CHARLES BOOTH The Man, the Maps and the Metropolis At the Guinness Vaults with Sarah Wise  on Sunday 12th July 2026 at 3:00 pm When social scientist Charles Booth compiled his famous ‘Poverty Map’ in the late 1880s, he was attempting to chart the everyday life of London’s 5.5 million citizens. With revolution in the air, this captain of industry was keen to know why capitalism was simply not delivering for over one-third of Londoners. His extraordinary ‘Poverty Map’ shows the income and social class of London’s inhabitants by colour-coding each street to indicate the income level of its residents ranging from the lowest classes indicated by black to the upper-middle and upper classes indicated by yellow. Sarah Wise discusses his work and findings about working-class lives and shows how the map provides invaluable insights into the social composition of late Victorian London. Tickets £12.50 each or £30 for a day pass to Mapping Lost London. Please click here to purchase. Sarah Wise Sarah Wise is an assistant professor at the University of California’s London Study Centre and teaches at City Lit. She is the author of four books of social history, including The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum (Jonathan Cape). Her latest, The Undesirables, The Law That Locked Away a Generation, was published last year.