Poverty : a study of town life / by B. Seebohm Rowntree.

  • Seebohm Rowntree
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Poverty : a study of town life / by B. Seebohm Rowntree. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    40/490 page 14
    CHAP. The investigation did not extend to the servant- keeping class, and necessarily did not include domestic servants living away from their homes.1 * Indeed the keeping or not keeping of domestic servants has in this inquiry been taken as marking the division between the working classes and those of a higher social scale. Method of Conducting Inquiry Some of my information was supplied by volun- tary workers, “ district visitors,7’ clergymen, and others. Many of the facts thus obtained have been valuable, especially as the details given were often of such a character as could only be supplied by those who were intimately acquainted with the families reported upon. I soon found, however, that the inquiry could not cover the whole of the city if it were dependent on voluntary workers only. The bulk of the information has therefore been obtained through an investigator who went systematically from house to house. His work involved the paying of many thousands of visits, and required no small amount of discernment and tact. He found that the people, with few exceptions, were willing to supply the information sought. In some cases there was a disposition to give incorrect information, but ex- perience soon enabled him to distinguish between 1 An estimate of the number of domestic servants in York is given at p. 26.
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