Chapter 6: Social and Welfare reforms

Chaptrer 6: Social and welfare reforms: pressure and action, 1880-1914

Charles Booth(1840-1916)

WHO:

- wealthy serious minded entrepreneur whos conscience drove him to investigate the nature of poverty in London.

WORK:

- employed a team of up to 35 co-workers over a period of 17 years to undertake a detailed study of the poor in London.

- findings moved a debate in which he was convinced that the poor were in distress through circumstances beyond their control.

BOOTHS ENQUIRIES

- Involvement in intellectual and socially aware radical circles in London led him to reject the hard-line of the COS, ‘That poverty was the fault of the poor’.

 - Due to entrepreneurship, he wasn't prepared to go as far as some thinkers and blame the capitalist system for creating poverty.

- After involvement in the 1885 Mansion Hone Enquiry into unemployment, he was ready and not as content as Mayhew. He wanted to explore why they lived as they did and understand the structural explanations behind property rather than moral.

- Investigation originally intended the last three years and despite the findings being published on a regular basis, the whole enquiry took close to 17 years.

- team investigators…