Health & Place 8 (2002) 25–35 Life and death of the people of London: a historical GIS of Charles Booth’s inquiry Scott Orforda,*, Danny Dorlingb, Richard Mitchellc, Mary Shawd, George Davey Smithe a Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Cardiff, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WA, UK b School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 6JT, UK c Research Unit in Health, Behaviour and Change, University of Edinburgh Medical School, Edinburgh EH8 9AG, UK d School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK e Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 2PR, UK Abstract Social reformer Charles Booth undertook a massive survey into the social and economic conditions of the people of London at the end of the 19th century. An important innovation of his Inquiry was the construction of large, detailed maps displaying social class of inner London on a street-by-street basis. These provide a detailed and vivid picture of the geography of poverty and affluence at this time. These maps have been digitised, georeferenced and linked to contemporary ward boundaries allowing Booth’s measurement of social class to be matched to the measurement of social class in the 1991 census of population and standardised mortality ratios derived for all causes of death in the survey area between 1991 and 1995. The social class data were used to derive an index of relative poverty for both time periods and a comparison of the geographies of relative poverty and their relationship with contemporary mortality was made. Although the overall standard of living had increased, the geography of poverty at the end of the 19th century was very similar to that at the end of the 20th century. Moreover, the geography of all causes of death for people over the age of 65 was more strongly related to the geography of poverty in the late 19th century than contemporary patterns of poverty. This relationship was also true for mortality for specific diseases that are related to deprivation in early life. The paper concludes that the spatial patterns of poverty in inner London are extremely robust and a century of change has failed to disrupt it. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Poverty; Mortality; Correlation analysis; Social change Introduction exemplified by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project (Gregory and Southall, 1998), whose goal is to provide The digitisation of historical material and the both unit boundaries and associated historical popula- accumulation of historical digital spatial databases have tion statistics collected at a variety of spatial scales. The become increasingly common within GIS during the rationale behind this and other historical GIS projects is past decade. Within the UK this has been perhaps best that mapping and spatially analysing historical data can often be crucial in understanding the patterns of present day social structures and the factors that have deter- *Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-29-20875272; fax: +44- 29-20874845. mined them. The problem of converting the bulk of E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Orford), d.dorling paper historical sources into digital form, particularly @geog.leeds.ac.uk (D. Dorling), [email protected] unsystematic qualitative sources, poses special chal- (R. Mitchell), [email protected] (M. Shaw), zetkin@ lenges to GIS, as does the problems of locating historical bristol.ac.uk (G.D. Smith). places and objects in order to assign them the 1353-8292/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 1353-8292(01)00033-8 26 S. Orford et al. / Health & Place 8 (2002) 25–35 geographical co-ordinates required by GIS (Knowles, between 1897–1903. The impetus behind Booth’s In- 2000). quiry was complex, reflecting both political and philo- This paper investigates the creation of a specific sophical ideologies combined with a compelling sense of historical GIS relating to the geography of poverty in social obligation and personal responsibility to remedy late Victorian London as measured by Charles Booth. the problems of poverty that he saw as ‘‘the problem of Like other historical GIS projects, the creation of the all problems’’ (Bales, 1991). He was the son of a GIS involved digitising data that was collected over 100 prosperous corn merchant from Liverpool, and was a years previous. The historical GIS is then utilised in a successful business man, forming the profitable Booth specific case studyFto examine how spatial patterns of Steamship Company together with his brother Alfred in poverty in Booth’s day are related to contemporary the early 1860s. He distrusted philanthropy, believing it patterns of poverty and how both of these are related to encouraged poverty, and socialism, believing instead contemporary patterns of mortality. The case study aims that co-operation between employer and employee in the to show that spatial patterns of inequalities in the past form of Trade Unions was capable of solving the continue to have a strong influence on inequalities in problems of the working poor. Although he was not an health in the present. This research is timely. The academic, he was influenced by the positivist philosophy Charles Booth archive containing unpublished data of Auguste Comte and was attracted to the positivist relating to his Inquiry has recently become on-line ideas of empiricism, believing that social problems such whilst social historians have commented that there is a as poverty could only be remedied by making social real need for the ‘‘reworking of Booth data for the study science research as exact as natural science research. In of long term economic and social change’’ (O’Day and this sense he saw the collection of quantifiable scientific Englander, 1993, p. 7). ‘facts’ as a necessary prelude to the discovery of The paper is divided into five parts. The first part practical solutions. He thus disliked much contemporary places the historical data into context by examining the social investigation which he regarded as shallow, motivations behind Charles Booth’s survey of inequality sensationalist and unscientific (O’Day and Englander, and poverty in London, the methods he used and the 1993). This dislike ranged from the descriptive accounts links with contemporary government surveys. The by Mayhew on the London poor to empirical survey’s second part examines how Booth’s data were digitised such as the 1881 census of population that Booth and matched to present day census data. It discusses the believed to be incorrect, specifically with respect to the derivation of an index of poverty based upon Booth’s categorisation and collection of employment data data and the census data. The third part investigates the (Bales, 1991). Crucially, he strongly disagreed with changing patterns of social class and poverty between Hyndman’s survey of the London poor published in late 19th century and late 20th century London, and 1885, which claimed that 25% of London’s population describes the changes that have taken place. The fourth were living in extreme poverty. Believing this to be an part explores how these patterns are related to exaggeration because the problem had not been contemporary patterns of mortality and the implications scientifically analysed, together with a general suspicion of these relationships. The paper then concludes with a of information related to poverty, Booth set out to discussion of the results and the new Charles Booth on- conduct his own survey of the condition of the people of line resource. London. He gathered together a diverse and educated team of young researchers, many of whom would later become implicit in the development of social statistical Charles Booth’s inquiry survey methods in academia and national government, and began his Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the In the last decades of the 19th century, social reformer People of London that would take 17 years to complete Charles Booth (1840–1916) undertook a massive sur- and would cost the equivalent of three million dollars veyFeven by today’s standardsFof economic, social today of his own money (O’Day and Englander, 1993). and working conditions in inner London. The results were published as the Inquiry progressed between 1889 and 1903, when the third and final edition of the The poverty survey completed research was published under the title of ‘Life and Labour of the People of London’. This impressive His first survey, the poverty survey, was initially seventeen volume work was divided into three parts or concerned with the East End but eventually covered an series, each representing a different emphasis of the area bounded by Hammersmith in the west to Green- Inquiry: The Poverty Series, Vol. 1–4 undertaken wich in the east, and from Highgate in the north to between 1886–1891; The Industrial Series, Vol. 5–9 Clapham in the south. The aim of the survey was to undertaken between 1891–1897; The Religious Influence show that the incidence and causes of poverty could be (i.e. social influence) Series, Vol. 10–17 undertaken accurately measured, and by doing so, indicate a way in S. Orford et al. / Health & Place 8 (2002) 25–35 27 which policy might, for the first time, be designed to of poverty’’ (Hennock, 1991, p. 190) and households meet actual and measured needs (Bales, 1991). It is this were classified by their conditions of poverty. An survey that this paper is concerned with. The amount of innovative feature of Booth’s work was the plotting of detail recorded by Booth and his team was astonishing these classifications by household onto maps, the most given that they were surveying an area that, in total, had important of these being the ‘Descriptive Map of a population of over four million.