Charles Booth (social reformer)
Charles James Booth was a British shipowner, Comtean positivist, social researcher, and reformer, best known for his innovative philanthropic studies on working-class life in London towards the end of the 19th century.
During the 1860s Booth became interested in the philosophy of Auguste Comte, the founder of modern sociology, and converted to his Religion of Humanity, affiliated with members of the London Positivist Society, and wrote positivist prayers. He was captivated by Comte's idea that in the future, scientific industrialists would be in control of the social leadership instead of the church ministers. Booth's work, followed by that of Seebohm Rowntree, influenced government policy regarding poverty in the early 20th century and helped initiate Old Age pensions and free school meals for the poorest children. In addition, his research would also demonstrate how poverty was influenced by religion, education, and administration.
Booth is best known for his multi-volume book Life and Labour of the People in London, which focuses on the statistics he collected regarding poverty in London. Life and Labour "discusses a range of social conditions in which it reported that it appeared people are likely to be poor or on the margins of poverty." Booth is also recognised for influencing the transition of social attitudes from the Victorian Age to the 20th century.
Due to his investigations on poverty, some honour Charles Booth as one of the founding fathers of social administration, and regard his work crucial when studying social policy.
Early life and education
Born at Liverpool, Lancashire, on 30 March 1840 to Charles Booth and Emily Fletcher, his father was a wealthy shipowner and corn merchant as well as being a prominent Unitarian. He attended the Royal Institution School in Liverpool before being apprenticed in the family business at the age of sixteen. He joined his brother, Alfred Booth, in the leather trade in 1862 and together they established a successful shipping line, in which Charles remained actively involved until his retirement in 1912.Booth became alienated from the dominant, nonconformist business class of Liverpool into which he had been born.
Career
Booth's father died in 1860, bequeathing him control of the family business. He entered the skinning and leather business with his elder brother Alfred, and they set up Alfred Booth and Company establishing offices in Liverpool and New York City with a £20,000 inheritance. In 1865 Booth campaigned for the Liberals in Toxteth, Liverpool, albeit unsuccessfully.After learning the shipping trade, Booth was able to persuade Alfred and his sister Emily to invest in steamships and established a service to Pará, Maranhão, and Ceará in Brazil. Then in 1866 Charles and Alfred Booth commenced the start of a shipping service between Brazil and Europe named the Booth Steamship Company. Charles himself went on the first voyage to Brazil on 14 February 1866. He was also involved in the building of a harbor at Manaus which overcame seasonal fluctuations in water levels. Booth described this as his "monument" when he visited Manaus for the last time in 1912. Booth would write letters to his wife describing the business problems that would rise such as personnel management, decision making, and factory relocation; this laid a foundation for the fundamentals of business ethics. Booth Shipping Line's biggest rival was R. Singlehurst and Company, but Booth kept calm while managing business affairs.
Booth initially engaged in politics, canvassing unsuccessfully for the Liberal Party in the General Election of 1865. Following the Conservative Party victory in municipal elections in 1866, his interest in active politics waned. This result changed Booth's attitude, when he concluded that he could contribute more by commissioning social studies, rather than by being a representative in Parliament.
Social research
In 1886, influenced earlier by positivism, Booth embarked on his major survey of London life and labour conditions for which he became famous and commonly regarded as initiating the systematic study of poverty in Britain. Booth was critical of the existing statistical data on poverty. By analyzing census returns he argued that they were unsatisfactory, later being invited to sit on a parliamentary committee in 1891 which suggested improvements that could be made to them. Due to the scale of the survey, results were published serially but it took over fifteen years before the full seventeen volume edition was published. His work on the study and his concern with the problems of poverty led to an involvement in campaigning for old-age pensions and promoting the decasualisation of labour.Booth publicly criticised the claims of Henry Hyndman, the leader of the Social Democratic Federation, Britain's first socialist party. In the Pall Mall Gazette of 1885, Hyndman stated that 25% of Londoners lived in abject poverty. The survey of life and labour began with a pilot study in Tower Hamlets. Booth then hired numerous researchers to assist with the full study of the whole of London, which investigated the three main topics of poverty, occupations, and religion. Among his researchers were his cousin Beatrice Potter and the chapter on women's work was conducted by the budding economist Clara Collet. This research, which looked at the incidence of pauperism in the East End of Londonwhich he defined in 1889 as the County of London between the City of London and the River Lea, therefore excluding parts of London in Essexshowed that 35% were living in abject poverty, even higher than the original figure. This work was published under the title Life and Labour of the People in 1889. A second volume, entitled Labour and Life of the People, covering the rest of London, appeared in 1891. Booth also popularised the idea of a "poverty line", a concept conceived by the London School Board. Booth set this line at 10 to 20 shillings a week, which he considered to be the minimum amount necessary for a family of 4 or 5 people to subsist.
After the first two volumes were published Booth expanded his research. This investigation was carried out by Booth himself with his team of researchers. Nonetheless, Booth continued to oversee his successful shipping business which funded his philanthropic work. The fruit of this research was a second expanded edition of his original work, published as Life and Labour of the People in London in nine volumes between 1892 and 1897. A third edition appeared in 1902–3.
Booth used his work to argue for the introduction of Old Age Pensions which he described as "limited socialism". Booth suggested that such reforms would help prevent a socialist revolution from occurring in Britain. Booth was far from tempted by the ideals of socialism, but had sympathy with the working classes and, as part of his investigations, he took lodgings with working-class families and recorded his thoughts and findings in his diaries.
London poverty maps
From 1886 to 1903, while Charles Booth was conducting his landmark survey on the life and labour of London's poorest inhabitants he created poverty maps to illustrate the conditions of the lives of these people. Booth's maps were based on observations of differences in lifestyle and focused on qualitative factors: food, clothing, shelter, and relative deprivation. Booth and his team of researchers visited every street in London to assess each household's class. The household's class was determined by the letters A–H, with A–D constituting want, and E-H representing comfort. Booth's maps colour-coded every street to determine and demonstrate the level of poverty or comfort. The colour-coding was also used to highlight the social conditions of the households on the streets. The objective was to expose to Victorian society the social evil, which is the problem of poverty. The maps have a strong impact on the poverty debate. Many who analyzed the maps noted how there existed greater concentrations of poverty south of the Thames, compared to the East End Slums. The colour palette of the maps also played a large role in how poverty was viewed. Areas with high concentrations of poverty were given dense and dark colours, while areas that were considered comfortable were given bright colours such as pink, blue, and red. The maps were attempting to demonstrate that the issue of poverty was a manageable problem.The importance of Booth's work in social statistics was recognised by the Royal Statistical Society when in 1892 he was elected President and was awarded its first Guy Medal in Gold. In 1899 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
For the purposes of poverty measurement, Booth divided the working population into eight classes, from the poorest to the best off, labeled A–H. These categories summarised economic circumstances but also had a moral dimension, with "A" representing the "feckless, deviant or criminal" groups.