{"id":807442,"date":"2026-10-19T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T10:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807442\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T10:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T10:00:10","slug":"blue-for-poor-yellow-for-posh-the-london-maps-exposing-centuries-of-terrible-housing-exhibitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807442\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue for poor, yellow for posh: the London maps exposing centuries of terrible housing | Exhibitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Booth\u2019s pioneering poverty maps<\/a> of Victorian London show a vivid colour-coded warren of streets, alleyways and slums tightly packed together. Those marked black and dark blue were classed as being \u201cvery poor\u201d, defined by \u201cchronic want\u201d. The light blue ones were poor \u2013 \u201c18s to 21s a week for a moderate family\u201d. Pink streets housed those who were \u201cfairly comfortable\u201d, and those where the wealthy lived were marked in yellow.<\/p>\n

The maps by the British social reformer are the 19th-century equivalent of the modern-day indices of deprivation<\/a>, which rank every geographic area of the UK by its level of social and economic disadvantage. Comparing the two shows how much has changed in the past 150 years \u2013 but also what hasn\u2019t. Historical slums have been cleared away and housing conditions have generally improved, but extreme poverty and extreme wealth continue to live side by side in the capital.<\/p>\n

Booth\u2019s maps form the backbone of a new exhibition at Senate House library titled A Place to Call Home<\/a>, which charts the history of housing and poverty in London over the past 200 years. \u201cWe may not have the same sort of slums that we used to in Victorian times but there are still issues with living conditions for many people living in rented accommodation,\u201d says academic librarian and curator Mura Ghosh. \u201cThese issues are on a continuum \u2013 continuity and change underline the whole thinking behind this exhibition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The\u2018There will still be things people find relatable\u2019 \u2026 the \u2018crawlers\u2019 of St Giles workhouse, from Street Life in London by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith, 1877. Photograph: Courtesy of Senate House Library, University of London<\/p>\n

A collaboration between the University of London<\/a> and the London School of Economics (LSE), the exhibition looks at the turbulent timeline of housing over the past two centuries, including wartime and postwar redevelopment, the building of estates and changing housing policy, as well as eviction and squatting. People will be able to view Booth\u2019s maps alongside a laptop displaying the current indices of deprivation, so they can see how conditions in their own postcode have changed over time.<\/p>\n

The curators have also picked out individual stories from Booth\u2019s notebooks detailing interviews he conducted with ordinary working Londoners, such as a chorus girl working at Drury Lane theatre who talked about how much her tights cost. \u201cWe wanted to bring out these stories of individual lives in London because that\u2019s what people can empathise with and feel connected to. They\u2019re talking about a city 140 years ago, but there will still be things people find relatable,\u201d says LSE curator Indy Bhullar.<\/p>\n

Some of the earliest examples of collective tenant resistance \u2026 a 1936 handmade issue of the Hampstead Tenant. Photograph: Courtesy of Senate House library, University of London<\/p>\n

One of the exhibition\u2019s rarest objects is a set of pamphlets from the Hampstead Tenants\u2019 Defence League from 1936-39. Some of the earliest examples of collective tenant resistance, they document protests, rent strikes, opposition to slum clearances and challenges to the local council. \u201cIt\u2019s quite a unique piece of history, and also utterly unexpected to find in an academic library,\u201d says Ghosh. \u201cThey\u2019re beautifully illustrated, and constructed from homemade paper and staples.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibition shows how the burgeoning collective resistance movement solidified over the subsequent decades. There\u2019s a 1974 squatters\u2019 handbook with practical and legal advice on how to squat, including how to change the locks, do your own plumbing and resist bailiffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cCollective action, rent strikes and protests, and encouraging people not to feel hopeless about the future \u2013 that\u2019s an important message because people often feel like they\u2019re alone in their housing situation,\u201d says Emily Chu, a fellow curator and academic librarian at Senate House library. \u201cThe exhibition shows that working together sometimes creates a much bigger impact and a louder voice the government can hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving towards the present day, there will be audio recordings of interviews with people from St Mungo\u2019s who have experienced homelessness, and discussion of how high rents and poor housing conditions persist into the present day. About 27% of Londoners live in relative poverty after housing costs are factored in<\/a>, the highest rate in England, with high rent and housing expenses the primary driver of poverty in the region. London has disproportionately high rates of damp and mould in social housing compared with other English regions \u2013 eight of the 10 local authorities in England receiving the highest volume of complaints are in the capital.<\/p>\n

The curators hope visitors will share their own experiences of this on the comment wall. They also call for groups who are campaigning on housing issues today to keep and donate their materials so the history of housing action can be continued.<\/p>\n

A Place to Call Home: Poverty and Housing in London is at Senate House library, London<\/a>, 23 October to 5 March 2027<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Booth\u2019s pioneering poverty maps of Victorian London show a vivid colour-coded warren of streets, alleyways and slums…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-807442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}