

He entered the skins and leather business with his elder brother Alfred, and they set up Alfred Booth and Company with offices in Liverpool and New York City using a £20,000 inheritance.


Career īooth's father died in 1860, leaving him in control of the family company. His eldest daughter Antonia married the Hon Sir Malcolm Macnaghten, and others married into the Ritchie and Gore Browne families. Mary and Booth in total had 7 children, 3 sons, and 4 daughters. Also, Mary was an advisor to Booth in his business affairs and played an active role in contributing to Booth's survey on London life and labor. Mary had a reputation for being well-educated and intelligent. The niece of the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, she was a cousin of the Fabian socialist and author, Beatrice Webb. Then on April 19, 1871, Charles Booth married Mary Macaulay, and the couple settled in London. īooth became alienated from the dominant, nonconformist business class of Liverpool into which he had been born. He joined his brother, Alfred Booth, in the leather trade in 1862 and they subsequently established a successful shipping firm together, and Charles remained actively involved with it until his retirement in 1912. He attended the Royal Institution School in Liverpool before being apprenticed in the family business at the age of sixteen. His father was a wealthy shipowner and corn merchant as well as being a prominent Unitarian. Ĭharles Booth was born in Liverpool, Lancashire on 30 March 1840 to Charles Booth and Emily Fletcher. Due to his investigations on poverty, some honor Charles Booth as one of the founding fathers of social administration, and find his work critical when studying social policy. Booth is also recognized for influencing the transition from the Victorian Age to the 20th century. Life and Labour "discusses a range of social conditions in which it reported that it appeared people are likely to be poor or on the margins of poverty. īooth is best known for his multi-volume book, Life and Labour of the People in London (1902), which focuses on the statistics he collected regarding poverty in London. While Booth classified people by their source of income, Rowntree made distinctions through class and specifically categorized groups by their economic relationships. Both Booth and Rowntree were positivists however, many differences between Booth and Rowntree's methodology existed. Even though Rowntree's work draws upon Booth's investigation, many writers on poverty generally turn their attention towards Rowntree's because his concept clearly addressed the problem of defining a "subsistence" level of poverty. īooth is often compared to Seebohm Rowntree due to their concepts on poverty. In addition, his investigation would also demonstrate how poverty was influenced by religion, education, and administration.
#SOCIAL BOOTH FREE#
Booth's work, along with that of Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, influenced government policy regarding poverty in the early 20th century and helped initiate Old Age pensions and free school meals for the poorest children. He was captivated by Comte's idea that in the future, scientific industrialists would be in control of the social leadership instead of the church ministers. Charles James Booth (30 March 1840 – 23 November 1916) was a British shipowner, social researcher, Comtean positivist, and reformer, best known for his innovative philanthropic studies on working-class life in London towards the end of the 19th century.ĭuring the 1860s Booth became interested in the philosophy of Auguste Comte, the founder of modern sociology, and converted to his Religion of Humanity, affiliated with members of the London Positivist Society, and wrote positivist prayers.
