CR Blog

Mapping London

• Posted by Mark, 2 March 2007, 14:42
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Charles Booth’s Descriptive Map of London Poverty, published in 1889, revealed that over a third
of Londoners lived in poverty. It was colour-coded to indicate the levels of poverty and prosperity
street by street. While the red colouring showed the habitat of the “well-to-do, middle class”, pale
blue and dark blue revealed the areas inhabited by the “poor” and “very poor” respectively. Here,
the black area in the centre (Bethnal Green) contained the “lowest class; vicious, semi-criminal.”

The British Library’s show, London: A Life in Maps, ends this weekend. If you haven’t been down (it’s free) we wholly recommend a trip over to Euston Road. The exhibition traces how the capital has been depicted since the earliest images of the walled City in the 1550s. On show are some of the earliest examples of wayfinding – the ancestry of the London A-Z if you like. While many of the cruder, hand drawn maps offer up a somewhat distorted vision of a growing city (often for political reasons), the large-scale, engraved depictions of the capital are astoundingly accurate and detailed.

Hollar Wenceslaus’ map of the damage inflicted on the capital by the Great Fire of 1666. The
sections in white indicate the areas that were completely destroyed.

William Morgan’s map of the City, Westminster and Southwark (the first large scale map on display in the show) dates from 1682 and reveals a city reborn after the fire of 1666; a capital befitting a resurgent British monarchy. Morgan’s maps are very English – fairly sober and practical – while John Roque’s attempts, by the middle of the eighteenth century, were more in tune with the latest French scientific and decorative fashions. Maps still ignored the poor, however, as most reproductions of the growing urbanisation east of the Tower didn’t even bother to add street names until years later.

Conversely, what also becomes apparent as the exhibition enters the Victorian age, is the extent to which mapping eventually aided many social causes. Charles Booth’s graphical evidence of the extent of the capital’s poverty levels fuelled emerging campaigns for social change. His Descriptive Map of London Poverty of 1889 (see top image of Hackney in London’s East End) colour-coded the levels of poverty and prosperity across the city:

Gold: Upper-middle and Upper classes. Wealthy.
Red: Well-to-do. Middle-class.
Pink: Fairly comfortable. Good ordinary earning.
Purple: Mixed. Some comfortable, others poor.
Pale Blue: Poor. 18s. to 21s. a week for moderate family.
Dark blue: Very poor, casual. Chronic want.
Black: Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal.

Even viewing them today, the spread of different colours across Booth’s city plans have an affecting power all of their own.

While some of London’s most affluent neighbourhoods around Hyde Park (middle left) are coloured gold…

…the streets off Bethnal Green Road housed many of the “very poor” and even the “vicious, semi-criminal”.

London: A Life in Maps is at the British Library until the 4th of March. The online gallery will, presumably, still be accessible for the near future and there are a host of maps to view there.

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