Charles Booth’s London Poverty Maps

A splendid - and necessary - publication...a great resource
Iain Sinclair

Charles Booth's London Poverty Maps is the first comprehensive publication of Booth's landmark survey of life in late-19th-century London, all within a single volume. In this groundbreaking social and economic survey, Booth discovered that 35 percent of Londoners were living in abject poverty. His team of social investigators interviewed Londoners from diverse backgrounds, documenting their experiences along with the investigators' own candid remarks and statistical data in over 450 notebooks. These findings became the foundation of Booth's colour-coded social mapping and his extensive seventeen-volume work, Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People of London, 1886-1903.

Organised into six geographical sections, Charles Booth's London Poverty Maps features the hand-coloured preparatory and printed social maps of London. The maps are complemented by reproductions of pages from the original notebooks, offering anecdotes and observations deemed too subjective for Booth's final published survey. An introduction by Professor Mary S. Morgan sheds light on Booth's aims and methodology, while six themed essays contextualise the survey's findings, enriched by evocative period photographs.

This publication provides a vivid glimpse into the everyday lives of people from all trades, classes, creeds, and nationalities, showcasing the diversity and vibrancy of late nineteenth-century London through Booth's meticulous lens.