Charles Booth’s London
Charles Booth investigated working-class political movements, women’s lives, religious beliefs, immigrant experiences, children, schools and trades. We will examine London neighbourhoods using Charles Booth’s Poverty maps, historical photos, sketches and eyewitness accounts.
Among the phenomena Booth investigated are working-class political movements, women’s lives and economic status, religious/spiritual belief, late-Victorian immigrant experiences of the city, children and schools, the various trades of London.
Practical information
- Teaching will be delivered as a lecture followed by interactive discussions. Materials will sent in advance so to aid discussions.
- Participants will need a pen and paper or a laptop for taking notes.
- You may wish to peruse in advance the Booth Archive website on the LSE’s site here.
- Digitised volumes of Life and Labour can be looked at here.
Need to Know
You will learn
- The basic concepts in Booth’s work
- The dominant socio-economic structure of late-19th-century London
- The various political strands of thought current at the time
- The characteristics of various individual London localities
- How to pursue further reading on these subjects, with a detailed bibliography/secondary reading list
Meet the Tutor
Sarah Wise
Sarah Wise teaches 19th-century social history and literature to undergraduates and adult learners and is visiting professor at the University of California’s London Study Center. Her debut, The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction. It was the inspiration for Sky’s The Frankenstein Chronicles.
Her follow-up, The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum, was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize, and was the basis for the BBC’s series The Victorian Slum. Her most recent book, Inconvenient People, was shortlisted for the 2014 Wellcome Prize.
She contributed a chapter to ‘Charles Booth’s Poverty Maps’ -- the best-selling illustrated book by Thames & Hudson/London School of Economics. Her TV work includes providing background material for BBC1’s ‘Secret History of Our Streets’, and BBC2’s ‘The Victorian Slum’, and she has twice been the history expert on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ Most recently she appeared on Radio 4’s ‘In Our Time’, speaking about the work of Charles Booth.
Course Overview
Week 1
Place: the ‘Old Nichol’ district in Shoreditch
Theme: Introduction to Charles Booth and his work, and the ‘Map Indicative of Poverty’.
Week 2
Place: Soho
Themes: the textiles and footwear industries of the West End; and the increasing division between East and West London
Week 3
Place: Whitechapel
Themes: the religious and spiritual life of the poor; the ‘common lodging house’ phenomenon; and the lives of Jewish immigrants in London
Week 4
Place: Lisson Grove
Themes: schools, the lives of children; and Booth’s team of investigators – who were they?
Week 5
Place: the Docks, including Limehouse, Shadwell, Bermondsey and Rotherhithe
Themes: the politicisation of the poor / trades unions
Week 6
Place: Covent Garden
Themes: unemployment and how to end it; what happened next? The ‘Liberal Reforms’, 1906 to 1914. And Booth’s survey revisited (in 1930)
Dates and Times
Charles Booth’s London
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