Orford, S., D. Dorling, et al. (2002). "Life and death of the people of London: a historical GIS of Charles Booth's inquiry " Health and Place 8(1): 23-35.
This article provides an interesting methodological contribution to studying community, through comparing historical and contemporary methods and insights of neighbourhood studies. The article explores the contemporary relevance of social reformer Charles Booth's detailed survey of the social and economic conditions of the people of London in the late 19th century, particularly his innovative detailed maps of social class of inner London. For this research, Booth's maps have been digitised, georeferenced and linked to contemporary ward boundaries, allowing Booth's measurement of social class to be matched to the measurement of social class in the 1991 UK census and standardised mortality ratios derived for all causes of death in the survey area between 1991 and 1995. Based on the social class data, the researchers derived an index of relative poverty for both time periods and compared the geographies of relative poverty and their relationship with contemporary mortality. The article concludes that despite a century of change and an increase in the overall standard of living, relatively little has changed in the spatial patterns of poverty of inner London.