Volume 1

Life and labour of the people in London. First series : Poverty / by Charles Booth ; assisted by Jesse Argyle [and others].

  • Booth, Charles, 1840-1916.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Life and labour of the people in London. First series : Poverty / by Charles Booth ; assisted by Jesse Argyle [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    but mostly live elsewhere. The mumpers (i,e. loafers) are still to be found on the spot. South of the district I have described^ as far as East Street^ which is the boundary of the Eegistration district, we still find much poverty. The end of East Street, next the Walworth Eoad, is an active market, especially on Sunday morning. A large proportion of the movable stalls are devoted to the sale of toys and household cr personal ornaments—here one finds a great choice of pretty brooches at one penny. The people who come to buy or linger about look poor, but not so extremely poor as those to be met with in Bermondsey New Road. In East Street side by side lie the Pembroke and Wellington Missions, each in their own way seeking to establish wholesome relations with the somewhat Grodless people among whom they are established, while the rest of the ground is occupied by the organization of St. Mark's Church. This is not exceptional, for almost everywhere in South London the Church is active, and mission-rooms, of all denomina- tions, abound. The work is rather disheartening. The people, where the standard of life is low, seem to be quite happy in poverty, hunger, and dirt, enlivened with drink, and not to be roused to better things, or else the right way to rouse them has not yet been found. In the central parts a hand-to-mouth existence is the rule even among those who might be well off if they chose. Walworth is full of cab-yards, of which many are found scajbtered all through South London, though of cabs, except at the railway stations, there are few. It is north of the Thames that they seek and find employment. From and through the Walworth district population steadily moves outwards towards Peckham, and beyond. The whole district bounded by the Peckham and Walworth Heads on south and west, and by the Old Kent Road to the north-east, bearing on the map a ridiculous likeness to the shape of a stockinged foot (of which East Street spans