Why London wouldn't exist without mass immigration

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.

Comments

[Jack Kessler]

You make an interesting point. Societies, and cities, don't stand still. My virtual tour of Wapping and Bermondsey, just taken, offers a reminder: the tanneries and impoverished East London & wrong-side-of-the-river districts now have been dramatically replaced by what appear to be the latest word in lofts and townhouses -- at least so the GoogleEarth overlays of the maps indicate, as I click the icons on & off and view the yesterday/today contrasts -- some nice-looking decks and fancy gardens and boat tie-ups down there, now, where it used to be all dead industry and bombed-out docklands before.

I say "all": there were a few strong little surviving neighborhoods down there too, in the Docklands, most summarily displaced when the "trendies" began moving in. West End => East End "immigration"... But that's Progress, or at least Change... Or anyway it's different: and the maps do show such differences very well here.

[Exhibition displays]

By the way, the British Library is well worth a visit even without this exhibition - it has a wonderful collection of ancient books and documents on display.