Charles
Booth,
the son of a wealthy businessman, was born in Liverpool
on 30th March, 1840. Booth's father was a Unitarian
and
head of the Lamport
& Holt Steamship Company. When Booth was twenty-two his father
died and took over the running of the company. Booth was an energetic
leader and
soon added a successful glove manufacturing concern to his expanding
shipping interests.
In the 1860s Booth became interested in the philosophy of Auguste
Comte,
the founder of modern sociology. Booth was especially attracted to
Comte's idea that in the future, the scientific industrialist would
take over the social leadership from church ministers. One of the
consequences of reading Comte was that Booth began to lose his religious
faith.
In 1885 Charles
Booth
became angry about the claim made by H. H.
Hyndman, the leader of the Social Democratic
Federation, that 25% of the population of London
lived in abject poverty. Bored with running his successful business,
Booth decided to investigate the incidence of pauperism in the East
End of the city. He recruited a team of researchers that included
his cousin, Beatrice Potter.
The result of Booth's investigations, Labour
and Life of the People,
was published in 1889. Booth's book revealled that the situation was
even worse than that suggested by H. H. Hyndman.
Booth research suggested that 35% rather than 25% were living in abject
poverty.
Booth now decided to expand his research to cover the rest of London.
He continued to run his business during the day and confined his writing
to evenings and weekends. In an effort to obtain a comprehensive and
reliable survey Booth and his small team of researchers made at least
two visits to every street in the city.
Over a twelve year period (1891 to 1903) Booth published 17 volumes
of Life
and Labour of the People of London.
In these books Booth argued that the stare should assume responsibility
for those living in poverty. One of the proposals he made was for
the introduction of Old Age Pensions. A measure
that he described as "limited socialism". Booth believed
that if the government failed to take action, Britain was in danger
of experiencing a socialist revolution.
Whereas many of his researchers, including Beatrice
Potter, became socialists as a result of what they discovered
while investigating poverty, Booth became more conservative in his
views. Strongly opposed to trade unions, he was unhappy with the sympathetic
treatment they had received from the the Liberal government that took
power after the 1906 General Election. Booth
now renounced his early support for the Liberal
Party and joined the Conservative
Party. Charles
Booth
died on 23rd November, 1916.
(1)
In her diary Beatrice Potter recorded her
first impressions of Chales Booth (9th February 1882)
It is difficult to discover the presence of any vice or even weakness
in him. Conscience, reason, and dutiful affectin, are his great qualities;
what other characteristics he has are not to be observed by the ordinary
friend. But he interests me as a man who has his nature completely
under his control, and who has risen out of it, uncynical, vigorous
and energetic in mind without egotism.
(2)
Beatrice Potter attended the first meeting
of Charles Booth's Board of Statistical Research on 17th April, 1886.
Charles Booth's first meeting of the Board of Statistical Research
at his London office. Object of the Committee is to get a fair picture
of the whole of London society - the 4,000,000 - by district and employment,
the two methods to be based on census returns. At present Charles
Booth is the sole worker in this gigantic undertaking. I intend to
do a little bit of it while I am in London, not only to keep the Society
alive, but to keep me in touch with actual facts so as to limit my
study of the past to that part of it useful in the understanding of
the present.
Gustave
Dore, Wentworth Street, Whitechapel (1872)
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