Old Map of London's Churches, Pubs and Schools in 1903 by Charles Booth - Westminster, City of London, Southwark, Isle of Dogs

Charles Booth is best remembered today for the poverty maps that colour-coded London street by street between 1889 and 1903, but his enormous survey of the capital, published as Life and Labour of the People in London, extended well beyond poverty into a third strand of research often overshadowed by the famous colour maps: an investigation into religious and moral influences across the city. This map, compiled from that religious influences survey and issued around 1903, belongs to that less well-known branch of Booth's project, and is best understood as part of his wider school of London social cartography rather than a repeat of his poverty maps proper.

Rather than shading streets by income, this map plots places of worship, public elementary schools, and premises licensed to sell alcohol across London, using separate symbols to distinguish denominations of church and categories of school and public house. The survey behind it drew on interviews with well over a thousand clergymen and completed questionnaires from parishes across the city, and the resulting map covers ground from Westminster and the City of London through Southwark and out to the docks of the Isle of Dogs. Viewed at a glance, the density of licensed premises against the comparatively sparse distribution of churches and schools was, for contemporaries, very much part of the map's point.

This print will interest social historians, students of Victorian and Edwardian London, and anyone drawn to the unusual corner of Booth's research that sits outside his famous poverty maps. It's reproduced at high resolution from an original example and available in a range of sizes, keeping the dense symbol key and street-level detail legible at any scale.