My Poverty Line Website

[ASY]

Hi

I have replaced my old poverty line website and completely rebuilt and launching a brand new Poverty Line website!

https://sites.google.com/view/birmingham1889/home

The new design offers a much better and easier way to search for your ancestors by name and street. My data base has records for over 12,000 households, 67,000 individuals and 112 streets taken from the 1881 census records.

The website should now be more user friendly and makes it easier for you to search by name or by house. I will add more streets and families over the coming years. In the methodology section, you will also find a page showing weekly salary income in shillings for over 900 Trades.

Currently my data shows that among the 12,000 households, 39.3% were in Poverty and 44.8% were very Poor.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the new site!

Cheers

Andy

 

[Morturn]

Thanks Andy, I will take a look later

 

[Astoness]

yes and i will andy

lyn

 

[brummy-lad]

Excellent work Andy, the time, research and dedication you must have put into creating this website is incredible.

 

[ASY]

Excellent work Andy, the time, research and dedication you must have put into creating this website is incredible.

Thank you, its taken a few years to make but thoroughly enjoyable. Not sure if you have seen by blog, I post on various streets, using my data and research into various families and their occupations.

Birmingham 1889 Journal Blog | "1880s Birmingham Research"

“Explore the Birmingham 1889 Journal Blog for a detailed study of the occupations and lives of citizens from 1839 to 1900. Delve into our methodology, including income and expenditure calculations, to understand the cost of living and poverty line classification across Birmingham's streets and...

birmingham1889.wixsite.com

Cheers Andy

 

[ASY]

Finally completed my poverty line mapping for the 12000 households in the St George District. The map is building a picture and shows just how many families were living in Poverty in the 1880's. I have also shown a few examples and explanation of how to use the three new Poverty Line Group pages on my website, which allow you to explore the data in depth:

link to blog post:
https://birmingham1889.wixsite.com/.../completed-poverty...

I have also uploaded a much higher res image and cropped so you can zoom into the streets and see more clearly.
link https://photos.app.goo.gl/Y2B4CtVr5b4hvEQq7



Now onto phase two proceeded to phase two and the next 12,000!!

#birminghamhistory #boothpovertymap #birminghamancestry #birmingham #ancestors #ancestry #GenealogyResearch #aston #19thcentury

 

[Morturn]

Thanks Andy, super stuff and food for thought.

I recently had some help off some forum members tracing a few of my ancestors who lived and worked in Birmingham. One of my 3xgranfathers was a cabinet maker, who lived his whole life in back to back housing. He died while at work aged 80+.

This does make me think if he spent a whole life in poverty even as a skilled tradesman

 

[Richard Dye]

Thanks Andy, super stuff and food for thought.

I recently had some help off some forum members tracing a few of my ancestors who lived and worked in Birmingham. One of my 3xgranfathers was a cabinet maker, who lived his whole life in back to back housing. He died while at work aged 80+.

This does make me think if he spent a whole life in poverty even as a skilled tradesman

Reading through this, Mort you make an excellent point that your 3Xgrandfather lived in poverty as a skilled tradesman. That is a question that should be asked? I believe it's in some part lack of any guidance and people wanting to keep people in their place.
Over time the poverty level does not seem to have changed much, problem is in the definition. For example, today we have folks with $600 mobile phones at the poverty line. Not sure where we go with this other than many of the changes are still the same.

 

[ASY]

Thanks Andy, super stuff and food for thought.

I recently had some help off some forum members tracing a few of my ancestors who lived and worked in Birmingham. One of my 3xgranfathers was a cabinet maker, who lived his whole life in back to back housing. He died while at work aged 80+.

This does make me think if he spent a whole life in poverty even as a skilled tradesman

Strewth life was certainly not easy. Somebody on facebook sent me a 2022 map showing Birmingham's neighbourhoods by income deprivation that shows 30% are still more deprived.

Similar to me, I can trace back to 1730s, where my 6th great-grandfather children went in two different paths. My side unfortunately the generations got gradually poorer and poorer. My 2nd GG is where this poverty line work interest started, I do find it fascinating and and feel a connection (strangely as so long ago) even to the families when I do my blogs I have real empathy and a connection

 

[ASY]

Reading through this, Mort you make an excellent point that your 3Xgrandfather lived in poverty as a skilled tradesman. That is a question that should be asked? I believe it's in some part lack of any guidance and people wanting to keep people in their place.
Over time the poverty level does not seem to have changed much, problem is in the definition. For example, today we have folks with $600 mobile phones at the poverty line. Not sure where we go with this other than many of the changes are still the same.

I agree Richard, individuals don't choose to live in Poverty. Again and again the families I research into the story is the same, where they lived was where the work was. One of my blogs was the Councillor who complained that the poorer classes were in the position that they were in because of the laziness and always being drunk. It transpired he owned several properties and was recorded as one of the worst landlords with his tenants having to live in complete squalor. As for being drunk, with the building of so many pubs and the occupations being mainly manual labouring, you would find it very difficult not to call in for a pint or two after such hard days work in those days.

I think the parallels today are similar maybe not to the same extent maybe but division and wealth of the few is getting wider and wider

 

[Richard Dye]

I agree Richard, individuals don't choose to live in Poverty. Again and again the families I research into the story is the same, where they lived was where the work was. One of my blogs was the Councillor who complained that the poorer classes were in the position that they were in because of the laziness and always being drunk. It transpired he owned several properties and was recorded as one of the worst landlords with his tenants having to live in complete squalor. As for being drunk, with the building of so many pubs and the occupations being mainly manual labouring, you would find it very difficult not to call in for a pint or two after such hard days work in those days.

I think the parallels today are similar maybe not to the same extent maybe but division and wealth of the few is getting wider and wider

I can agree in part but your last sentence skews the information! That division has and always be there, it is who and what is in the mix and where the so called poverty line is. Certainly over time with varying ideologies the rich has always got richer and the poorer poorer (what is the base line). Statistically, we are looking at a bell curve that is scewed and has always been. Looking back overtime the shape of the curve has not varied much. We can huff and puff but the data tells it all. We need to find a way to shift the base line for poverty because there is no “silver bullet” to fix this!