1 00:00:04,090 --> 00:00:09,780 Thank you very much, as a pleasure to be with you all today at the Tusker conference. 2 00:00:09,780 --> 00:00:20,080 So the title of my talk refers to the pressing question of Victorian social reform, particularly in the city of London. 3 00:00:20,080 --> 00:00:29,130 And I want to take you back to 19th century London, because the question on everybody's lips was why in the greatest city, 4 00:00:29,130 --> 00:00:40,170 in the greatest nation on Earth, why on earth was there so much poverty, so much squalor, so much disease and so much immorality? 5 00:00:40,170 --> 00:00:45,630 As you can imagine, people weren't reticent about giving answers to that questions. 6 00:00:45,630 --> 00:00:56,250 And as we can see on the left, all sorts of people gave their opinions more or less well-informed in the forms that you see there on the left. 7 00:00:56,250 --> 00:01:03,180 And they used various media. The hope amongst them proves statistics, graphs, photographs, paintings and maps. 8 00:01:03,180 --> 00:01:08,840 And it's there on these maps that I'd like to concentrate today. 9 00:01:08,840 --> 00:01:15,110 You may be familiar with one of the most famous map surveys of enquiries into London poverty, 10 00:01:15,110 --> 00:01:19,970 which happened in the 80s, 80s and 80s, 90s when the question was really current. 11 00:01:19,970 --> 00:01:28,730 It was under the leadership of Charles Booth. And from the start, the idea was to investigate and then to map poverty. 12 00:01:28,730 --> 00:01:36,590 He used working maps which were hand coloured ordnance survey maps at a particularly large scale one to 2500. 13 00:01:36,590 --> 00:01:41,660 And the result of print maps, which you may well be familiar with. I'll show you some examples in a moment. 14 00:01:41,660 --> 00:01:47,510 Were printed on Stanford's library map of London and its suburbs at six inches to a mile. 15 00:01:47,510 --> 00:01:54,890 So Booth didn't originate cartography originate maps in the sense of surveying and drawing his own maps. 16 00:01:54,890 --> 00:02:02,900 What he did was exhaustively to find out social information and to plot it onto maps. 17 00:02:02,900 --> 00:02:12,530 And here's the point of his survey, was to find out who exactly was in London, where they lived and what kind of people they were. 18 00:02:12,530 --> 00:02:22,320 And he was absolutely exhaustive. He and his team in gathering information and he classified that and their families that 19 00:02:22,320 --> 00:02:29,030 he investigated into a classification system that had both economic aspects and moral. 20 00:02:29,030 --> 00:02:34,160 So we can see here, for example, that some people are described in economic terms as very poor, 21 00:02:34,160 --> 00:02:38,900 poor, wealthy, but other people are described in moral terms, 22 00:02:38,900 --> 00:02:47,270 the lowest class of the semi criminal who are so poor that they're really living on the margins of society in all senses spatially, 23 00:02:47,270 --> 00:02:55,630 but also in terms of shared norms. So here's one of Booth's maps of London. 24 00:02:55,630 --> 00:03:04,330 There were many of them, and they went through a couple of additions and she may be familiar with this because it's a particularly well known. 25 00:03:04,330 --> 00:03:13,930 And in this one, we can see the red areas of the wealthy people who are on the west side of London, where there are near to a park, you can see. 26 00:03:13,930 --> 00:03:21,480 And as we move further eastwards, we get to encounter more poverty and get blue areas and black areas. 27 00:03:21,480 --> 00:03:27,730 I can place up. That's what that looks like. Red areas, certainly, particularly on street fronts. 28 00:03:27,730 --> 00:03:31,570 In more back streets, we get poorer people. 29 00:03:31,570 --> 00:03:43,180 And here we can see poor people clustering in that black area towards the bottom just here by the railway line where we might expect to find them. 30 00:03:43,180 --> 00:03:50,160 So some say I'm sure many of you will be familiar with these maps because they're particularly well known. 31 00:03:50,160 --> 00:04:00,070 Now, there had been earlier poverty maps. The English economist William Javins made a poverty map of Sydney and Australia in the eighteen fifties. 32 00:04:00,070 --> 00:04:04,240 And in the same decade, a clergyman in Liverpool made this map here, 33 00:04:04,240 --> 00:04:11,110 which we can see shaded on a pre-existing map showing areas of poverty in the city. 34 00:04:11,110 --> 00:04:18,250 But the wealth project was on a completely different scale and completely different level of information, 35 00:04:18,250 --> 00:04:22,360 which was really exhaustively compiled and then mapped. 36 00:04:22,360 --> 00:04:30,920 As you've seen in amazing detail. And the booth maps were very widely imitated. 37 00:04:30,920 --> 00:04:34,960 This is one again, another map, which he may well be familiar with, 38 00:04:34,960 --> 00:04:40,610 that one of the whole house maps of Chicago in the following decade, in the 80s, 90s. 39 00:04:40,610 --> 00:04:45,800 And this was made by the women was one of several examples made by the women of Holehouse 40 00:04:45,800 --> 00:04:51,980 in Chicago plotting the various characteristics of the family in the city of Chicago. 41 00:04:51,980 --> 00:04:58,310 Jane Adams was the leading light of Holehouse and Florence Kelly was very important in the cartography. 42 00:04:58,310 --> 00:05:05,150 And they explicitly took their took their method and their inspiration from Booth. 43 00:05:05,150 --> 00:05:13,750 So it's nice to have women directly inspired by this famous famous survey. 44 00:05:13,750 --> 00:05:19,720 And women were very closely involved in Booth's survey. 45 00:05:19,720 --> 00:05:27,820 They supplied information on all topics. He and his investigators went round the streets relying on local people, 46 00:05:27,820 --> 00:05:37,840 particularly local middle class people who were involved in things like school boards and other aspects of life in different areas. 47 00:05:37,840 --> 00:05:43,600 And women particularly were employed on the project to investigate women subjects. 48 00:05:43,600 --> 00:05:52,840 So inverted commas, of course, looking particularly at things like women's characteristic girls, what girls were doing, how people were educated. 49 00:05:52,840 --> 00:05:55,840 The fate of domestic servants. 50 00:05:55,840 --> 00:06:10,870 The condition of domestic servants of all domestic homely topics which women were thought naturally are better able to investigate, 51 00:06:10,870 --> 00:06:19,270 partly because they could get the confidence of women. And partly because they were thought to have some kind of natural affinity for these topics. 52 00:06:19,270 --> 00:06:26,290 So women were really heavily involved in all aspects of the servant of the survey. 53 00:06:26,290 --> 00:06:33,010 We see here a family group of the booths. And we can see Mary Booth here, Charles's wife. 54 00:06:33,010 --> 00:06:40,420 And she was really central to the operation as an editor, as an adviser, as a coordinator throughout the whole duration. 55 00:06:40,420 --> 00:06:45,190 But perhaps particularly when it got to the publishing stages, people involved, 56 00:06:45,190 --> 00:06:55,240 women involved in the investigative stages included Alice Stopford Green, the historian who was involved in the women's work sex section. 57 00:06:55,240 --> 00:07:02,620 Beatrice Potter, a cousin of Mary Booth, who was famous in her own right as a sociologist and reformer, 58 00:07:02,620 --> 00:07:12,190 but was roped in by Charlie, who wanted me to do women's work in East End, as she recalls in her diary. 59 00:07:12,190 --> 00:07:18,820 Another woman, famous woman in her own right as an economist and a civil servant, was Clah Collett, 60 00:07:18,820 --> 00:07:26,770 and she worked again on the things you can see that say things in which women were thought naturally to have some affinity. 61 00:07:26,770 --> 00:07:31,030 She didn't necessarily enjoy it, as you can see the quotation at the bottom. 62 00:07:31,030 --> 00:07:39,220 This investigative work, she said, I would give it up whenever I see a chance of earning a certain 60 pounds, even by lectures on economics. 63 00:07:39,220 --> 00:07:46,540 So she was one of the key figures in the survey, even though she didn't really enjoy it particularly. 64 00:07:46,540 --> 00:07:53,120 And another person involved in the survey was Octavia Hill, the subject of our talk today. 65 00:07:53,120 --> 00:07:57,320 She was a very famous housing reformer. And so she was she was a friend of booths. 66 00:07:57,320 --> 00:08:03,260 And so she was asked to contribute to the section on housing. 67 00:08:03,260 --> 00:08:08,480 But did these women draw maps? Well, that's something that I think and that's a question. 68 00:08:08,480 --> 00:08:13,610 I think no one's ever asked before. And so it's not surprising that we don't know the answer to that. 69 00:08:13,610 --> 00:08:22,460 So, as I say, we knew that they were very heavily involved in all the different sections of the the stages of the of the investigation. 70 00:08:22,460 --> 00:08:26,240 But we don't actually know whether they drew maps or not. 71 00:08:26,240 --> 00:08:32,730 So this is work in progress. As soon as the archive opens up again, I have plans to go up to London, 72 00:08:32,730 --> 00:08:40,550 look at the original notebooks of all the investigators and see if we can actually get more insight into the map making process. 73 00:08:40,550 --> 00:08:46,580 We know a tremendous amount about the information gathering process. We know a tremendous amount about the maps themselves. 74 00:08:46,580 --> 00:08:58,040 But we know actually curiously little about the personnel drawing the maps and whether women were part of that. 75 00:08:58,040 --> 00:09:04,010 But what we do know is about another map, because at the same time as all these women were working on Boutte's map projects, 76 00:09:04,010 --> 00:09:12,050 Octavia Hill was, in fact, herself making a map of London and its social problems. 77 00:09:12,050 --> 00:09:17,300 So a little bit about Octavia Hill. She was a really important housing and charity reformer. 78 00:09:17,300 --> 00:09:21,380 You may have come across her if you're British in connexion with the National Trust, 79 00:09:21,380 --> 00:09:25,610 because she was one of three founders of that venerable institution. 80 00:09:25,610 --> 00:09:35,390 And we seeing here a very fine oil painting of her. And I think it sort of gives some idea of her eminence that in the British National 81 00:09:35,390 --> 00:09:42,140 Portrait Gallery in the section of 19th century word is the Victorian gallery. 82 00:09:42,140 --> 00:09:48,380 There are two women, one of whom is Queen Victoria and the other of whom is Octavia Hill. 83 00:09:48,380 --> 00:09:54,110 And that gives us some idea of really quite how eminent she was. 84 00:09:54,110 --> 00:10:00,080 And she wanted to she was involved in all kinds of social projects, 85 00:10:00,080 --> 00:10:06,890 and we know in detail because she tells us about one particular mapping project that she has. 86 00:10:06,890 --> 00:10:16,280 We took one of Stanford's maps, she says, and this is the outcome of her having taken the map, what she was plotting onto the map. 87 00:10:16,280 --> 00:10:23,060 So same idea as being taking a pre-existing map and using it for a particular social purpose. 88 00:10:23,060 --> 00:10:30,440 She was mapping parks and open spaces within six miles of Charing Cross, the centre of London. 89 00:10:30,440 --> 00:10:33,620 So taking her was very, very good at galvanising volunteers. 90 00:10:33,620 --> 00:10:41,130 So she galvanised all her volunteers, many of the women, and she got them to plot open space in London, 91 00:10:41,130 --> 00:10:49,310 but not just any old open space that happened to be coloured green. What she wanted to get them to plot was accessible open space. 92 00:10:49,310 --> 00:10:56,060 So not private gardens or private squares, for example, accessible space and preserved space. 93 00:10:56,060 --> 00:11:02,120 So space that was going to be permanently available for all for recreation. 94 00:11:02,120 --> 00:11:06,380 And she published her results in an article in the 19th century, 95 00:11:06,380 --> 00:11:14,750 which was a really important journal in Victorian Britain with a circulation of 20000, which was really rather significant. 96 00:11:14,750 --> 00:11:23,510 And her findings were very striking. She found out that in the western half of London, so the rich part were booths, 97 00:11:23,510 --> 00:11:32,390 red areas had been the number of residents per acre of preserved open space was 682. 98 00:11:32,390 --> 00:11:38,030 Whereas in the poorer eastern half, it was seven thousand four hundred eighty one. 99 00:11:38,030 --> 00:11:44,570 So a combination of demographic statistics and cartographic work revealed 100 00:11:44,570 --> 00:11:51,210 quite how unequal the access to open space was in nineteenth century England, 101 00:11:51,210 --> 00:11:56,450 19th century London. So why did she make this one map? 102 00:11:56,450 --> 00:12:01,340 Because this is the only map we know about that she did she she made. 103 00:12:01,340 --> 00:12:05,740 Well, we can sense her personal preference, as her biographies biographer said. 104 00:12:05,740 --> 00:12:11,630 Octavia always enjoyed a map. And we know that she used maps a tremendous amount. 105 00:12:11,630 --> 00:12:18,170 And she certainly had an eye for the visual because she was trained as an artist originally. 106 00:12:18,170 --> 00:12:27,800 So she she had an eye for these things. And we can see her use of maps in various of her projects to the left. 107 00:12:27,800 --> 00:12:36,500 We can see one of her housing projects. She built these rather charming cottages in the middle of a very poor part of London. 108 00:12:36,500 --> 00:12:42,620 And she and the architects were working together. And the architect was remark that he was very patient, 109 00:12:42,620 --> 00:12:50,390 as she was always investigating and changing his plans so that she she was used to seeing 110 00:12:50,390 --> 00:12:56,480 building plans and envisaging envisaging what they would look like in in practise. 111 00:12:56,480 --> 00:13:03,370 And on the right, we can see another of her, the fruits of her labours in the 1880 as she laid out this garden. 112 00:13:03,370 --> 00:13:13,280 And in really poor part of of London, indebted. And she laid out the garden to be a pleasure garden for the local people. 113 00:13:13,280 --> 00:13:24,530 And she must have had access to a map to do that because it's really well thought of in terms of some rather picturesque winding paths and so on. 114 00:13:24,530 --> 00:13:31,160 So she used maps and she used plants. She had an eye for the visual. 115 00:13:31,160 --> 00:13:36,680 And I think she made and publish this particular map because of the occasion. 116 00:13:36,680 --> 00:13:44,960 She regarded it as a once in a lifetime chance to bid for a large amount of money to save large areas of open space in London after 117 00:13:44,960 --> 00:13:52,130 this particular act of parliament had been passed and there was a there was money available for and people could bid for it. 118 00:13:52,130 --> 00:13:59,990 And as she said in the 19th century, I must use all ways open to me to get her slice of this money. 119 00:13:59,990 --> 00:14:06,410 So the novelty of the medium, the kind of graphic medium fitted the novelty of the situation. 120 00:14:06,410 --> 00:14:10,970 Normally, she would rely very much on words, the spoken word, 121 00:14:10,970 --> 00:14:17,480 as she was an experienced public speaker or the published word as she was an incorrigible 122 00:14:17,480 --> 00:14:25,970 essayist and and and a writer of chapters in other people's books and indeed in her own. 123 00:14:25,970 --> 00:14:32,910 But here she must use always opened for me. So she draws a map. 124 00:14:32,910 --> 00:14:42,210 But it's the only map she didn't make. So why did she make no other maps? And I think but there are various answers to that. 125 00:14:42,210 --> 00:14:47,910 And I think partly she felt that the map lacked the emotive power of prose. 126 00:14:47,910 --> 00:14:48,930 We can see here, she says, 127 00:14:48,930 --> 00:14:58,110 cast your eye on the eastern semicircle on the map and transform the darkened surface where the houses are back into real life. 128 00:14:58,110 --> 00:15:03,900 So the map goes only so far. Ultimately, you have to translate it back into real life. 129 00:15:03,900 --> 00:15:10,110 And again, she says. But now translate all that from tables or statistics or a map back into real life. 130 00:15:10,110 --> 00:15:19,020 So she then paints a word picture of what the unequal access to open space actually means for poor people. 131 00:15:19,020 --> 00:15:24,870 So I think she feels that a map can go so far, but prose carries her further. 132 00:15:24,870 --> 00:15:29,700 We can see to the difficulties of reproduction the map was in black and white, 133 00:15:29,700 --> 00:15:37,230 where actually she wanted a colour to be able to show where the green, accessible, open space was. 134 00:15:37,230 --> 00:15:46,050 It was a full that Martin got damaged very easily. And the publisher of the magazine was experienced in publishing prose, but not maps. 135 00:15:46,050 --> 00:15:55,490 And I found it extraordinarily difficult, actually, to get a good quality reproduction of the map because so many of them have been damaged. 136 00:15:55,490 --> 00:16:00,420 And perhaps the final reason why she made no other maps was that this campaign failed. 137 00:16:00,420 --> 00:16:05,850 She didn't get the large injection of money that she wanted permanently to transfer 138 00:16:05,850 --> 00:16:14,540 to trons form access or by poor people in the east end of London to open space. 139 00:16:14,540 --> 00:16:17,390 So research continues. 140 00:16:17,390 --> 00:16:26,000 I'm looking forward to getting back into the archives, to finding out whether the women of the Booth survey actually carried on. 141 00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:35,180 I actually actually contributed to the cartography. And I want to find out what happened to Octavia Hill's map. 142 00:16:35,180 --> 00:16:46,700 So I'm looking forward, as I'm sure many others are, to the reopening of the archives and some more answers to this contribution to women and mapping. 143 00:16:46,700 --> 00:16:55,480 Thank you very much. Arculus, absolutely terrific stuff and a great way back after the coffee break. 144 00:16:55,480 --> 00:17:05,010 I've I've really got to start off with a point which goes against the cartographic grain, if you like, that towards the end. 145 00:17:05,010 --> 00:17:13,200 You mentioned that the Octavia Hills assumption was that like maps lacked the emotive power of those. 146 00:17:13,200 --> 00:17:20,220 Yet we're all map people. I'm guessing most people on this conference are amongst people. 147 00:17:20,220 --> 00:17:26,010 What are the lines which I often turn out is that a map is worth a thousand words. 148 00:17:26,010 --> 00:17:31,710 Isn't this going against the cartographic grain? Oh, certainly. 149 00:17:31,710 --> 00:17:41,400 I'll take the Hill was actually remarkably adept in using all kinds of media for examples statistics she would pitch 150 00:17:41,400 --> 00:17:48,930 up before the Royal Statistical Society and sort of these statistics around with all the other men in the room. 151 00:17:48,930 --> 00:17:51,450 So she and she, as we know, she was used a map. 152 00:17:51,450 --> 00:18:03,660 But I think she always felt that ultimately she could evoke the personal when she was writing or speaking. 153 00:18:03,660 --> 00:18:13,020 She had one of her particular characteristics is that she always brings things down to a particular personal example. 154 00:18:13,020 --> 00:18:15,870 So she talks about ECAs and she talks about statistics. 155 00:18:15,870 --> 00:18:23,040 But then she says, I want to take you now into a court and I want to take you now into a room, into one of my courts. 156 00:18:23,040 --> 00:18:27,720 And you can see the old woman who's been living there for 20 years or whatever, 157 00:18:27,720 --> 00:18:35,370 and she paints that a word picture of this very particular, very personal, very emotive, 158 00:18:35,370 --> 00:18:43,830 emotive scene that that she finds that she always wants to find a sort of chord with her readers, 159 00:18:43,830 --> 00:18:51,450 not least because there are very few occasions when Octavia Hill writes that she doesn't want people to contribute to one of her campaigns. 160 00:18:51,450 --> 00:18:54,120 She was always raising money for everything. 161 00:18:54,120 --> 00:19:01,620 So she wants Pete to tug at people's heartstrings and make them reach into their pockets or to devote time. 162 00:19:01,620 --> 00:19:11,970 And ultimately, I think she she feels that for all the fact that she likes visible media, she finds that the spoken word word carries her through. 163 00:19:11,970 --> 00:19:20,770 And she had a particularly fine speaking voice. Suddenly, she knew how to hold a room and she knew how to how to talk to to write emotively. 164 00:19:20,770 --> 00:19:26,820 And I think I think ultimately she wasn't she wasn't persuaded by it, by the power of the magazine. 165 00:19:26,820 --> 00:19:34,740 That's not to say I'm not persuaded that something big to fail was a convincing answer. 166 00:19:34,740 --> 00:19:40,520 I can see where Octavia Hill's coming from, this next question. It's got nothing to do with Octavia Hill whatsoever. 167 00:19:40,520 --> 00:19:47,900 Our book. Are there any poverty maps or similar of Welsh towns? 168 00:19:47,900 --> 00:19:57,410 That I don't know. I mean, there are things like we start to get sanitary maps at around this time and it's it's likely, 169 00:19:57,410 --> 00:20:04,160 but in things like medical boards of health, you will have had the starts of sanitary maps. 170 00:20:04,160 --> 00:20:13,130 But I don't know of any particular mapping projects of poff of poverty explicitly. 171 00:20:13,130 --> 00:20:21,760 I think the focus in poverty was in the national press and in the national I was in was in London. 172 00:20:21,760 --> 00:20:25,520 And and I think that's why we get the best known examples there. 173 00:20:25,520 --> 00:20:32,720 But a good question, and it would be very nice to find out making a comment really, which I'd like you to comment on. 174 00:20:32,720 --> 00:20:37,730 It's surprising that she didn't use her drawing skills to utter Cartouche. 175 00:20:37,730 --> 00:20:41,600 Yes, I think she was in rather sort of business like mode here. 176 00:20:41,600 --> 00:20:45,890 So I think she was held back from that. 177 00:20:45,890 --> 00:20:53,360 As I said, she had trained as an artist and she trained under John Ruskin in the same way as she knew any number of influential people. 178 00:20:53,360 --> 00:20:59,960 She she trained under sort of the foremost art critic, social critic in the 19th century. 179 00:20:59,960 --> 00:21:03,520 And for 12 years, she was employed by Ruskin as a copyist. So. 180 00:21:03,520 --> 00:21:07,220 So she certainly could have supplied a cartouche. 181 00:21:07,220 --> 00:21:14,450 But I think that she does write in her description of how the map was made, how it how it had taken a huge amount of time. 182 00:21:14,450 --> 00:21:16,490 And she was very busy. So who knows? 183 00:21:16,490 --> 00:21:23,120 Had she had more time, had it taken less time actually to compile the map, maybe she would have drawn a drawn a cottage. 184 00:21:23,120 --> 00:21:32,360 But I think in any sense, she's trying to be businesslike in order to persuade the people dispensing this charity money to to give her someone 185 00:21:32,360 --> 00:21:39,110 she might have thought it was a little bit fanciful if she'd if she'd sort of indulged in decorative effects. 186 00:21:39,110 --> 00:21:43,820 I don't know that that's pure, pure speculation. But I know that she was busy amassing, 187 00:21:43,820 --> 00:21:55,578 sort of bristling with statistics and so on in order to try to make a watertight case to to the people dispensing the fund.