Charles Booth Biography 1840 - Born he was the son of a wealthy Liverpool entrepreneur.1884 - Made a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society

How did he conduct his investigations?

• Investigations were originally intended to last 3 years, but took 17 years to complete.  Booth was central in the investigation but had at any one time up to 35 people working with him.  While Booth controlled their work, he expected them to contribute ideas and to take responsibility for writing specific sections of the final work.
• Examples server to show how intermeshed and yet wide-ranging Booth’s investigators and investigations became.
• Jesse Argyle started out as one of Booth’s company clerks. He was an able and perceptive interviewer, responsible for investigating poverty in Walthamstow and wrote up his findings for the final publication.
• Graham Balfour fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, he set up the enquiry into poverty in Battersea, supervised it and wrote up for the publication.
• Octavia Hill made contributions on model dwellings and their influence on the character of the poor.  

What did he discover?

• Booth and his team divided the population into classes.  He believed that an appreciation of the differences between the classes was fundamental to understanding the causes of poverty.
• Class A – 0.9% of the population, people at the bottom of any social hierarchy: semi-criminals, loafers and idlers, and sometimes took on occasional work.  Booth believed people were born into this class and rarely escaped from it.
• Class B – 7.5% of the population, who were casual, low-paid workers.  Most Dockers who were employed on a daily basis and had no security of employment.  Booth believed that because of their mental, moral or physical sate, incapable of bettering themselves.
• Class C – slightly better of than Class B, but the irregular nature of their work meant that life was a constant struggle for survival.
• Class D – had low incomes(less than 21 shillings a week) but work was regular and able to budget for survival.
• Class E and Class F – 51.5 of the population in regular employment that paid enough to have comfortable lives.  Class E earned up to 30 shillings a week and Class F were the best paid skilled artisans.  They were the lower and upper middle classes

What solutions did he propose?

• Booth saw Classes A and B as the biggest problems.  Class A could be dealt with through established charities and individual acts of philanthropy, coupled with rigorous policing.
• His solution to the problem caused by Class B was to take them out of the labour market altogether.  He saw them as lacking the ability to better themselves and because of this dragging down classes C and D.  He was opening up employment opportunities for classes C and D who were better able to manage themselves.
• In this way, they would rise out of poverty and the poor, while remaining poor, would be able to live above his ‘poverty line’.