Guide to the Stepney Union Casebooks
What are the Stepney Union Casebooks?
The Stepney Union Casebooks are a record of over 1,000 persons who received assistance from the Stepney Poor Union in the year to 30 April 1889. They were transcribed by researchers employed by Charles Booth, to provide data for his Inquiry into the causes of poverty in London.
They are available to search, without charge, on the London School of Economics website:
https://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/stepney-union-casebooks
The Pauperisation Codes
These handwritten documents are not too difficult to read but, because they were compiled in order to extract statistical data about the persons concerned, Booth and his researchers created a coding system. This appears at the front of Volume A (BOOTH/B/162). It’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with these, or keep them to hand when searching the records. A transcription of the Pauperisation Codes appears on page 3 of this guide.
Navigating the record set
Navigating the records is straightforward but I found it very time consuming trying to locate a particular record, so I have created a step-by-step guide (pp.4-8), and index of the categories within each volume (p. 9) and a complete index of every case in all seven volumes, including the digital page numbers, which you can find on pp.10-39.
I hope you find this guide helpful. You will appreciate that it has taken a considerable amount of time to compile the index: if you find it useful, a voluntary donation can be made via this payment link. https://www.pcsgenealogy.com/_paylink/AZ50Dx5X
Thank you.