Charles Booth’s Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London, 1886-1903

Charles Booth’s Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London, undertaken between 1886 and 1903, originated in the profound unease about poverty that came to a head in London in the 1880s, when acute economic problems heightened long-standing social tensions. Booth set out to remedy what he felt was a lack of facts about poverty, by investigating and documenting ‘the condition and occupations of the inhabitants of London’. Booth’s Inquiry profoundly influenced the public debate around poverty and social policy in the decades that followed.

Combining panoramic scope and scale with an extraordinary level of detail, the archive of the Inquiry reveals the living and working conditions of the inhabitants of what was then the largest city in the world. Over 450 volumes of interviews, questionnaires, observations and statistical information document the social and economic life of London, highlighting all of its contrasts, complexities and contradictions.

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