LONDON
— In London if you were unlucky enough to belong to the “lowest class,
vicious
and semi-criminal,” your street appeared on the map in black. Dark blue
meant
that you were “very poor,” and pale blue “poor.” Purple suggested that
you lived
on a more respectable “mixed” street, while pink was “comfortable” and
red
“well-to-do.” Best of all was for your street to be colored yellow for
“wealthy.” This
simple color-coding system translated a labyrinth of sociological and
economic
research into something that everyone could understand. It was devised
for
Booth’s Poverty Map, a series of maps made from 1886 to 1903 by a
British
philanthropist, Charles Booth, which showed the relative wealth — or
otherwise —
of the occupants of every street in London.