classes, by the formula 100*BLONDS/BRUNETS. If blonds and brunets were equally represented, then the index would have a value of 100.

There is a range of variation from 233 (blonds 2.33x the frequency of brunets) for Political Reformers and Agitators, to 33 (brunets 3.03x the frequency of blonds) for Actors and Actresses.

The null hypothesis in this case would be that blonds and brunets occur at the frequency found in the general population. Coon, in Races of Europe notes that blonds are more important than brunets in the British Isles. It is difficult to assess the meaning of these terms without a standard scale.

The 95% confidence interval for brunets among Political Reformers for the binomial distribution is (expressed as % blonds) [45.7, 88.1]. For Actors and Actresses it is [7.3, 52.4]. These may be statistically significant depending on the actual percentage of blonds in the British Isles.

The largest occupational class in this study is for the Hereditary Aristocracy, with 149 samples. The index of blondness is 82, i.e., 45% blonds. The confidence interval is [36.8, 53.3].

Brunets may indeed be over-represented in the English aristocracy. The sample is hardly sufficient to make a case for it though. One can safely conclude though that the idea that blonds are more than the brunets among aristocrats is false.

Posted by Dienekes at April 20, 2003 01:44 AM | PermaLink