The Moral Mapping of Victorian and Edwardian London: Charles Booth, Christian Charity, and the Poor-but-Respectable

Charles Booth’s seventeen-volume series, The Life and Labour of the People in London (1886-1903), is a staple of late Victorian social history and a monumental work of scholarship. Despite these facts, historians have paid little attention to its section on religious influences. Thomas Gibson-Brydon’s The Moral Mapping of Victorian and Edwardian London seeks to remedy this neglect.

Combing through the interviews Booth and his researchers conducted with 1,800 churchmen and women, Gibson-Brydo...