Main content

Booth's Life and Labour Survey

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's ambitious project to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's survey, The Life and Labour of the People in London, published in 17 volumes from 1889 to 1903. Booth (1840-1916), a Liverpudlian shipping line owner, surveyed every household in London to see if it was true, as claimed, that as many as a quarter lived in poverty. He found that it was closer to a third, and that many of these were either children with no means of support or older people no longer well enough to work. He went on to campaign for an old age pension, and broadened the impact of his findings by publishing enhanced Ordnance Survey maps with the streets coloured according to the wealth of those who lived there.

The image above is of an organ grinder on a London street, circa 1893, with children dancing to the Pas de Quatre

With

Emma Griffin
Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia

Sarah Wise
Adjunct Professor at the University of California

And

Lawrence Goldman
Emeritus Fellow in History at St Peter鈥檚 College, University of Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Available now

49 minutes

Last on

Thu 10 Jun 2021 21:30
麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 4

More episodes

Previous

Kant's Copernican Revolution

Next

Edward Gibbon

See all episodes from In Our Time

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

CONTRIBUTORS



Lawrence Goldman at the University of Oxford

Sarah Wise at the University of California


READING LIST

Charles Booth, Booth鈥檚 Maps Of London Poverty, 1889: East And West London poster (Old House Books, 2013)

Charles Booth (ed. Jess Steele), The Streets of London: The Booth Notebooks: South East (Deptford Forum Publishing, 1997)

Charles Booth (ed. Jess Steele), The Streets of London: The Booth Notebooks: East (Deptford Forum Publishing, 2018)

Mary Booth, Charles Booth: A Memoir (first published 1918; Gregg Publishing, 1968)

Thomas R.C. Gibson-Brydon, The Moral Mapping of Victorian and Edwardian London: Charles Booth, Christian Charity and The Poor-But-Respectable (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016)

Drew D. Gray, London鈥檚 Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City (Hambledon Continuum, 2010)

Hubert Llewellyn Smith (ed), The New Survey of London Life & Labour: 40 Years of Change (PS King & Son, Ltd, 9 vols, 1930-35)

Mary S. Morgan and Iain Sinclair, Charles Booth's London Poverty Maps: A Landmark Reassessment of Booth's Social Survey (Thames and Hudson, 2019)

Belinda Norman-Butler, Victorian Aspirations: The Life and Labour of Charles and Mary Booth (first published 1972; Routledge, 2017)

Rosemary O'Day and David Englander, Mr Charles Booth's Inquiry: Life and Labour of the People in London Reconsidered (Hambledon Continuum, 1993)

Rosemary O'Day and David Englander (eds.), Retrieved Riches: Social Investigation in Britain, 1840-1914 (Scolar Press, 1995)

T. S and M. B. Simey, Charles Booth: Social Scientist (Oxford University Press, 1960)

Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society (first published 1971; Verso Books, 2013)

Beatrice Webb, My Apprenticeship (first published 1926; Cambridge University Press, 1980)

Beatrice Webb (eds. Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie), The Diary of Beatrice Webb, 1873-1943 (Little Brown, 4 vols, 1982-85)

Sarah Wise, The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum (Vintage, 2008)


RELATED LINKS











Digitised volumes of Life and Labour on the Wellcome Library site:






Broadcasts

  • Thu 10 Jun 2021 09:00
    麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 4
  • Thu 10 Jun 2021 21:30
    麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 4

Featured in...

In Our Time podcasts

Download programmes from the huge In Our Time archive.

The In Our Time Listeners' Top 10

If you鈥檙e new to In Our Time, this is a good place to start.

Arts and Ideas podcast

Download the best of Radio 3's Free Thinking programme.

Podcast

  • In Our Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.