The moral mapping of Victorian and Edwardian London : Charles Booth, Christian charity, and the poor-but-respectable / Thomas R.C. Gibson-Brydon ; edited by Hillary Kaell and Brian Lewis.

Montreal ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2016]

xi, 226 pages ; 24 cm

"Charles Booth's seventeen-volume series, The Life and Labour of the People in London (1886-1903), is one of the staples of late Victorian social history. But historians have paid comparatively little attention to its third section, on religious influences. In this book, Tom Gibson-Brydon sets out to remedy this neglect of the religious dimension by immersing himself in the largely untapped interviews of the 1,800 London churchmen and women in the Booth archive at the London School of Economics. The first third of the study discusses the philosophy of Booth himself and the genesis of the religious influences series. The second third considers the agents of London charity: ministers and philanthropic women. The concluding third focuses on the recipients of charity: London's poor. The frank testimony of "social scientists," Christians, and philanthropists deploying moralistic languages that stigmatized and excluded the despised underclasses comes as no surprise. But what is more unexpected is the extent to which members of the working classes themselves deployed moral segregation as they tried to maintain their rank in the poor-but-respectable hierarchy. In critiquing the warm idea of working-class solidarity and community-building traditionally portrayed by many leading social and labour historians, the book argues for a much meaner, bleaker reality in London's teeming neighbourhoods."-- Provided by publisher.

English

May 13, 2016

Includes bibliographical references and index.