Abstract
New Social Survey of London.—It is now more than forty years since Mr. Charles Booth began his great social survey of London, which occupied seventeen years and was published in a number of volumes. It is of importance to assess the social changes that have taken place in the intervening period and to extend the scope of the work. A new social survey has now been started by the London School of Economics. Some account of the scope, methods, and aims of the work are given in a paper by Sir H. Llewellyn-Smith in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, vol. 92, pt. 2. The area to bq included does not correspond accurately with any administrative area, for these have little relation to present urban growths. North of the Thames it has to be pushed beyond the county of London. As a whole it includes, on the basis of the 1921 census, a population of 5 millions, of which 41/2 millions were then within the county. The methods of the important survey of poverty differ from those used by Booth inasmuch as intensive methods on the lines of Prof. Bowley's ‘sampling’ will be combined with the older extensive system of indirect information from schools, police, and clergy. Other branches of the survey will deal with industries, especially clothing, boot, shoe, and furniture trades, to which Booth gave special attention; crime; occupations; wealth and the use of leisure. Considerable progress has already been made with the poverty survey.
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Research Items. Nature 124, 632–634 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124632a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124632a0