This might seem like an obvious statement to make, but
it does have particular relevance to any discussion of London maps. Maps have long been used to illustrate social issues and conditions, whether in the 17th century or today. Living conditions in London before about 1870 were so awful that at any one time the death rate seems to have been higher than the birth rate. It was only immigration from the
countryside and from abroad that enabled London to survive.
There are several maps in the exhibition that suggest why this was so, such as a survey of their
London properties commissioned by the Clothworkers Company in 1612,
showing gross overcrowding with privies above the Fleet River, which
was already called 'Fleet Ditch' at the time, and a map from the 1850s
showing domestic housing surrounded by a gas works, a vast wooden shack
used to store tar and kerosene, a factory with 26 horse-power machines
driving grinding stones that operated 24 hours a day, and a canal full
of stagnant water. A map of 1866 also illustrates how the outbreak of
cholera in that year was caused by infested water supplied from the Old
Ford reservoir in the East End.
It was
only immigration from outside London that enabled its population to
quadruple between 1550 and 1650 and to increase six-fold between 1800
and 1900. Maps sponsored by the Liverpool industrialist Charles Booth
from 1889 show that 60% of the population of some of the outer suburbs
had been born outside London, while another map shows that about 18% of
the population of Stepney in 1900 were Jewish immigrants from Poland
and Russia. Booth's Poverty Map also attempted to illustrate some of these crucial social issues.
Immigration continues to be vital for London to replace
those who move out. The figures for the built-up area of London alone
mask the continuing increase in population which is best seen if the
population of the satellite towns beyond the Green Belt - in effect the
outermost London suburbs - is added. Their relationship to London can
be seen in a map accompanying the Abercrombie Plan of 1944, which is
also on display in the exhibition. More recently, in 2005, The Guardian newspaper commissioned a series of maps illustrating migration into the capital at the start of the 21st century.
