BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.

There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our programs

if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time.

I hope you enjoyed the programs.

Hello, in 1886, Charles Booth surveyed every household in booming London to test an unlikely

claim that as many as a quarter lived in poverty.

That figure turned out to be wrong.

It was really a third.

Many of them too old or too young to work.

He shared this in his groundbreaking work Life and Labor of the People in London in 17 volumes.

And he reinforced his findings with maps, the streets coloured according to the wealth

of those who lived there, highlighting a problem that could not be ignored.

When we did discuss Booth's Life and Labor survey, our Emma Griffin, professor of modern

British history at the University of East Anglia, Sarah Wise, Adjunct professor at the University

of California and Lawrence Goldman, emeritus fellow in history at St Peter's College,

University of Oxford.

Lawrence Goldman, who was Charles Booth and what was his background?

Well, Charles Booth was born in 1840 in Liverpool and he was the son of a corn merchant,

that's to say Adela in grains and foodstuffs.

And the family he came from were moderately prosperous.

Now, there were unitarians and unitarianism was a form of high-minded, rationalistic

...