Human Rights Maps (98): Poverty in Late 19th Century London, and the Link to Crime

London poverty map, late 19th century

(source, source, click image to enlarge, more about these maps here, here and here)

What’s interesting about these maps is not that it tells us a lot about poverty (except perhaps that there is less wealth segregation than is normally expected), but that at the time, poverty was explicitly linked to crime (the lowest classes are “semi-criminal”). And that link is something we regularly discuss on this blog (see here, here and here for instance). We think that things aren’t as clear cut as many, including the authors of this map, want us to believe.

More maps on poverty are here. More maps about human rights in general are here.