So would he have run?

[MrBarnett]

Hi again Fish,

If you look at the detailed classifications again you will notice that of the working class categories A - F only A doesn't mention earnings. The two examples given clearly show Booth considering criminality over and above economic considerations. He doesn't use the word because, but his meaning is surely that Mayfields should be black because they are a bunch of thieves but
Pennington St should remain blue because they don't give the police much trouble.

MrB

[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?)

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

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

MrB

[MrBarnett]

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

[Fisherman]

For what it's worth, here is the great man's assessment of Mayfields Buildings in St. Geo in the East:

'Uncoloured on the map, but should be black. The worst place in the subdivision. Not one male in the street above school age that has not been convicted. Thieves - rough cockney Irish. Broken dirty windows, ? women. Doors open, black shiny doorposts. 3 story houses. Has been the ruin of Princes square, else a quiet country like place.'

Seems more of a moral classification than an economic one.

MrB

So it is - but the facts he built his street maps with it´s colours on were economic facts. Otherwise, we could be certain that there was no crime in any of the other colours than black, since Booth did not mention that particular shortcoming other than in relation to that particular colour. It is in fact - and of course - impossible to do the kind of mapping that is suggested, where BOTH income and criminality MUST coincide. If you were deprived of your job and wealth, Mr Barnett, would you automatically become a criminal...? And would you get honest again when you got a new job?

Booth described the colours like this:

BLACK: Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal.
DARK BLUE: Very poor, casual. Chronic want.
LIGHT BLUE: Poor. 18s. to 21s. a week for a moderate family
PURPLE: Mixed. Some comfortable others poor
PINK: Fairly comfortable. Good ordinary earnings.
RED: Middle class. Well-to-do.
YELLOW: Upper-middle and Upper classes. Wealthy.

In the first volume of the poverty series in the final edition of Life and Labour of the People in London, Booth elaborated more on the classifications, eight of them:

A 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
B Casual earnings, very poor. The labourers do not get as much as three days work a week, but it is doubtful if many could or would work full time for long together if they had the opportunity. Class B is not one in which men are born and live and die so much as a deposit of those who from mental, moral and physical reasons are incapable of better work
C Intermittent earning. 18s to 21s per week for a moderate family. The victims of competition and on them falls with particular severity the weight of recurrent depressions of trade. Labourers, poorer artisans and street sellers. This irregularity of employment may show itself in the week or in the year: stevedores and waterside porters may secure only one of two days' work in a week, whereas labourers in the building trades may get only eight or nine months in a year.
D Small regular earnings. poor, regular earnings. Factory, dock, and warehouse labourers, carmen, messengers and porters. Of the whole section none can be said to rise above poverty, nor are many to be classed as very poor. As a general rule they have a hard struggle to make ends meet, but they are, as a body, decent steady men, paying their way and bringing up their children respectably.
E Regular standard earnings, 22s to 30s per week for regular work, fairly comfortable. As a rule the wives do not work, but the children do: the boys commonly following the father, the girls taking local trades or going out to service.
F Higher class labour and the best paid of the artisans. Earnings exceed 30s per week. Foremen are included, city warehousemen of the better class and first hand lightermen; they are usually paid for responsibility and are men of good character and much intelligence.
G Lower middle class. Shopkeepers and small employers, clerks and subordinate professional men. A hardworking sober, energetic class.
H Upper middle class, servant keeping class.

Once again, ALL criminals and semi-criminals are encompassed by the lowest classification of earnings. Take a look at any society, and you will find that criminality exists all over the range of different incomes.

Luckily, Booth points out that the "black" class people also involves occsaional labourers and street vendors, for example.

My own take on this is that Sally oversimplifies things to a completely ridiculous extent. But I can see why: Hutchinson was an occasional labourer, "some occasional labourers" are counted into the black mass, and the black mass - according to Sally, ahem ... - is one where ALL people were criminals!

Case closed, eh, Sally?

The best,
Fisherman

[MrBarnett]

Sally,

Thanks for filling in the gaps, I was working from a print out that had the right margin cropped, duh!

MrB

[Sally]

For what it's worth, here is the great man's assessment of Mayfields Buildings in St. Geo in the East:

'Uncoloured on the map, but should be black. The worst place in the subdivision. Not one male in the street above school age that has not been convicted. Thieves - rough cockney Irish. Broken dirty windows, ? women. Doors open, black shiny doorposts. 3 story houses. Has been the ruin of Princes square, else a quiet country like place.'

Seems more of a moral classification than an economic one.

MrB

Thanks for posting that Mr.B,

Yes: 'thieves, Prost[itutes] rough cockney Irish. Broken dirty windows, bare headed women.'

Certianly more of a moral classification than an economic one - and quite typical. Booth took into account a wide range of social factors when constructing the poverty maps of London, both quantitative [e.g.statistics taken and compiled from census data] and qualitative [e.g. local knowledge]

[MrBarnett]

For what it's worth, here is the great man's assessment of Mayfields Buildings in St. Geo in the East:

'Uncoloured on the map, but should be black. The worst place in the subdivision. Not one male in the street above school age that has not been convicted. Thieves - rough cockney Irish. Broken dirty windows, ? women. Doors open, black shiny doorposts. 3 story houses. Has been the ruin of Princes square, else a quiet country like place.'

Seems more of a moral classification than an economic one.

MrB

[Sally]

I'm not casting aspersions on Booth. he was a man of his age. I am stating what was very clearly the case - his classifications were based on income and wealth not crime figures.

Rubbish. His classifications were the result of both quantitative and qualititive work. Booth was one of the founding fathers of social research - to imply that he constructed a poverty map of the capital based only on 'income and wealth' is nonsense and merely demonstrates that you don't know what you're talking about.

Have you actually read any of Booth's work, or is he just another casualty of your relentless drive to promote your suspect?

[Fisherman]

The places marked as black on Booth's poverty map were notorious - there is plenty of contemporary evidence which supports his conclusions, should you wish to cast aspersions where they really are not due.

Weekly Herald, 17:th of August 1888:

The model dwellings at George Yard Buildings were erected about thirteen years ago, and Princess Alice, but a short time before her death, visited the poor residents there, and extolled the ingenious method of housing them. The structure was erected more as a philanthropic than as a commercial
venture by Mr. Crowther, a gentleman well-known in the district. The occupants are of the poorest class--described by the superindentent's wife as "the poorest of the poor, but very honest."

Are these the notorious, vicious criminals you are speaking of, Sally? Or is the superintendent´s wife just covering for them on a philantropic basis?

Do you think that if the people living in a very poor area were not criminally inclined, Booth would not have cast that area in black? Was criminality an ingredient that must have been there for the area to get coloured black - or was actually poverty what governed the colouring?

Criminality is often more rife in the deprived classes, we all know that. If you have to steal to eat and keep alive, then steal you will. But you know, Sally, not all poor people steal (hard as it may seem to fathom).

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Ah, if only my typo had been as funny as yours, Fish!

Given the context, Sally, it was actually even funnier methinks!

Fisherman

[Lechmere]

I'm not casting aspersions on Booth. he was a man of his age. I am stating what was very clearly the case - his classifications were based on income and wealth not crime figures.

[Sally]

Booth’s colour coding, or rather the description that went with it was not based on crime statistics it was based on his assumption that the very poorest people were vicious and semi criminal.

Oh dear, Ed, that won't do I'm afraid. The Crossmere spin I can let pass, but this?

Charles Booth was of course a renowned social researcher whose work on poverty - including a large body of statistical work which it appears you haven't encountered - was important and influencial, e.g. in government policy on poverty during the early 20th century.

He knew what he was talking about alright. I'm sure that you know as well as I do that his colour coding was based, not on personal assumption, as you disingenuously suggest, but on detailed observation and the intimate local knowledge of the police officers who accompanied his researchers on their research perambulations around London.

In almost every case, the decision to colour was accompanied by a justification. Black was usually black because it was inhabited by criminals - thieves, bullies, prostitutes to name but some.

The places marked as black on Booth's poverty map were notorious - there is plenty of contemporary evidence which supports his conclusions, should you wish to cast aspersions where they really are not due.

Would Crossmere have avoided the more dangerous route? Depends on how bright he was, eh?

[Sally]

...all that fun and look what happens: you got it wrong too. Excting?

There´s karma for you!

Anyhow, yes, exited was the word I was looking for.

All the best,
Fisherman

Ah, if only my typo had been as funny as yours, Fish!

[Lechmere]

Booth’s colour coding, or rather the description that went with it was not based on crime statistics it was based on his assumption that the very poorest people were vicious and semi criminal.
So what I said was correct:
You have no idea whether it was a more dangerous route. Booth’s colour codes were an indication of poverty not crime. Unless you also subscribe to his view that poverty equals crime and danger.

The Old Montague Road took him past a ‘black zone’ on Booth’s map for about 100 yards.

On the issue of plausible routes – all that has ever been said is that it is plausible that Lechmere took the Old Montague Street route as it is the shortest – which it is.
The Skinner Street route is only shorter to the curtilage of the station and to an entrance to the station, not to the good depot.

I have attached a late-ish but pre-war map of Broad Street Station to make sense of the photos.

The big red circle on the aerial view on post 120 is roughly where my red line is.
All the goods station track (the green area) had by then been removed. Cars are parked over this area in the photo. The cars are parked below where the track was
The goods station tack was on a raised platform which was no longer there when the aerial photo was taken.

I have marked Skinner Street in purple and the most sensible route to the Good Station depot from Skinner Street is down the narrow alley marked with a purple arrow.
The Goods Station where the Pickfords Depot is marked in blue and the entrance in orange.

The colour demolition picture in post 122 is aligned facing north. The big building in the background can be seen in the picture in 120.
The picture was taken on the eastern side of the passenger station, roughly where I have marked in pink.
The old black and white picture is on the same alignment. You can see a bit of track on the left which matches and the buildings to the right match
It also makes sense that the arch numbering started with the lowest numbers nearest the Eldon Street entrance to the station.

I find these photos very interesting by the way.

[Fisherman]

Exited, surely Fish?

If the carmen really were excting Pickfords, we'd be looking at a very different picture...

...all that fun and look what happens: you got it wrong too. Excting?

There´s karma for you!

Anyhow, yes, exited was the word I was looking for.

All the best,
Fisherman