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Description

The Most Iconic Mapping of Soceoconomic Status Ever Produced. 

Nice example of Booth's temperance map of London, showing the locations of "houses licensed to sell intoxicating drinks" in relation to places of education and worship. The map was published as part of a series of maps and accompanying text volumes, and it served to demonstrate that the temperance movement in the UK had failed.

Published in 1902, the map shows the data collected in 1899 and 1900 by the shipping magnate Charles Booth for his Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London. Supposedly started following Booth's shock at an 1886 claim by Pall Mall Gazette that up to 25% of Londoners lived in poverty, the Inquiry lasted until 1903 and revealed to a surprised nation the extent of the issues faced by the working class. The Inquiry focused not only on statistical measurements of poverty but also on understanding the root causes of this societal evil, as on the present map.

The Inquiry was published in four iterations, each larger than the previous, with the final 1902-1903 edition comprising seventeen volumes. The 1891 second edition is notable as it contained maps to illustrate the study - the first edition did not include maps. Most of these maps were snapshots of individual neighborhoods, with only a few of the maps (including the present) showing London as a whole, with these being the most desirable. This map was published in the final volume of the work.

The detail on the present map is impressive, showing the locations of hundreds of bars (both on and off license), liquor stores (but only if they sell non-alcoholic items, curiously), and restaurants.  In addition, different types of churches, schools, and synagogues are marked. The map focuses on central London, stretching from the West India Docks (Isle of Dogs) to Westminster, and from King's Cross to Kennington.

The map uses as its base a Stanford map of London with a scale of two inches to the mile.

The Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London

The Inquiry was a seventeen-year commission that investigated the lives of the working classes in London during one of the great periods of industrialization. While other nineteenth-century surveys on the matter were conducted throughout the UK, Booth's work is considered some of the most important because of the way it was published and how it affected public opinion.

For the survey, Booth recruited his family, friends, and colleagues to conduct surveys throughout the city. These well-heeled members of upper society (including his cousin, Beatrice Webb, who would help found the London School of Economics) interviewed thousands of denizens of both wealthy neighborhoods and the most impoverished areas to gain both quantitative and qualitative information that they used to propose arguments not just on the distribution of poverty but also its root causes.

Today, we are fortunate to know many details about the Booth survey due to the papers that survive at the London School of Economics. While the published reports were carefully anonymized and any identifying information removed, Booth's notebooks present additional details that shock the reader even more than the published works.

Charles Booth: Life and Times

Charles Booth was one of the most prominent London Victorians of his time, whose LSE biography describes him as "one of the great and the good." Very wealthy from a young age given his inheritance of 20,000 pounds following his father's passing, he established an important shipping company with offices in Liverpool and New York.

Booth's interest in socioeconomic studies started in the 1860s following his brief and failed involvement in politics, which happened during a general Tory takeover of the government. As such, he decided that educating the populace regarding the problems that faced the working class was a more useful dedication of his time.

This would come to a peak with his famous inquiry, conducted from the 1880s into the 1900s, which investigated working class life in the English capital. This inquiry is remembered for a number of reasons, including the vast amounts of data that is published in volumes and select maps. 

Booth survived 13 years following the end of the poverty surveys and died in 1916.

Condition Description
Folding map.
Reference
https://booth.lse.ac.uk/