LEFT-HANDEDNESS has reached record levels, with a more than threefold rise over the past century in the proportion of those using their left hand to write.

A large-scale historical study of handwriting down the ages by academics at University College London (UCL) has found that the proportion of left-handers has gone up from 3% among those born more than 100 years ago to 11% today.

Chris McManus, professor of psychology at UCL, said the surge in left-handedness may be due to a reduction in attempts to coerce naturally left-handed children into using their right hands.

McManus’s team have reinforced the theory that left-handedness is growing by analysing film shot about 1900 which shows that only 16% of those living at the beginning of the 20th century used their left arms to wave, compared with about 24% of people today.

The 800 reels of footage of Edwardian England were taken by Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon and unearthed in Black-burn, Lancashire, in 2002. Some were shown on television as the Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon.

Study of the films also shows how difficult it is even to define what left-handedness means. Far more people wave with their left hands than write with them. Other combinations are also possible - for example, a right-handed writer might use the left arm to bowl a cricket ball.

Philip Schuman, 36, a left-handed shipping executive from Cheltenham now living in Vermont, America, said he was right-footed when playing football and right-handed when batting on the cricket field, but a left-handed tennis player.

“It’s an advantage in tennis, as when I hit it cross court - with the forehand - it goes to the opponent’s backhand,” he said. “Whenever I see someone else who is left-handed, I feel like we are part of an exclusive club.”

Famous left-handers have included Jimi Hendrix - who played a right-handed guitar upside-down because he believed right-handed guitars to be manufactured to a higher standard than left-handed ones. Others have included Julius Caesar, Marie Curie, and among contemporaries, Prince William and the actress Nicole Kidman.

Previously experts had suggested severe discrimination against “gibble-fists” in the 18th and 19th centuries might have caused their numbers to fall - before left-handed numbers picked up again as the fashion for coercing left-handers faded in the latter 20th century.

Twisted wire jewellery from Roman times suggests about 10% was made by left-handers, indicating that perhaps this is a “natural” proportion.

According to McManus’s research, as the age of women at childbirth increases, even more lefties could be on the way because older women are more likely to bear left-handers.

Left-handedness is partly hereditary and it had been thought that left-handers were more likely to die before reproducing. The film footage suggests that the declining numbers of left-handers in the Victorian years might have been a temporary blip due to forcible attempts to make naturally left-handed people use their right instead.

Even into the 1960s some schoolchildren’s left hands were tied behind their backs to ensure they wrote with their right.

McManus believes the same genes that determine handedness have a strong influence on the development of language skills. Mutations in these genes may have caused humans to evolve complex language, distinguishing us from other apes, which are left and right-handed in roughly equal proportions.

Swedish researchers found that if a pregnant woman had an ultrasound scan, her chances of giving birth to a left-handed child were raised by 30%.

While some researchers have linked left-handedness to talents such as creativity with art and languages, others have suggested its effects may be less benign. Recent Dutch research indicated that left-handed women may be twice as likely to die from breast cancer.

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