Charles Booth’s ‘Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London’ undertaken between 1886 and 1903, was conducted as a series of interviews. Liverpool-born Booth was a shipowner and sociologist. He financed and devised one of the most comprehensive oral surveys of London life, covering poverty, industry and religious influences. It included the creation of a series of ‘poverty’ maps. These were coloured to show the status of the residents, street by street, from the poorest to the very wealthiest.
Here is an example of the local poverty map, but it is not possible to see the detail in this blog.
In Kilburn and West Hampstead, several Anglican and Non-Conformist ministers and a Roman Catholic priest gave fascinating insights into how they perceived their congregation, parish and neighbourhood, past, present and future. In turn they were observed by the interviewer who sometimes described their appearance and gave an assessment of their character. The interview, often undertaken by local school board visitors, could take two and a half hours, sometimes longer. Repeated mentions were made of the same poor and overcrowded streets and the injurious influence of drink. It provides a very focused snapshot of these neighbourhoods at the end of the century as viewed through the eyes of the clerics interviewed, with additional details from the police. But the Survey does not include any comments from residents.
The original Hampstead parish served by St John in Church Row, was subdivided as more Anglican churches were built and parish areas allotted them. This subdivision was in response to the growth of Hampstead: as more houses were built, so their occupants wanted somewhere to worship, preferably not too far away from home. The Roman Catholics and non-conformists (Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists and Wesleyans,) also built churches and chapels.
At the time of Booth’s Survey, religion was an important part of everyday life. Most denominations offered several services a week in addition to Sunday, plus a range of clubs and classes for adults and children. These are described at length in many of the interviews. But some clergy thought they were observing a change, a general decline in attendance; ‘it is the exception for people to go to church or chapel regularly’. One commented on, ‘the indifference and apathy of Christian people, who let any slight cause – a shower of rain – keep them from worship’.
However, another considered low attendances were a specific response to the individual characteristics of his neighbourhood. Rev. William Pierce was minister at the Congregationalist Church on Finchley Road at the corner with Burrard Road, (the building has been converted into residential flats). He described the area bounded by Finchley Road, Kilburn High Road and south to the railways as, ‘a strange and difficult district from the religious point of view. I don’t know whether you will find any other district where the people are of a similar class where the religious observance is so slack’.
He ascribed low attendances to the fact that the area was built up before the local churches, ‘and having acquired careless habits’ in other words, not attending church, the residents ‘have kept them up.’ He also blamed the large number of mansion flats ‘where life is only one remove from the Hotel’. He believed there was a desire for religious instruction for children, but unfortunately many flat dwellers were single or childless: ‘the man who has a house of his own and children is much more concerned about the morality and the government of a district, than the childless couple in a flat who can lock up their premises and go away when they like’.
You might have expected the Rev. Sharpe, vicar of nearby Emmanuel Church on West End Green to voice similar opinions. But despite being surrounded by blocks of mansion flats, he only mentioned them to criticise their build quality (some being ‘showy, cheap and ill-built’), and not their malign influence. Emmanuel’s parish had and was still experiencing sustained building growth, over an area south from Hampstead Cemetery following the curved line of today’s Thameslink across to and up Finchley Road.
Of all the clerics, Rev. Ernest Newton Sharpe gave the most detail about his parishioners: ‘the parish is gradually going down and is bound to get poorer. The poorest street is Ravenshaw with two or three families in a little six-roomed house’. (Inspector Wayman agreed).
Next in poverty is Broomsleigh Street, Dornfell and Glastonbury, but better than Ravenshaw, said Wayman. Sumatra, Solent, Glenbrook and Agamemnon Roads were occupied by ‘clerks and artisans getting poorer’, said Sharpe, while Narcissus, Kingdon, Dennington Park, Hillfield, Inglewood and Westbere, Sandwell Crescent and Gondar Gardens were ‘pretty well to do’. Here Wayman disagreed so far as Dennington and Kingdon were concerned, he felt they were declining: ‘Tradesmen beginning to speak of them as “Sloper’s Island” a name given to roads where tenants are apt to flit (slop off and leave) with unpaid bills’.
Sharpe further analysed the makeup of his parishioners. He estimated two to three thousand were poor, generally labourers; 3,000 were artisans and clerks, struggling for respectability; 800 including city workers were comfortably off with a further 4,000 classified as comfortable and well to do. The interviewer noted, ‘he has only one rich man in his parish’. He gave no name, but Sharpe was almost certainly referring to an owner of one of the few remaining large houses with extensive grounds near West End Green, that were yet to succumb to the developer.
The Rev. Maylott in charge of the Primitive Methodist Church at the corner of Solent Road and Mill Lane, (redeveloped 1981) was more positive. ‘At West Hampstead the people are generally respectable clerks and city men’. Wayman noted that very few were employed locally. Maylott also commented on the large amount of building in the neighbourhood.
The most pessimistic was Dr Ralph Williams, vicar of St Luke’s on Kilburn Lane (the church was bombed in WWII and rebuilt, along with many of the neighbouring streets). The parish lay south of the today’s London Overground line and took in parts of Malvern and Canterbury Roads. Williams had been in post since the parish was created 22 years ago, and seen the population grow from 4 to 10,000.
Like the Rev. Pierce, Williams ascribed problems to the neighbourhood’s recent creation. ‘The district suffers from its newness. The place has no roots, as soon as anything new comes along in the shape of a new street or anything that is residentially more attractive or advantageous, off they go’. At the time it was relatively easy to move from one rental property to another, and so from one church, even one faith, to another. Dr Williams thought the streets east of Salusbury Road were becoming poorer, ‘said to be attracting the sweepings from more central London’. As well as drink issues, gambling was ‘rife, and an increasing vice’. The interviewer clearly felt Dr Williams was struggling with his parish work and concluded, ‘he is getting a bit tired, is perhaps even near the disheartened stage, and is now hardly robust enough for his work’.
Booth’s interviewers also spoke to the Superintendents of Police Districts, including Superintendent Charles Dodd of ‘S’ Division, the largest in the Met, stretching from Albany Street in the south, up through Hampstead and part of Kilburn, as far as Bushey in the north. He agreed with Rev. Williams, saying there was a lot of street betting. When asked how to deal with it, Dodd said fining a bookmaker only increased betting by ‘advertising’ the bookmaker’s pitch. He was inclined to advocate license and control. Otherwise, you had to send the bookie to prison.
The vicar of nearby of St Augustine’s, Dr Richard Kirkpatrick, was outspoken in describing inhabitants of mews in his parish, as ‘vile’. Running north-northwest from the church in Kilburn Park Road, the parish certainly included a few unsavoury and insanitary mews properties, but it mostly benefited from better off residents. Kirkpatrick was described as, ‘an old gentleman of 76, tall, bearded, rather dignified in expression and quite so in manner, courteous’.
The wealthiest parish was undoubtedly St Mary’s, attached to the church on Abbey Road. In 1898 its vicar was the Rev. Stone, who had been in post about two years. The interviewer judged him to be of fair intelligence, with a quiet pleasant voice and gentlemanly manner. ‘The church is like its vicar, prosperous, well staffed, well organised, and well supported’.
Stone estimated his parish population at 8,000 with around 10% poor or very poor. Of the latter, he judged their morals were low and that it was frequently the servant girls ‘who were led astray’. Stone was largely referring to streets in Kilburn Vale: Wayman agreed there was poverty here but the area was ‘no problem to the police’. The larger part of the parish bordering Priory Road, over to Finchley Road and south of Belsize Road, was populated by the comfortable middle class. Inspector Wayman described the properties in Canfield, Compagne, Fairhazel, Greencroft and Aberdare Gardens as, ‘spick and span and smart as they can be. It is a great district for successful authors, journalists, actors, singers and musicians’.
St Mary’s was a church where the pews were rented, in other words you paid to attend, and there was a waiting list. On Sundays the church was full. When asked about drink and how it affected his congregation, Rev. Stone made an interesting observation. ‘He knew of a good many cases of private tippling among women. For many there is a special temptation owing to the long absence through the day of their husbands’. Another clergyman thought the increase in licensed retail outlets made it easier for women to buy alcohol.
Nearby Quex Road was home to three churches. Stone described friendly relations but no co-operation between the clergy.
The Rev. Jackson was minister at the large Wesleyan Church which stood on the corner with Kingsgate Road. Closing in 1961, it looked like a Grecian temple and seated 1,000. ‘A charming old man with unimpaired intellect, Mr J brings 37 years of ministerial experience to his work’. He had been in post for two years. Jackson’s opinion of the area was unfavourable. ‘The district is going down, especially west of the Kilburn High Road e.g. Willesden parish. To the north of the chapel the roads are becoming poorer by the increase of lodgers’. High rents and rates resulted in more overcrowding as people took in lodgers to help pay their day-to-day expenses. Jackson identified Palmerston Road and neighbouring streets as the poorest in the area. His opinion was echoed by the Reverend Charles Vick, minister of the Brondesbury Baptist Church at the corner of Iverson Road, (closed 1980). He said these streets had ‘gone down, and the process was continuing’. He too blamed high rents for overcrowding and for the subdivision of large single-family houses into multi occupation.
The Reverend Jackson’s congregation in Quex Road came from both sides of the main road, some from as far away as Finchley Road: mainly ‘city people, tradesmen, builders and a great many shop assistants’. Not full for Sunday services but attendances were growing. There was a question about why some people attended, perhaps for charity handouts, but when speaking of the poorer women from the Palmerston Road area, Jackson gave them the benefit of the doubt; he didn’t believe many attended ‘for what they could get’.
Jackson said there was ‘a good deal of drink’ and ‘a lot of robberies and petty thefts’. He lived in St George’s Road (later renamed as Priory Terrace) in the house allocated to successive pastors and told the interviewer there had been three recent robberies in the road, including the theft of his own overcoat. He concluded enigmatically, ‘the cases are hushed up’.
Church of the Sacred Heart, Quex Road
The neighbouring Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart drew its congregation from a wide area. Rev. Father O’Reilly estimated he had around 2,000 in his flock: from Ireland, France, Germany, Spain and elsewhere, of whom 2/3 were working class. (The Rev. Jackson thought many lived in Kilburn Vale). At the time, the church could hold just 400 persons and was being enlarged to take 700. On Sunday there were four masses with an attendance of around 1,200. Before coming to Quex Road, Father O’Reilly had been in Whitechapel which he greatly preferred: ‘In Kilburn he finds more indifference and no spirit of enthusiasm’. He didn’t believe drinking was an issue, but across the High Road in the opinion of the Dr Williams of St Luke’s, the problem of drinking was ‘appalling, and a common vice among women’. Nearly always, he found drink to be ‘at the bottom of distress’.
Drink was easily available. In 1882 the Kilburn Temperance Council had conducted a one day census of attendance at places of worship and public houses between the hours of 18.00 and 20.00, on a ‘fair and clear’ evening. There were 35 pubs and 26 places of worship in the area covered, reaching from St Mary’s in Abbey Road, across to the parishes of St Augustine’s and St Luke’s, centred on Kilburn Lane. The enumerators noted the total entering the places of worship as 5,570 with a slightly higher total for the pubs of 5,591.
As we have mentioned in previous blogs, the pub was the focal point for many working-class neighbourhoods rather than a place of worship. This was reflected by the high prices paid for prosperous public houses in south Kilburn: Dr Williams noted in his interview that The Canterbury Arms in Canterbury Road off the High Street had recently been sold for £50,000 and the Chippenham on Shirland Road for £90,000. We were not able to substantiate the figure for the Canterbury Arms, but a contemporary newspaper reported an even higher sale price for the Chippenham of £100,000, which translates to an amazing £12M today. When asked about publicans, Superintendent Dodd described them as generally well-educated businessmen, totally unlike the ‘the decayed prize fighter type’ publicans of twenty years ago.
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St James’, Sherriff Road (© Marianne Colloms)
Some ministers were not interviewed but the report specifically notes that one had refused to co-operate, the Rev. J.R. Taft of St James’, Sherriff Road who had been vicar since late 1896. ‘He was twice written to without response. I have called twice: the second time he was in but in response to a card and message, declined to see me’. Instead, the would-be interviewer included a recent interview with the Reverend from the publication Church Bells. The article described the Rev Taft as, ‘a singularly original preacher, whose sermons are as free from conventionality as they are full of conviction’.
His parish included well off streets east of West End Lane, but the main area stretched westwards to Kilburn High Road, taking in many lower middle and working-class homes. Taft felt West Hampstead had changed in the short time he’d been there due to the building of the Great Central Railway (today’s Chiltern line), possibly because it had demolished a run of good class property on Broadhurst Gardens, removing better off parishioners. Taft also criticised flats, or more specifically one (unnamed) block, which can only have been the recently completed St James’ Mansions on West End Lane. These had been built on the grounds and site of a large mansion, The Beacon, and ‘brought nearly 500 persons to the parish in the place of one good family’. Seemingly Taft was upset because this stretched parish finances and meant more work for him and fellow workers.
So far as poverty was concerned, Taft estimated about 5,000 of his parishioners were poor. If correct, this represented around 70% of his flock. He described but did not name Palmerston Road and Netherwood Street as, ‘two streets equal to anything in the East End. The name of Hampstead is supposed to suggest luxury, but there as many as fifty people in one house in the streets to which I refer’. Wayman said the level of poverty here was worse than in Kilburn Vale. Some Palmerston houses were in bad repair and the street was poor, but Netherwood Street was even poorer. But he concluded while both had a ‘very bad reputation for roughness, they are much better now’.
There is so much more to discover in the pages of Booth’s notebooks. We encourage you to visit the LSE site – your home may be on the maps and described in the street walks! The maps do not cover parts of Kilburn west of Edgware Road, but include all of West Hampstead and much of Kilburn to the east.
Background
Four editions of Booth’s survey were published:
Life and Labour of the People (London: 1889), with two volumes (the second entitled Labour and Life of the People).
Labour and Life of the People (London: 1889-1891), two volumes with an appendix.
Life and Labour of the People in London (London: 1892-1897), nine volumes and maps; and Life and Labour of the People in London (London: Macmillan, 1902-1903), comprising 17 volumes.
The original notebooks in which survey data was transcribed can be found at the London School of Economics (LSE) Archives, in addition to the descriptive maps of poverty, where the streets are classified by seven colours or combinations of colours. These range from the worst black, indicating lowest class or semi criminal inhabitants, through poor, comfortable and well to do, with wealthy residents at the top, in yellow streets.
For more information on the purpose and results of the survey, go to https://booth.lse.ac.uk
Much of the material is available online at the LSE website.
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