Charles Booth’s poverty map of London, 1898-9, sheet 5. LSE Library
Transcript
Map Descriptive of London Poverty, 1898-9
(In 12 sheets)
Sheet 5
East Central District
The streets are coloured according to the general condition of the inhabitants, as under:
Black = Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal.
Dark blue = Very poor, casual. Chronic want.
Light blue = Poor. 18 to 21 shillings a week for a moderate family.
Dark pink = Mixed. Some comfortable, others poor.
Light pink = Fairly comfortable. Good ordinary earnings.
Red = Middle-class. Well-to-do.
No colour = Upper-iddle 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.
Visual description
A map of the East End of London showing the general block shapes of buildings along the roads. The
buildings have been coloured in based on a scale of “the general condition of the inhabitants” as
observed by Charles Booth’s investigators. The scale ranges from black for the “Lowest class, vicious
semi-criminal” to red for “Middle class. Well-to-do”. The area of interest for us is between St Stephens
and Christ Church in the Spitalfields area and shows Little Pearl Street and the surrounding area
Coloured in black and blue while an area of Red is shown on the other side of Commercial Street.