The Charles Booth Online Archive contains material from the Archives Division of the British Library of Political and Economic Science (the Library of the London School of Economics) relating to Booth's survey into life and labour in London (1886-1903). It also contains Booth family papers from the Archives of the University of London Library.
Digitised poverty map
Some of the most striking products of the survey were the maps of London coloured street by street to represent seven levels of income and class, from the "lowest class - vicious and semi-criminal" to the "upper-middle and upper classes - wealthy".
The seven classes are described on the legend to the maps as follows:
 | BLACK: Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal. |  | DARK BLUE: Very poor, casual. Chronic want. |  | LIGHT BLUE: Poor. 18s. to 21s. a week for a moderate family |  | PURPLE: Mixed. Some comfortable others poor |  | PINK: Fairly comfortable. Good ordinary earnings. |  | RED: Middle class. Well-to-do. |  | YELLOW: Upper-middle and Upper classes. Wealthy. | | A combination of colours - as dark blue or black, or pink and red - indicates that the street contains a fair proportion of each of the classes represented by the respective colours. |
|
The first series of maps was based on information gathered from the School Board visitors representing the situation in 1889 and was widely circulated and commented upon. Ten years later, as the inquiry was still progressing, it was thought necessary to revisit the maps and a second series was produced, the twelve Maps Descriptive of London Poverty, 1898-9. Revisions were based on the observations made by investigators accompanying policemen on their beats around London. It is these twelve maps and the thirty-one notebooks recording the investigators' impressions of their walks with the policemen that the LSE project has digitised.
Spitalfields from the Maps Descriptive of London Poverty, 1898-9
The twelve original map sheets have been scanned and stitched together to create one searchable online image. They cover an area from Hammersmith in the west, to Greenwich in the east, and from Hampstead in the north to Clapham in the south, and were published between 1902 and 1903. They use Stanford's Library Map of London and Suburbs at a scale of 6 inches to 1 mile (1:10,560) as their base.
Digitised "police" notebooks
The website contains thirty one digitised notebooks describing the impressions of streets and street life in London between 1898 and 1900.
The social investigators accompanied police around their beats in London in order to update the existing street-level information for the second edition of the Maps Descriptive of London Poverty to cover the years 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 and their inhabitants and often include 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, such as the relationship of publicans and police, crime and drunkenness among men, women and children, and 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].
An example of a page from the police notebooks, recording the start of a walk around the Isle of Dogs [archive reference Booth B346 p.1, Archives Division of the British Library of Political and Economic Science (London School of Economics)].
Online catalogue of survey notebooks
The website also provides access to an online catalogue of the 450 notebooks from the survey, held at the Archives Division of the British Library of Political and Economic Science (London School of Economics).
Digitised Booth family magazine
The Charles Booth Online Archive contains digitised images of seven volumes of the Booth family magazine The Colony (1866-1871). The magazine aimed to represent high-standards of social conscience and discussed issues such as universal suffrage and religion. It contains poems, plays, articles and ghost stories and many examples of Victorian issues and values can be found. This material comes from the archives of the University of London Library.
Online catalogue of Booth family papers
The correspondence in this collection is largely concerned with domestic and personal details of the lives of the Macaulay and Booth families, related by the marriage of Mary Macaulay to Charles Booth in 1871. The collection contains over 6000 items of correspondence from 359 identified people. The letters were sent by and to members of the Macaulay family (mainly between 1800 and 1850) and the Booth family (mainly between 1860 and 1916).
Resources available from the Charles Booth Online Archive
