B. Abrahart
Henry Mayhew, a neglected pioneer of urban studies and the social sciences, was also a relentless classifier with powerful geographical insights and outlooks. His writings attempted to encapsulate the living conditions and the plight of the poor in Victorian England. However, he also experimented with what were considered to be advanced cartographic and diagrammatic visualization techniques, in which applied statistics were used to depict national spatial data distributions and regional spatial data relationships. The appendix to his fourth and final volume on 'London Labour and the London poor', contained numerous maps and tables, in which he integrated demographic and social datasets that originated from two main independent sources:
[1] the decennial censuses of 1841 and 1851; and [2] annual returns made to the Register-General of England and Wales for the period 1841-1851. His original choropleth boundaries and statistical tabulations have been replicated in a modern digital environment and in stringent efforts to develop the best possible reproduction a detailed inspection of the published material has been carried out. This paper will highlight and discuss some interesting anomalies and blunders that were detected and comment on the nature of cartographic inclusions with respect to popular printed publications in Victorian England.
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