Archive reference numbers: Booth B346-376

The social investigators accompanied police around their beats in London in order to update the existing street-level information for the Maps Descriptive of London Poverty 1898-1899. The policemen were able to supply local knowledge of the area and inhabitants as well as probably providing protection. The reports of the walks record vivid descriptions of the streets of London, inhabitants and often a description of the policemen. The report of each walk is accompanied by a sketch map of the area covered in the walk.

A typical description indicates if the street should be coloured differently on the updated edition of the poverty map, the type of housing, inhabitants if seen, state of the roads, type of occupations and extent of poverty of the inhabitants. Sometimes the descriptions go beyond this and general subjects are recorded. For example, the relationship of publicans and police, crime and drunkenness among men, women and children, descriptions of ethnic communities. General remarks on the walk tend to appear at the end of each report.

Abbreviations are common in the police notebooks. East, south, west and north are often abbreviated as are the colourings for the streets DB [dark Blue], LB [Light Blue], Rd [Red].

The Charles Booth Online Archive has digitised all thirty-one of the police notebooks: click here to access these images.

Click here for an example of a page from the police notebooks, recording the start of a walk around the Isle of Dogs, taken from Booth B346, page 1 of the Booth Collection at the Archives Division of the British Library of Political and Economic Science (London School of Economics).