A complete set of Booth’s ‘Labour and Life’ in London

The complete set of an important socio-economic survey of London, containing the landmark 'Poverty Map of London', famed for the colour-coding of the streets according to the degree of wealth of the inhabitants, ranging from black ('Lowest class... Vicious, semi-criminal'), through shades of blue and purple ('Poor', 'Mixed', 'Fairly Comfortable'), to red ('Well to do') and yellow ('Wealthy'). The text of the first volume details the poverty of the East End, the jobs the residents held and the influx of population to London, both domestic and foreign. A section of the latter describes the influx of Jews, spurred by pogroms in Russia and the expulsion of Poles from Prussia by Otto von Bismark. Booth writes that it is these immigrants '' that make Whitechapel Road the most varied and interesting in England'' (p.543). The second volume focuses on Central London and South and Outlying London, with a final section on children. Booth (1840-1916), owner of the Booth Shipping Line, acted in response to an 1886 Pall Mall Gazette article that claimed that 25% of Londoners lived in poverty. Booth regarded this figure as wildly exaggerated, so recruited a team of volunteer researchers (including his cousin Beatrice Potter) to compile an analysis of social conditions based on field visits and interviews with local police, clergy and employers. The first volume, covering the East End, showed that 35% lived in poverty; the second volume, covering the rest of the city, showed that no less than 30 per cent of the city's total population could be classed as poor.