... to finds work was to, beg, steal, prostitution or starve to death. The latter may seem some-what extreme, but many people at this time would have rather starved themselves to death, rather that go into the workhouses. The workhouses were extremely harsh and deliberately striped away any dignity or self-respect of whose who were desperate enough to enter them. Those who did lost their right to vote. The work of Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree was instrumental in illustrating the levels of poverty that existed in Britain prior to the creation of the welfare state. Booth was born in Liverpool, moved to London at the age of twenty-two to run the family ship-building business. He was deeply influenced by Auguste Comte's theory that scientific industrialists would eventually take over the social leadership from the church. Booth began his investigations into poverty in 1885. He questioned H.H. Hyndman's suggestion that 25% of ...

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