A few days ago I was asked an interesting question, which made me think long and hard. The question was a simple one, to name some of my favourite websites.
Perhaps like many apparently simple questions, this is one of those that can be very revealing, and much more interesting than at first glance.
And perhaps typically, I have only just realised that I omitted to include what I think of as a very important website.
Important for all sorts of reasons, but perhaps the key reason is one of those aspects of the Internet which make it so interesting and important.
Because this particular website, in my own case, is particularly helpful in understanding something of the origins and circumstances of family members, particularly from the Victorian period.
The website is William Booth's poverty map of the east end of London.
This map was put together by the man that went on to found the salvation army, and throughout his life he threw much attention on the issues caused by poverty in the east end of London in particular.
I was born and brought up in the east end of London, which I suppose in American terms might have been described as downtown London.
Throughout English history, the East end has been an important factor in the wealth of London, and has certainly played an important part in the wealth of what was once the British Empire.
This is perhaps for one particular reason, and that is the fact that it is the location for the London docks.
These docks were once at the heart of this trading nation, where ships from all over the world would bring their wealth and produce. And where there was always a willing workforce to undertake any aspect of those trades which contributed to the wealth of the united kingdom.
For it was always to the slums of the East end that immigrants to this thriving metropolis came perhaps for the first start in making a new life for themselves, in one of the largest cities in the world.
My father was a stevedore in those London docks, and I lived most of my early life within a stone's throw of where my father worked almost his entire working life.
In modern London, dockland is a place where much modern development has taken place, creating part of the new infrastructure from which the city makes much of its money.
Many gigantic multi-storey buildings have been constructed perhaps where once stood the dockside places that received and stored the produce of the world.
Many of those warehouses have been converted to loft apartments which are some of the most expensive places to live in London today, often boasting wonderful views of the River Thames and located centrally in what has been reborn from its grimy working past.
The poverty maps of London were created by a small army of Christian evangelists keen to do something to challenge the problems created by this poor and disadvantaged environment, in which so many people grew up.
So many communities of refugees have made this part of London their first home, such as Huguenots fleeing Catholic persecution in the 18th century from Holland, through to in more modern times Bengali and Indian immigrants from the former Empire.
Much of the east end was for many years the place where Jewish communities, so often persecuted even in England, found sufficient toleration for a thriving cloth and tailoring community to be founded, along with so much of the cultural associations of that diverse community.
The importance of the poverty maps is the way in which it can give an extraordinary insight into the living conditions of relatives that in my case so often grew up in the heart of this community. Shoreditch is where so many of my ancestors grew up, and as I have researched my family tree, like so many people these days with the help of the Internet and online databases that can give access to Census information which in this country is available from 1841, which so often provides an address.
The poverty maps can provide an extraordinary insight into the wealth or otherwise of individual streets, and a clear indication of the social status of the people living in particular houses in particular streets.
In most cases, my family roots lie in the middle strata of the poorer classes living and working in London in the 19th century, rather than the criminally poor whose location is identified so clearly in the poverty maps.
So often the trade pursued by parents stretches back to their parents and so forth, so that my stevedore father had as a father a merchant seaman.
Genealogy is perhaps one of the luxuries that we can appreciate in the modern world where we have more leisure to spend than most of our predecessors.
It is though one of those most valuable of pursuits, which can give some sense of perspective on the modern lives that we lead.
It is unfortunate that I totally forgot this important website in my list of websites, as it really is an important insight into the person that I am, the person that I have become thanks to the innumerable antecedents on whose shoulders I stand.
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