Social Change in Tower Hamlets … 100 years since Charles Booth

2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of social reformer Charles Booth. Booth is best known for his prominent 1889 survey of poverty in East London, ‘Life and Labour of the People’. This exhibition explores what has changed in East London since Booth’s day through modern day photographs and social investigations.

Booth had strong links with East London, which was the first part of the city that he surveyed and Oxford House was one of the venues he selected for displaying his poverty map of East London. The work of Oxford House was directly relevant to Booth’s concerns with poverty.

It was established in 1884 as a “settlement house” where students and graduates from Keble College (Oxford University) undertook a period of residential volunteering to learn first-hand about the realities of urban poverty. Volunteers provided practical support to alleviate or remove the impact of poverty by creating projects such as youth clubs, poor man’s lawyer, labour exchanges and adult education classes.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Oxford House, the New Policy Institute and photographer Keith Greenough. All profits from the sale of prints and donations at this exhibition will go to Oxford House to help fund the restoration of its historic building.