So would he have run?

[Fisherman]

One last Booth quote, re the Boundary St area:

According to Insp. French certain streets were 'in character dark blue and black. Much of this was dark blue before but it is worse now by reason of the immigration of the worst characters from Boundary Street - thieves, prostitutes, bullies, especially thieves'.

No mention of earnings, criminality is the deciding factor.

MrB

And that shows us that the idea of the day was that there was a clear correlation inbetween poverty and bad character, just as I have said all along. Equally, a good character and a good income would also have been regarded as a given interconnection.

Like I said, it was believed that poverty was something you deserved, a punishment. In that context, it is easy to understand why it is spoken of character here. Booth would have been convinced that where he found poverty, he would find crime. And where he found crime, he would have been certain to find poverty. The two were tied together in his mind, apparently.

He was a man of his age and time. Today, he would have been laughed out of any academic seat. We know that you can be poor and honest.

As an aside, I think that the immense success Charles Dickens had, appealing to enormous crowds, to some extent owed to the fact that he described poor but patently honest people, like for example Daniel Pegotty in "David Copperfield", a man that had no money but very commendable ethics, who was morally untouchable, whereas a man like Steerforth, who had been born into money, was given the role of the bad guy, morally corrupt and without ethics.
In this context, Dickens is the polar opposite of Booth, giving the little man some dignity.

All the best,
Fisherman

[MrBarnett]

One last Booth quote, re the Boundary St area:

According to Insp. French certain streets were 'in character dark blue and black. Much of this was dark blue before but it is worse now by reason of the immigration of the worst characters from Boundary Street - thieves, prostitutes, bullies, especially thieves'.

No mention of earnings, criminality is the deciding factor.

MrB

[Fisherman]

MrBarnett:

You are a very slippery fish indeed! I entered this debate because you appeared to be saying that Booth's black did not imply criminal because he had coloured GY black and we had conflicting evidence that suggested GY was inhabited by very poor but very honest folk.

At that stage, I mistakenly thought that the GYB were coloured black. When I noticed they were not, I suspected that this would NOT be on account of the people living there being honest, but instead on them representing a higher level of income than what was led on by the atttendantīs wife.

If that is slippery, I canīt say. I would have thought it in accordance with the evidence.

As Ed points out, Booth's intention was to identify concentrations and degrees of poverty, hence the 5 categories of working class people, using very specific monetary criteria, compared to the catch all classifications for the more prosperous inhabitants - lower middle class (red)/upper middle class and upper class (yellow). I don't think the red classified inhabitants of Commercial Street would have been toffs.

Tellingly, he makes no mention of earnings when listing the criteria for black classification. And throughout the note books he explains his use of black in terms of criminality.

They did not work other than in some exceptions, few and far apart. That would be their economical status description: No work, no pay, no money = poverty.

The best,
Fisherman

[Lechmere]

The black category represented people virtually without work so I would suggest that is why they have no wage quoted.
Of the 8 categories he subdivided the population into (although there are seven colour codes) he only quoted earnings for three.
Booth regarded the bottom four categories as being below the poverty line.

[MrBarnett]

Well, what if the caretakers wife was overestimating the poverty?

You are a very slippery fish indeed! I entered this debate because you appeared to be saying that Booth's black did not imply criminal because he had coloured GY black and we had conflicting evidence that suggested GY was inhabited by very poor but very honest folk.

Obs

As Ed points out, Booth's intention was to identify concentrations and degrees of poverty, hence the 5 categories of working class people, using very specific monetary criteria, compared to the catch all classifications for the more prosperous inhabitants - lower middle class (red)/upper middle class and upper class (yellow). I don't think the red classified inhabitants of Commercial Street would have been toffs.

Tellingly, he makes no mention of earnings when listing the criteria for black classification. And throughout the note books he explains his use of black in terms of criminality.

MrB

[Fisherman]

If we accept the statement that the residents of GYB were the poorest of the poor, then why were they not in the black category? I would suggest it was that they had been vetted, their tenancy depended on their 'respectability' and Booth's police chaperones were aware of the fact .

MrB

Well, what if the caretakers wife was overestimating the poverty?

Come to think of it, Crow was a cabdriver and Reeves a waterside labourer, so they had steady jobs, apparently. And was that not something that was expected of those who were to stay in the model buildings...? I seem to remember such a ruking, but that could be wrong, of course.

If this holds true, then it of course demolishes the bolstering of my own argument that poor people can be nice people anyway, but there you are. Maybe it goes without saying, after all?

The best,
Fisherman

[Sam Flynn]

Is Booth's poverty map a true reflection of wealth, and poverty in the city of London though?

It's all relative, Obs. Booth made the mistake of starting in the East End; as I've said elsewhere, this was tantamount to setting out to survey average height by calibrating your tools in Lilliput.

When Booth extended his survey to other London boroughs, his categorisations (and colour-codes) started to creak, such that comparing a "red" in Whitechapel to a "red" in (say) Bloomsbury would give a rather misleading impression.

Don't get me wrong - Booth's maps are an excellent resource, but they should be treated with a little caution.

[Fisherman]

Hi Mr Barnett

Is Booth's poverty map a true reflection of wealth, and poverty in the city of London though? I mean, we have areas of red (middle class, well to do) either side of Commercial Street, within a stones throw of Dorset Street, one of the blackest dastardly streets in London. Surely we can't have well heeled gents living, and wandering about in that locale?

Regards

Observer

God forbid!

Fisherman

[Observer]

Hi Mr Barnett

Is Booth's poverty map a true reflection of wealth, and poverty in the city of London though? I mean, we have areas of red (middle class, well to do) either side of Commercial Street, within a stones throw of Dorset Street, one of the blackest dastardly streets in London. Surely we can't have well heeled gents living, and wandering about in that locale?

Regards

Observer

[MrBarnett]

Hi Ed,

One step at a time. My comments about GY were made to challenge the suggestion that Booth's black classification did not necessarily imply criminality. If we accept the statement that the residents of GYB were the poorest of the poor, then why were they not in the black category? I would suggest it was that they had been vetted, their tenancy depended on their 'respectability' and Booth's police chaperones were aware of the fact .

Time and again on the police notebooks Booth defends or questions his colour coding in terms of criminality. I haven't read them all, but I have yet to see an entry such as, 'black on map, but average earnings seem to have increased so should be blue'

MrB

[Lechmere]

Yes that's right - on the other side of Old Montague Street

[MrBarnett]

Hi Fish,

Yes, GY Buildings were said to be inhabited by the deserving poor, but unless I am mistaken it was the common lodging houses at the NE end of GY that were coloured black.

[Lechmere]

The maps were specifically called Descriptive Map of London Poverty' - which shows the emphasis.
The bottom category was describe on this manner:
The lowest class which consists of some occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals. Their life is the life of savages, with vicissitudes of extreme hardship and their only luxury is drink.
No doubt some people who lived in the black coloured areas did match this description and some of his survey assistants recorded interesting local information. However it is not a crime survey, nor can it be taken as a reliable indication of where it was safe to walk.

[Fisherman]

MrBarnett: Hi Fish,

Category A includes occasional labourers and B includes labourers who do not get as much as three days work a week. (Do you detect and economic gulf between the two?)

I think the ones in category A were weven more occasional workers than the ones on category B, quite simply.

However, category A labourers live the life of savages and their only luxury is drink.

Do I detect a generalization here? Yes I do.

I think it is safe to assume a reasonable correlation between black shaded streets and streets where it would be dangerous to walk.

And I think it is quite safe to assume that Booth was a product of his time, Mr Barnett - he obviously thought there was a correlation between poverty and dishonesty. And many people did at this stage; it was an era when poverty was regarded as a moral punishment imposed upon bad people by higher powers. It was an era when it was believed that long fingers gave away pickpockets.

We are enlightened people, or at least we have a responsibility to be so. We know that God had nothing to do with castigating bad people and making them poor. We know that long fingers is a genetically inherited trait that is as useful for culture-spreading pianists as it is for pickpockets. And we know that poverty is not something that automatically will induce a criminal behavior.

To this we must add our knowledge that socially and economically deprived people are people will at times react by stealing what they are never given the chance to earn. Thus there WILL sometimes be criminality in economically wanting groups of people.

To reason that the Booth maps were actually made to show to what extent a criminal behavior could be expected is not true. The fact that Booth clearly lists how much the different groups earned effectively dissolves such a suggestion. To state that Booth (wrongly) believed that criminality followed with low incomes is however fairly certain. Therefore, he believed that listing income levels would be listing how prone the inhabitants of certain areas would be to become criminals.

Once again, we have a resonsibility to acknowledge that such a suggestion is balderdash. What the people in these areas, described as more or less animals by Booth, thought about it, we can only guess.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Booth again on Pennington Street:

'The houses in Pennington Street should I think be not worse than blue. The trouble to the police is from the occasional quarrel in which the people indulge but for months they are quiet + since dock labour has been more regular the tone and behaviour of the people is quieter. There are thieves and prostitutes, but no brothels...'

The key word in his black classification would appear to be 'vicious', i.e. violent
and troublesome to the police, who presumably the main source for the information on criminality.

MrB

The problem is, this cannot be reconciled with what other sources say, some of them speaking of for example George Yard as being inhabited by patently honest people who were nevertheless extremely poor.

The best,
Fisherman