Comments on: Charles Booth’s Spitalfields

By: Phaedra

Phaedra — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 11:03:04 +0000

What a great idea, thanks for doing this.

By: Tina

Tina — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 18:45:45 +0000

Only 3 generations ago did my family live in Little Pearl Street. Hard to imagine them living in such conditions in comparison to where and how we live today.

By: John Campbell

John Campbell — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 11:41:26 +0000

The stigma of the Irish would live on in London well into the second half of the twentieth century – ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs!’ I assume that many of these Spitalfields’ dwellers would originally have been refugees from the famine, it can only have been the social deprivation and squalor they endured and their desperation that forced them to survive in any way they could. Sad pictures of such underprivileged lives, probably lived without any satisfaction and ultimately ended in the poverty into which they were born.

By: Helen Breen

Helen Breen — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 11:07:34 +0000

Greetings from Boston,

GA, well done comparison. The faces of those children, especially the ones playing in the wheelbarrows, says it all – poverty hurts!

By: Valerie P

Valerie P — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 09:47:44 +0000

Sobering. And as 21stc disenfranchisement begins to gallop so our streets are filled with now-homeless (formerly housed!)….

By: Akkers

Akkers — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 09:16:26 +0000

Another really interesting article – what a great idea to marry up the descriptions from Booth’s notebooks and put those wonderful pictures by Horace Warner alongside them.

By: Peter Holford

Peter Holford — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 09:14:14 +0000

The Charles Booth archive is a wonderful resource for family historians and anybody interested in social history. I’ve delved into it many times over the years for insights into my family and am pleased to report that none of them was ‘vicious’! I looked that one up to find that the meaning in the 19th century was very different and simply meant ‘immoral’.

The full archive is freely available online including: https://booth.lse.ac.uk/

It’s good to have photos illustrating Booth’s account. His budget obviously didn’t allow for an illustrated account!

By: Philip Marriage

Philip Marriage — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 08:22:58 +0000

Warner’s photographs come alive with Booth’s descriptions – the two harmonise so well.

By: Greg Tingey

Greg Tingey — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 07:16:34 +0000

As you know, but the other readers probably don't, the Chas Booth London Maps & Notes are available on-line. HERE

By: Valerie-Jael

Valerie-Jael — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 05:39:10 +0000

Those were grim times for a lot of people. Valerie