One of the myths of modern times – that left-handed people die young – has been challenged by a study of films from Victorian England.
In 1992, a survey of more than a million people between the ages of 10 and 86 established that the proportion of left-handedness was lower in the elderly than in the young. The study painted a grim long-term picture for left-handers, but only if rates of left-handedness have remained constant down the decades. So has it changed?
Chris McManus and Alex Hartigan of University College London tackled the question using documentary films made in northern England between…
