Tower Hamlets from Booth's Poverty Map of London

BOOTH, Charles.

Map B. - Outer East London (1900).
London, 1903. Lithographic map with original hand colour. Two sheets conjoined, total 320 x 440mm.

Laid on canvas.

Two sections (of twenty) of the extended version of the Poverty Map of London, published in the collected edition of Charles Booth's 'Life and Labour of the People in London', a founding text of British sociology. It covers part of Tower Hamlets, from Victoria Park to the East India Docks, with Globe Town, Bow, Stepney, Limehouse, Polar and Blackwall. The streets are coloured-coded to show the affluence of the inhabitants: on this map the streets are on the low end of the spectrum, from black (''Lowest Class'') of Gill Street, Limehouse, to the red ("Well-to-do") of the shop lining the Mile End Road, Bow Road, and East India Dock Road. There is no yellow for ''Wealthy''.
Booth (1840-1916), owner of the Booth Shipping Line, acted in response to an 1886 Pall Mall Gazette article that claimed that 25% of Londoners lived in poverty. Booth regarded this figure as wildly exaggerated, so recruited a team of volunteer researchers to compile an analysis of social conditions based on field visits and interviews with local police, clergy and employers. The first volume of 'Life and Labour' (1889), covering the East End, showed that 35% lived in poverty. The second series, covering the rest of the city (1891) showed that no less than 30 per cent of the city's total population could be classed as poor.

See HYDE: Victorian Maps of London, 252.
Stock ID : 20692