Everything about Charles Booth Philanthropist totally explained
Charles Booth (
30 March 1840 -
23 November 1916) was an
English philanthropist and social researcher. He is most famed for his innovative work on documenting working class life in
London at the end of the
19th century, work that along with that of
Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree influenced government intervention against poverty in the early
20th century.
Early life
Charles Booth was born in
Liverpool in 1840 to Charles Booth and Emily Fletcher. His father was a wealthy ship-owner and corn merchant as well as being a prominent
Unitarian.
Booth attended the
Royal Institution School in
Liverpool before being apprenticed at aged sixteen.
After studying shipping, Booth was able to persuade Alfred and his sister Emily to invest in steamships and create a service to Pará, Maranhão and Ceará in Brazil. Booth himself went on the first voyage on 14th of February 1866. He was also involved in the building of a harbour at Manaus which could overcome seasonal fluctuations in water levels. He described this as his "monument" when he visited the area for the last time in 1912.
Booth also had some participation in politics. He campaigned unsuccessfully for the Liberal parliamentary candidate in the election of 1865. However, he became disillusioned with politics following the Tory victory in municipal elections in 1866. This changed Booth's attitudes, he saw that he could influence people more by educating the electorate, rather than through politics.
The survey into London life and labour
After this Booth expanded his research to cover the whole of London. This investigation was carried out by Booth himself and a team of researchers. However Booth continued to operate his successful shipping business while the investigation was taking place.
Life and Labour of the People of London was published in seventeen volumes between 1891 and 1903 - he used this work to argue to the introduction of Old Age Pensions which he described as "limited socialism". Booth argued that such reforms would prevent socialist revolution from occurring Britain. Booth was far from tempted by the ideas of socialism but had some sympathy with the working classes, as part of his investigation he took lodgings with working class families and recorded his thoughts and findings in diaries.
The
London School of Economics keeps his work on an online searchable
database.
Political views
While Booth's attitudes towards poverty may make him appear fairly liberal, Booth actually became more conservative in his views as he became older. Some of his investigators such as Beatrice Potter became socialists as a result of their research, however Booth was critical of the way in which the Liberal government appeared to support trade unions after they won the 1906 General Election. This caused him to renounce his Liberal Party membership - he deferred to the Conservative Party.
Influence of his work
Life and Labour of the People of London can be seen as one of the founding texts of British
sociology, drawing on both
quantitative (
statistical) methods and
qualitative methods (particurly
ethnography). Because of this, it was an influence on
Chicago School sociology (notably the work of
Robert E. Park) and later the discipline of
community studies associated with the
Institute of Community Studies in
East London.
The importance of his work in
social statistics was recognised by the
Royal Statistical Society, who awarded him the first
Guy Medal in Gold in 1882 and elected him their president in the same year. He was made a
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1899
"As having applied Scientific Methods to Social Investigation".
Works
Further Information
Get more info on 'Charles Booth Philanthropist'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://charles_booth__philanthropist.totallyexplained.com">Charles Booth (philanthropist) Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
