The first published volume of Booth's 'Labour and Life' in London

BOOTH, Charles.

Labour and Life of the People. Volume I: East London. Second Edition, with a Coloured Map.
London & Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1889. 8vo, original cloth with black lettering, marbled edges; pp. iv + 598; 4 wood-engraved maps printed in browns, folding map with hand colour at rear, backed with linen as issued.

Inner hinges strained, a little foxing throughout.

A copy of the first volume of the important survey of poverty in London, from the 2nd edition (same year as the first); the second volume was published later in 1891. Originally published as 'Life and Labour of the People', the title was rearranged because another reformer, Samuel Smiles, had published ''Life and Labour' in 1887.
The book contains a folding map of Whitechapel, St George's-in-the-East, Stepney, Mile End Old Town, with parts of Shoreditch and Polar. Titled "Descriptive Map of East End Poverty, Compiled from School Board Visitor's Reports in 1887'', it introduces the famous colour code, with the legend for black reading ''Very poor, lowest class... Vicious, semi-criminal''. The map was superceded by a four-sheet map of all London when the First Series was completed. The other maps are: the East End showing the proportion of population born in other parts of the UK; England and Wales showing the proportion of population born in other parts of the country; the East End showing the proportion of population born abroad; and the East End showing the proportion of population born outside London.
The text details the poverty of the East End, the jobs the residents held and the influx of population to London, both domestic and foreign. A section of the latter describes the influx of Jews, spurred by pogroms in Russia and the expulsion of Poles from Prussia by Otto von Bismark. Booth writes that it is these immigrants '' that make Whitechapel Road the most varied and interesting in England'' (p.543).

Bookplate of William Waldegrave (1859-1942), Earl of Sherbourne, on front pastedown.
Stock ID : 21934