Reproduced courtesy of the London School of Economics, Charles Booth Archive. For more information please click here.

In 1898-9 Charles Booth took a survey of the state of poverty throughout London. He walked the streets with police to accompany him and wrote notebooks as to what he found. The map of this survey is contained in the map section. However here is a transcript of the notebook taken when Booth walked around the area: I’ve attached a copy of the actual notebook to the right, but for ease of reading I’ve transcribed it below:

“North up Queen Ann St. 3 st. (3 storey), rough, children very ragged, some prostitutes. Bread and bits of raw meat in the roadway, windows broken & dirty; all english: one woman called out “let us be guv’nor dont pull the houses down & turn us out! On the West side not coloured in map is a small court: hot potato can standing idle, dark, narrow. D/blue N (North) up Thomas St. at the N.W. corner 10 men waiting for the Casual Ward to open. (It opens at 4, it was now 1.45PM).

“North end of Thomas St is a gate leading to private Rd. on the West side of which are 3 blocks of dwellings called Blackwall Blds belonging to Blackwall Railway. decent class. purple. at either end is a gateway which is shut at night. The furthest gate opens on to the stoneyard of the White Chapel Union.”

The colours mentioned (dark blue and purple) relate to the class of the area. The full table makes interesting reading and is reproduced here

BLACK: Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal.
DARK BLUE: Very poor, casual. Chronic want.
LIGHT BLUE: Poor. 18s. to 21s. a week for a moderate family
PURPLE: Mixed. Some comfortable others poor
PINK: Fairly comfortable. Good ordinary earnings.
RED: Middle class. Well-to-do.
YELLOW: Upper-middle and Upper classes. Wealthy.

A combination of colours, such as dark blue or black, or pink and red, indicates that the street contains a fair proportion of each of the classes represented by the respective colours.

In an earlier volume he has 8 classes and this says a great deal about the mind-set of Booth

A The lowest class which consists of some occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals. Their life is the life of savages, with vicissitudes of extreme hardship and their only luxury is drink
B Casual earnings, very poor. The labourers do not get as much as three days work a week, but it is doubtful if many could or would work full time for long together if they had the opportunity. Class B is not one in which men are born and live and die so much as a deposit of those who from mental, moral and physical reasons are incapable of better work
C Intermittent earning. 18s to 21s per week for a moderate family. The victims of competition and on them falls with particular severity the weight of recurrent depressions of trade. Labourers, poorer artisans and street sellers. This irregularity of employment may show itself in the week or in the year: stevedores and waterside porters may secure only one of two days’ work in a week, whereas labourers in the building trades may get only eight or nine months in a year.
D Small regular earnings. poor, regular earnings. Factory, dock, and warehouse labourers, carmen, messengers and porters. Of the whole section none can be said to rise above poverty, nor are many to be classed as very poor. As a general rule they have a hard struggle to make ends meet, but they are, as a body, decent steady men, paying their way and bringing up their children respectably.
E Regular standard earnings, 22s to 30s per week for regular work, fairly comfortable. As a rule the wives do not work, but the children do: the boys commonly following the father, the girls taking local trades or going out to service.
F Higher class labour and the best paid of the artisans. Earnings exceed 30s per week. Foremen are included, city warehousemen of the better class and first hand lightermen; they are usually paid for responsibility and are men of good character and much intelligence.
G Lower middle class. Shopkeepers and small employers, clerks and subordinate professional men. A hardworking sober, energetic class.
H Upper middle class, servant keeping class.

So we now know Blackwall Buildings was “Mixed, some comfortable, others poor” and Booth says it was owned by the Blackwall Railway.

As for the actual builder, then all signs point to Mark Gentry from Castle Heddingham, He had a depot in Stratford and built many similar philanthropic flats. There is no first hand proof of this, but it is highly likely from the style of the Buildings.

Map reproduced courtesy of David Wayne Thomas, University of Notre Dame