Charles Booth's Descriptive Map of London Poverty South-West circa 1889

Charles Booth's Descriptive Map of London Poverty first published circa 1889. South-Western sheet comprising of the Parish of Chelsea, and Parts of Fulham, Kensington, St.George's Hanover Square, Strand, Lambeth, and the Battersea portion of Wandsworth.

The streets are coloured according to the general condition of the inhabitants (as the key).
- Lower class. Vicious, semi criminal
- Very poor, casual. Chronic want.
- Poor. 18s - 21s. a week for a moderate family.
-Mixed. Some comfortable, others poor.
- Fairly comfortable. Good ordinary earnings.
- Well-to-do. Middle class.
- Upper-middle and upper classes. Wealthy.

When this map was published:

During the 1800’s London was rapidly expanding. The population of London grew from 2.2 million in 1840 to over 4.3 million souls by the end of the reign of Queen Victoria. 85% of Londoners were working class, and 30% were living in dire poverty. Life expectancy in Victorian London was low. Middle classes could expect to reach their 40’s, but for laborers and lower classes it was still only in the mid 20’s. Infant mortality rate reached a peak of 163 per 1,000 live births in 1899, and children living amongst the filth and squalor of London’s slums would be lucky to survive past their fifth birthday.
Charles Booth was a social reformer. Born in Liverpool in 1840, his family were originally corn traders who expanded into the leather trade and shipping. The ‘Booth Steamship Co’ was a successful venture that led to offices in Liverpool, London, and New York. Director of the Liverpool shipping line, by 1900 his company ran 14 ships, and launched the first passenger service to ports in northern Brazil and along the Amazon River. Widely travelled across the globe, and a fulltime worker, it was his personal interest in urban poverty that led to the creation of ‘Booth’s Inquiry into the life and labour of London’ - a 17 year-long inquiry in to pauperism in London, and its causes and effects on society as a whole. Booth set out to determine the nature & magnitude of the problem of pauperism in London, and to identify the reasons behind it. The Inquiry began in 1886, and alongside seventeen volumes of research and analysis, a series of four maps were produced in 1889 which became ‘Descriptive Maps of London Poverty’ detailing the distribution of rich and poor across London. Describing the streets depending on the social condition of its inhabitants, and their various states of employment.
The rising crime rate was a serious concern and latter observations and a series of a further 12 maps produced ten years after the first inquiry, were taken from police notebooks, and from investigators walking the streets whilst police officers were on patrol. Offences went up from about 5,000 per year in 1800, to 20,000 in 1840. Ideas of how to punish these criminals was changing and the criminal and penal system we know now is in part a product of the Victorian age. In 1815, 200 offences carried the death penalty, hard labour and exile was commonplace. Questions on the brutalising effects of public hangings as entertaining spectacles first arose in 1840, and public hangings were abolished in 1868. In 1861 the death penalty was abolished for all crimes except murder, high treason, piracy, and arson. Where once, at the beginning of the century, you could be hung for widespread minor misdemeanors such as pick pocketing, poaching, and theft, criminals now had to be housed and contained within a prison. Between 1788 – 1868, 806 ships transported 164,000 convicts to the Australian colonies. The last convict ship left Britain in 1867.
Chronic poverty was a worry for the wealthy 15% because of the effect on their own surroundings, the effect of rising crime rates, and increased danger to themselves. Reliance on maps became commonplace during the 19th century because London was expanding, and the wealthy especially did not want to get lost in London’s crime infested back streets. Council housing was not introduced until the next century and workhouses (inhumane establishments to house societies most needy) were synonymous with Charles Dicken’s London, who would have walked these streets at the same time as Booth. Whilst there are many examples in literature of an awakening moral conscience in the Victorian era regarding the welfare of society's most vulnerable, there are no other examples of such a huge undertaking to interview, observe, and map, the very real inhabitants of Booth’s London.