‘There is an innate desire in all men to view the earth and its cities and plains from exceeding high places’, wrote Henry Mayhew in the year Stanford’s Library Map was published.(footnote 1)

To satisfy his own desire Mayhew clambered into the cockpit of the Royal Nassau Balloon, and accompanied Charles Green, the intrepid aeronaut, on his 500th ascent. The gun was fired, the gas-bag was loosened, and the buoyant machine bounded like a vast ball into the air. London in no time was stretched out beneath them, suburban fields like green baize table covers, roadways like long narrow ribbons, the river resembling a metallic snake, bridges ‘positively like planks’, barges on it no bigger than summer insects on water.

The London that Mayhew looked down upon from a balloon in the sky, and that Stanford carefully recorded cartographically at ground level, was a town undergoing momentous changes. The census of the previous year had established that since 1851 its population had increased by 440,798 to almost three million. The metropolis was expanding physically in every direction devouring fields as far away as Hammersmith, Hampstead, Greenwich, and Wimbledon. New railways, underground as well as on the surface, were being constructed and new bridges, roads, churches, schools, and large hotels too. Millions of pounds were being spent on improving water supply and removing sewage. ‘The builder appears to be taking possession of every thoroughfare’, commented a contributor to the 1862 edition of the British Almanac Companion with justifiable concern, but behind all the hoardings ‘goodly buildings’ were rising, ‘fitfully’ indeed, but occasionally with surprising rapidity. The result might not resemble Baron Hausmann’s Paris, a capital city similarly convulsed in destruction and redevelopment. But Londoners need not fear. Haphazard London’s development might be, but in the end it would be various and equally picturesque.

1862 was the year of the International Exhibition . Now that Europe had a network of railways and steam communication with the Continent was certain and rapid, numbers well exceeding those for the Great Exhibition of 1851 were hoped for. The times were somewhat inauspicious though. In November 1861 the Prince Consort had suddenly died. America was now in the grip of fearful civil war. As a result of that war trade in the United Kingdom was depressed, particularly in Lancashire suffering the ‘cotton famine’. Even the International Exhibition building - long and low with disproportionately heavy domes at each corner - failed to excite people. Only 87,000 more visitors than in 1851 arrived and the congested capital had difficulty in transporting and accommodating them. Nevertheless the Exhibition did demonstrate in some measure the vitality of this imperial nation, whose capital was the largest city the world had ever seen. It is the capital in this moment in history that Stanford’s map encapsulates.

When Trelawny William Sunders, a young geographer from Plymouth, acquired a stationery business at 6 Charing Cross and turned it into a map shop, his choice of site was perfect. Four doors west of Northumberland House, it stood at the corner of Trafalgar Square facing Herbert Le Sueur’s equestrian statue of King Charles the Martyr, traditionally the point from which mileages from London were measured - the geographical centre of London. For a start it was in an area that attracted tourists. Nearby were the National Gallery and Railton’s Nelson Monument. Nearby too was the Strand, still one of London’s most fashionable shopping centres. Here stood the shops of several mapsellers, including Charles Smith at 172 and James Reynolds at 174. James Wyld, ‘Geographer to the Queen and Prince Albert’, who until recently had been profiting nicely from the demand for maps created by the Railway Mania, had his shop close by in Charing Cross East. To the south stretched Whitehall, lined with government offices all needing maps. And to the west Cockspur Street connected Pall Mall with Trafalgar Square and funnelled club-land customers and Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) through to Trelawny Saunders’ new map shop.

Saunders was an upright, scholarly man.(2) He had arrived in the metropolis at the age of eighteen to join the Bible house of Samuel Bagster & Sons, travelling as an ‘outside’ on a stagecoach and being nearly frozen to death when crossing Salisbury Plain in a snowstorm. He was associated with the Plymouth Brethren and his special interest was Biblical geography. He was a man of ideas, sometimes wild ideas. In 1848 he was joined by another talented young man, Edward Stanford.(3) Son of William and Ann Stanford, proprietors of a modest tailors and drapers establishment at 29, Holborn Hill, Edward had been educated at the City of London School but apprenticed at fourteen to a Malmsbury printer. When his master died and his indentures were cancelled, he became an assistant to Thomas H. Pettitt, a manufacturer of diaries and account books in Compton Street, Soho. Hardly had Stanford arrived at Saunders’ then he left to join Messrs. Wilson, Richard & Co., wholesale stationers in St. Martin’s Court. Evidently his commercial flair and expertise as a stationer were assets the less practical Saunders could ill afford to lose. Stanford was invited back and in 1852 made a partner. The firm was re-named ‘Saunders & Stanford’ but the partnership was short-lived. In 1853 it was dissolved by mutual consent and henceforth the business was continued by Stanford on his own account.(4) Trelawny Saunders, free now to pursue his ideas, wild and rational, campaigned vigorously for the establishment by the British Government of a settlement on the Gulf of Carpentaria to be called Port Flinders, organised the transfer of the RGS headquarters from Waterloo Place to 15 Whitehall Place where he served as Librarian and Map Curator,(5) and plunged himself into ambitious plans for setting up a new national educational establishment in the vale of Neath, South Wales, its object to be ‘the practical application of Science to Public Service.’

Stanford, meanwhile, was showing an especial interest in the mapmaking side of his newly acquired concern. He was elected a Fellow of the RGS in 1854, Saunders acting as sponsor. He acquired map plates from other firms - the copperplates for the London maps of Benjamin Rees Davies for example - and employed engravers in order to produce his own maps. His apprenticeship in printing was put to full use, printing presses being installed in premises at the back of the shop in Trinity Place. The business was also extended to include 7 and 8, and for a period, 16 Charing Cross. In c.1855 he came to an arrangement with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge to publish atlases and sheet maps from their steel plates but under their ‘superintendence’. He acquired plates and copyrights from the bankrupt firm of H. G. Collins. He also either borrowed or acquired plates from firms continuing in business such as J. H. Banks for the ‘Balloon View of London’ and A. E. Evans & Son for a redrawing of Faithorne and Newcourt’s multi-sheet map of the London of Oliver Cromwell.

The 1850s had seen a growth in the demand for universal knowledge and with it the establishment of a free public library system. Publishers were not slow to grasp the implications of the ‘Public Libraries Act, 1850’, and books designed with the public library user specifically in mind soon began to appear. For his part Edward Stanford embarked upon an ambitious cartographic project - a series of large copper-engraved wall maps of the continents which he called Stanford’s Library Maps. These were intended for the walls of libraries, private and public, and for use in offices and, no doubt, in schools too. Patronage was invited from ‘statesmen, merchants, and other important classes whose pursuits induce them to appreciate geographical works.’(6) To edit the series it was critical that someone who was a genuine geographer, not simply a stationer with geographical interests, should be involved. Fortunately for Stanford a disappointed Trelawny Saunders had just reappeared on the London scene, his grand educational scheme at Gnoll Castle in the Vale of Neath, despite much influential support, having ended in disaster. Stanford offered the job of organising a geographic department in the business to Saunders who gladly accepted it. The responsibility for editing the Library Maps thus became his. The continental maps were ‘constructed’ by Dr A. K. Johnston in Edinburgh. The task of engraving them was assigned to the firm of W. & A. K. Johnston.

The first of the series, Stanford’s Library Map of Europe, appeared in 1858. It was well received. The Athenaeum’s reviewer lyrically described it as ‘a work of science as to drawing and correctness: a work of art as to clearness and beauty.’(7) Europe was followed by Australasia in 1864, Asia in 1862, North America in 1863, South America in 1864, and England and Wales in 1882. The Library Maps were described in the Geographical Journal as ‘the finest series of maps published in this country since the grand series of wall maps produced by Aaron Arrowsmith at the close of the eighteenth century.’

By mid-century there was a crying need for a new large-scale map of London and Stanford was aware of it. In the 1940s his most prominent rival, James Wyld MP, had entertained the idea of producing a new edition of Richard Horwood’s 40-sheet map, originally published in 1792-99, the copperplates for which had been acquired by his father from William Faden. Wyld had the City area revised, and at least one sheet beyond. With the collapse of railway speculation in 1846, however, he was left with heavy claims against unsuccessful railway companies and far less capital. By 1850 he had become preoccupied with constructing a Monster Globe in Leicester Square, and thenceforth he concentrated on producing instant maps of military engagements in far-off places.

Two large commercial maps of London were available to the public. A new edition of Greenwood’s survey (scale 8 inches: 1 mile), originally published in 1827, was issued by Charles Smith in 1856, and a new edition of Cruchley’s New Plan of London and its Environs (scale 5 inches: 1 mile), originally published in 1828, was issued by G. F. Cruchley in 1851. Both maps had been unevenly revised and Smith’s in particular was very unreliable. As regards non-commercial maps there was, of course, the Ordnance Survey. Campaigned for in 1842 by the Metropolitan Improvement Society,(8) the survey was finally carried out by sappers and miners for the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers in 1848 to the consternation of the citizens who associated their presence and activities in the streets with the threatened French invasion.(9) The map was engraved on the 5-foot, 12-inch, and 6-inch scales. Its great limitation was that it was only a skeleton survey. Street outlines, benchmarks, and the position of military establishments at Woolwich were shown but almost nothing else.

In 1855 the Metropolitan Board of Works was created, the forerunner of the London County Council. Its chief functions were to create a general system of sewers, and to widen highways and improve communication generally between one part of London and another. A reliable, detailed, large-scale map of the capital now became imperative. In March 1856 the Board moved ‘that a map of the whole area within the jurisdiction of the Board be provided, defining the boundaries of the various vestries and district boards.’ The Works and improvements Committee were instructed to consider and report upon the best means of providing such a map.(10) Proposals for the new map were sent in by several commercial map-makers including James Wyld who promised to adapt his large ‘London and its Environs’ map for the purpose, and Messrs. Day & Son who were prepared to produce a new six-inch scale map, ‘the most perfect ever issued.’(11) A sample section of a six-inch map, which looked peculiarly like the Skeleton Survey, was submitted by Colonel Sir Henry James of the Ordnance Survey. Day’s proposals were recommended to the Board but were not taken up.(12)

It was at this point that Stanford resolved to embark upon a large London map and to include it in his Library Maps series. The formidable task of designing the plan and superintending its construction was assigned to Trelawny Saunders who set about engaging a team of surveyors and despatching it to various parts of London. The information which they brought back was painstakingly transferred to the 26" x 38" sheets of the 12-inch Skeleton Survey. Further data were culled from a variety of manuscript and printed sources and this too was laid down on the 12-inch sheets. A prospectus with a key map indicating the division into sheets and the map’s adaptability for a whole range of administrative purposes was made available to potential customers. The compilers looked forward to completing and publishing their twenty-four sheet survey - a great landmark in the story of British cartography - in the year of the International Exhibition, 1862.

It must have been with considerable consternation that Edward Stanford and Trelawny Saunders now learned that another large-scale survey was being prepared, and that its publishers were proposing, not to sell it, but to give it away. This was to be the Weekly Dispatch map - ‘The Great Map of London’ - which regular subscribers to the Sunday newspaper would receive in parts. The first sheet of this London map made its appearance early in 1861, its publication being heralded by an advertisement placed in The Times:

SPLENDID MAP of LONDON, 27 feet square, gratis with the DISPATCH. - On Sunday January 6 will be issued GRATIS with the DISPATCH the first of nine double sheets, forming when complete the most perfect and useful MAP of LONDON ever published, and measuring 27 square feet, upon a scale of nearly 10 inches to the mile…(footnpote 13)

The map’s compiler was Edmund Weller, FRGS, a regular engraver of maps in the RGS Journal. As one of Weller’s sponsors when elected a Fellow of the RGS in 1851, and therefore most probably a friend or close acquaintance, it is likely that Saunders was aware of the rival map some while before its appearance. If so he and Stanford must have judged its imminent appearance as non-fatal, for work on the Library Map continued regardless. The data from the 12-inch skeleton maps were now reduced to the six-inch scale and transferred reversed, onto 24 steel plates. Next the plates were engraved, and finally the sheets were printed off. On 28 and 30 May 1862 its publication was announced in The Times:

NEW MAP of LONDON. - Now ready, STANFORD’S LIBRARY MAP of LONDON and its SUBURBS on the scale of 6 inches to a mile, constructed on the basis of the Ordnance Block Plan, thoroughly revised and completed from actual surveys specially undertaken for the purpose, with details of public buildings, parks, and various estates, from original documents. The map is engraved in the highest style of art on 24 steel plates, the size of each sheet is 15½ inches by 12 inside the border, and they are sold separately, or combined in any way to form maps of parishes, districts, or residential environs. The complete map measures 5ft. 2in by 6ft. inside the border, and is designed to form one of Stanford’s Library Maps. It is therefore well adapted for suspension and reference in public offices, libraries, and counting-houses, &c. Price:- Sheets, plain, one guinea; coloured, in a portfolio, one guinea and a half; mounted, in morocco case, or on rollers, varnished, £2.15s; on spring rollers, £5.5s; single sheets, plain, 1s; coloured, 1s. 6d. A prospectus with key map indicating the division into sheets, and its adaptability for various administrative purposes, may be had on application, or per post for one stamp. London. Edward Stanford. 6, Charing Cross.

Considering its significance and the cost and scale of the undertaking, Stanford’s new map attracted remarkably little attention. The Athenaeum, it is true, welcomed it briefly, commenting kindly on the quantity of detail and stoutly asserting, ‘This magnificent work of topography leaves nothing to be desired.’(14) Other references to the map though are difficult to find. The reason for this might perhaps be that Stanford chose not to promote it, the shortage of reviews signifying that no review copies were ever sent out. Certainly Stanford’s long advertisements give it scant attention, burying it amongst descriptions of postal district maps, small maps of the environs reduced from the Ordnance Survey, and handy maps for visitors to the International Exhibition. Perhaps by the time Stanford’s Library Map of London appeared Stanford’s saw it as primarily a tool for London’s administrators.

The quantity of administrative detail is indeed most impressive. The Metropolis Management Act of 1855, which brought the Metropolitan Board of Works into existence, had divided London into parishes and districts, each unit electing one or two members to represent it on the Board. By the employment of a five-colour system, Stanford distinguished between parishes electing one member and districts united for electing one member. Not all copies were coloured in this way. Completely uncoloured copies could be purchased; the original used for the present facsimile is an example of this. Other copies were coloured to the customer’s desires, to show the parish boundaries for instance, or poor law divisions, or rural deaneries. Still more copies were coloured to show parks, commons, enclosures, and cemeteries (green); railway stations (red); and omnibus routes (brown). A variety of symbols were used to indicate county boundaries, county court districts, the boundaries of the City of London and the parliamentary boroughs, postal districts and town delivery limits, police court districts and divisions, and registry districts and sub-districts.

Streets and sewers, as well as boundaries, were of particular concern to the M.B.W. administrators since the improvement of both was their responsibility. Stanford’s Library Map, only in the most general way, would have been useful to them, its scale being too small for adaptation for planning purposes or for showing subterranean detail. Evidence of the M.B.W.’s activities, nevertheless, can be seen in several places on the map. At Old Ford, where the High and Middle Level lines of Bazalgette’s Metropolitan Main Drainage system met, we see the embanked Northern Outfall Sewer passing above ground and over seven branches of the River Lea towards Abbey Mills where it was directed to Barking Creek. Careful examination of the map reveals several new streets either under construction or recently completed. Victoria Street had been finished back in 1851, yet numerous sites on either side of the street are still shown vacant. Linking London Docks with the Eastern Counties Railway terminus is a thoroughfare completed in 1862, Commercial Street. In Southwark a swathe of buildings has been cleared for the construction of Southwark Street to link London Bridge Station with Blackfriars Bridge Road. Of the M.B.W.’s most remarkable metropolitan improvement, the Victoria Embankment, incorporating a grand new street, the District Railway, and the Northern Low Level Sewer, there is as yet no sign.

The early 1860s was a period of feverish bridge building in the capital. Lambeth Bridge, opened in 1862, is shown connecting Horseferry Road, Westminster, and Church Street, Lambeth. Further east is Hungerford Suspension Bridge, in 1862 in course of being converted into a railway bridge for the South Eastern Railway Company, its chains being sent to Bristol for the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Continuing eastwards we come to Blackfriars Bridge, on the point of being rebuilt to the designs of J. Cubitt. Hard up against it is the proposed iron lattice girder bridge for the London, Chatham & Dover Railway Company.

Several new railways had recently been opened or were in course of construction. The Hampstead Junction Railway had been built in 1860. On 2 September 1861 two trains collided on it killing five people and maiming many others. The London & South Western Railway had been extended to a new terminus at Victoria in 1860. Its Grosvenor Hotel, ‘the most splendid of its class yet erected’ according to one contemporary, was still under construction. Connecting the London & South Western with the Great Western was the new West London Junction Railway, shown as built though in fact not opened until 1863. Meanwhile, the South Eastern Railway is shown extending itself from London Bridge towards its ultimate destination, Charing Cross. 4,580 working class people lost their homes to make way for it. St Thomas’s Hospital, by London Bridge Station, was demolished too, but on this edition of Stanford’s map it is still shown standing. Advancing from the Elephant & Castle Station in the south to the cleared site of the Fleet Prison on the north side of the Thames is the London, Chatham & Dover Railway. In due course this would connect up with the Metropolitan underground railway which by 1862 had been built from Paddington as far as Clerkenwell.

The new railways with their inelegant viaducts and ugly iron girder bridges involved considerable destruction and injured the appearances of extensive tracts of metropolis. In 1862 citizens learnt to their dismay that even the view of St Paul’s down Fleet Street would shortly be ruined by the construction across the foot of Ludgate Hill of a bridge by the London, Chatham & Dover Railway. Railway development, however, contributed to London’s growth and redistributed its population. The effects are to be seen on the Library Map. On sheet 2, for example, building grounds are shown at St John’s College Park, Dartmouth Park, and south of Hornsey Lane; on sheet 5 the area between Brondsbury Park and Paddington Cemetery is being developed; on sheet 6 a pasture field is laid out for buildings; and sheet 8 Victoria Park is surrounded by building plots. South of the river on sheet 14 the Park Estate building ground is shown at Battersea; the outline of new streets can be seen on the site of Vauxhall Gardens, closed to the public in 1859. The activities of a number of land societies, set up to enable members by acquiring land to qualify for parliamentary franchise, are also in evidence. The usual method of the societies was to build up estates and divide them into plots for sale to individuals whose political allegiance was thought to be unquestioned. Originally it was a predominantly Whig movement. Estates of the Conservative Land Society are to be seen on sheets 2 and 13 however.

London is not generally regarded as the greatest of Britain’s manufacturing towns though such precisely it is, and most emphatically this is what it was in the 1860s. Approximately 15% of the workers of England and Wales employed in manufacturing industries in 1861 were working in London, and almost 25% of those employed in the service industries. London was a tremendous agglomeration of economic power and much evidence of this can be found on Stanford’s map, particularly along the banks of the river and in the outskirts. Industry had long been established along the course of the River Wandle, which entered the Thames at Wandsworth and on the map we see printing and starch factories, paper mills, and flourmills. Along the Thames river front from Battersea to Lambeth we can see potteries, cement works, candle manufactories, distilleries, chemical works, saw mills, Letts’ timber yards, the Lion Brewery, and Maudsley & Co.’s engineering works. East of Southwark the industrial scene is dominated by the requirements of the port and of the shipping industry. Following the construction of the wet docks and the coming of the railways the East End became the great industrial centre. Along the Limehouse Cut, constructed in 1770 to provide alternative access west of the great loop of the Isle of Dogs, are to be seen chemical works, manure works, and bone factories - all noisome industries. Around the Isle of Dogs itself are trades associated with the shipbuilding industry such as rope factories, iron works, chain and anchor works, and mast houses. Four years after Stanford’s map was first published the great crash occurred in the East London shipbuilding industry from which it never recovered. In 1862 Scott Russell’s vast ship-yard, which recently had constructed Brunel’s Great Eastern, was still flourishing and is clearly shown on the map. The Metropolitan Nuisances Act of 1844 drove noxious trades out of London, and industry grew rapidly just to the east of the Lea in Essex. In Stratford, Old Ford, and West Ham we see colour factories, waterproof works, patent tanning factories, and glue works.

Besides showing London at work Stanford’s Library Map shows London at play. The 1860s was a period of great cricket with cricketing personalities larger than life. Thirteen of their cricket fields are shown, the main concentrations being around Lords, the Oval, and Belsize Park. Bathing and boating lakes for East Londoners are shown in Victoria Park. Within the Crystal Palace complex at Sydenham are roundabouts, a shooting gallery, a gymnasium, an archery ground, and a cricket field.

Normally the map compiler’s approach was practical and sternly objective, the information being conveyed with the clarity and consistency of an Ordnance plan. Just occasionally, however, the discipline called for was more than he could manage and quirky notes find their way onto the map. ‘Hackney Brook now filled up’ we are informed (sheet 8); ‘Old Ford Bridge; The Tide reaches thus far’ (sheet 18); ‘Hone Took’s house, died 1812’ (sheet 21); and ‘Here [at Streatham Park] Dr. Johnson visited Mr. & Mrs. Thrale 1766-1782’ (sheet 22).

What makes the Stanford Library Map especially valuable for today’s researcher is the quantity of detail it carries on buildings. Ground plans are supplied of the largest and best known; though the scale of the map is too small for this to be always helpful. The names of terraces are provided and sometimes the names of individual houses too (see the Wandsworth Road, Addison Road, and Lower Tulse Hill, for example). Terrace names rarely feature on even the 1:1056 sheets of the Ordnance Survey. Other buildings systematically inserted on the map and named where helpful include schools, post offices, churches, police stations, workhouses, almshouses, hospitals, and clubs. Statues and tollgates are pinpointed and identified.

Not until the year after the publication of Stanford’s Library Map did the Ordnance Survey receive the authority it needed to commence the filling in of the Skeleton sheets and not until 1871 was that survey completed. For a while therefore the Stanford and Weekly Dispatch maps were the most detailed maps of the capital available to the public. And even when the last of the Ordnance Survey sheets, drawn to the scale of five feet and twenty-five inches to the mile, had been published in 1880, the need for a map such as Stanford’s remained. In the first place it was a convenient size and available in a selection of convenient forms - as 24 sheets in a portfolio, or as four sheets in a dummy book slip-case, or as one sheet mounted on a roller. In the second place it was subjected by its publisher to almost continuous revision - we know of editions for c.1863, 1865, c.1866, 1868, c 1871, 1874, c.1875, 1876, 1877, 1888, 1891, c.1894, c.1897, and 1901.(15) The Ordnance sheets were revised only on one occasion in the 19th century, in 1894-96.

What the user of the later editions of Stanford’s map in each case needs to know is how thorough the action revision was. The Library Map covered an area of 120 square miles and in very great detail, and the cost of attempting to keep it up to date was very considerable. Stanford’s estimate of the cost involved in employing a surveyor and staff to keep the map abreast of development in 1891 was £500 per annum.(16) The map was certainly overhauled as large-scale Ordnance sheets were published, new developments being added and street name errors, inherited from the skeleton sheets, now being put right.(17) In several cases the extent of revision can be demonstrated to be related to guaranteed demand. The School Board of London was one of Stanford’s best customers. In 1877 it ordered 200 maps showing the sites of all schools and the School Board divisions(18) and Stanford supplied what were, in effect, Library Maps overprinted. More maps were demanded in 1881,(19) and more again in 1885. The Board, however, finding Stanford’s base-map information ‘practically useless’ for its exacting requirements, contacted Stanford’s rival, George Washington Bacon, the present owner of the Weekly Dispatch map plates.(20) Irked by his rival’s threatened involvement in the project, Stanford agreed to radically update the steel plates of his Library Map, promising that, provided the Board ordered 100 or more copies at 26s. per copy, the entire sum would be spent on revision. To this proposal the Board readily agreed, and 100 copies were promptly ordered. When stocks of the 1886 edition were exhausted in 1891 the Board wrote to the new London County Council suggesting that the two institutions should prevail upon Stanford to revise the Library Map annually.(21) In the subsequent negotiations one suggestion considered was that both bodies should contribute £100 a year towards revision expenses.(22) In the event Stanford undertook again to spend all the money received from the Board on making further additions.(23)

As a direct result of the School Board’s requirement and demands the most reliable later editions of the map can be said to be those issued in 1886 and 1891. The Library Map was still being listed and described at length in Stanford’s catalogue in 1912 - 50 years after it had been originally published - where it was described as ‘the standard map adopted by the London County Council’(24) The steel plates survived until World War II and they were disposed of as scrap metal, Stanford’s public-spirited contribution to the war effort.

Hardly had Stanford published his map than he became aware of a demand for maps and on the same scale but covering larger or smaller areas. In 1864 he published a version with the title, Central Part Stanford’s Library Map of London which only reached as far north as Islington and as far south as Stockwell.(25) It measured 35½" x 61½" and sold, whether in a case or on a roller, for 25s.

Larger versions of the map were created on occasions by adding sections of the six-inch Ordnance Survey to it. A copy of Stanford’s Library Map in the Public Record Office has an additional twelve inches of map attached to the left of it for example. In the 1912 catalogue the publishers informed the public that they could supply additional sheets to cover the whole of the London County Council area. Measuring 78" x 102", it could be purchased mounted on rollers and vanished for £5.5s. or mounted on a roller for £10.

The publication of the first edition of Stanford’s Library Map in 1862 coincided with the beginning of a new Railway Mania affecting the London area. Each year until the end of the century Edward Stanford would produce a map showing the plans deposited by the companies at the Private Bill Office in November for consideration in the following parliamentary session. In some years post- as well as pre-sessional maps were published. In 1863 a record fifty-five new railway schemes were proposed, and Stanford produced, in addition to his usual one-sheet map, a special edition of the Library Map with all the suggested railways overprinted in red.(26) Accompanying the map was a sheet of statistics giving the number of each in the Private Bill Office list, the name of each scheme, the engineer, the number of lines and branches, and the total length. That this map was intended not only for parliamentary committees and the Metropolitan Board of Works (M.B.W.), but also for anxious citizens wanting to know what threat there might be to their property, is shown by the fact that Stanford advertised each of the twenty-four individual sheets in The Times.(footnote 27)

Stanford was not the man to miss a commercial opportunity. Two one-inch geological maps of the London area had been prepared by the Geological Survey, a ‘solid’ map in 1873, and a map showing the drift beds in 1874. Both maps were expensive - 22s. were charged for the solid version, 30s. for the drift. Moreover the scale of these maps for many purposes was deemed inadequate. A large geological model of London existed, however, in the Jermyn Street Museum, the creation of the ingenious James B. Jordan, inventor of the Jordan Sunshine Recorder. Recognising the model’s usefulness Stanford commissioned Jordan to transfer the information from the model to his Library Map of London. The first edition of the geological version of it appeared in 1877: further editions of it were subsequently published in c.1889 and in c.1901.

The overprinting of sections of Stanford’s Library Map for the School Board of London to show the location of schools and School Board district boundaries has already been discussed. Stanford also used it as the base-map for the four poverty maps that constitute so important a feature of Charles Booth’s monumental investigation, Labour and Life of the People, 1889-1891. These maps indicated by means of a seven-point colour scheme the degree of poverty or affluence of each street in the capital. Yellow represented wealthy streets; red, well-to-do; pink, comfortable working class; purple, mixed with poverty; light blue, standard poverty; dark blue, very poor; black, streets inhabited principally by occasional labourers, loafers, and semi-criminals. A second street-by-street survey of London poverty was undertaken by Booth and his team between 1898 and 1899, and the maps, updated, corrected, and extended to cover a much larger area, featured in the ‘Religious Influence’ section of the 17-volumed Life and Labour of the People of London, 1902-3. Beatrice Webb described them in her autobiography as ‘perhaps the most impressive achievement, and certainly the most picturesque outcome of the whole enquiry.’

Stanford’s Library Map is unquestionably the most detailed and useful commercial Map of London produced in the Victorian period. It is hoped that the present reproductions of it will prove valuable to historians and geographers, and of some interest to all who find that they live within its limits.

These notes first accompanied a 24-sheet facsimile of Stanford’s Library Map of London and its Suburbs (1862), published in 1980 by Harry Margary in association with Guildhall Library. That facsimile is still in print, and copies of it can be purchased from: Harry Margary Publications, 81 Battersea Business Centre, 99-109 Lavender Hill, London SW11 5QL (tel.: 020 7585 2590; fax: 020 7223 9751; www.harrymargary.com)

BARKER, Felix, and JACKSON, Peter, The History of London in Maps (London: Barrie & Jenkins 1990)

COLLINS, H.G., Illustrated Atlas of London with 7,000 References (London: H.G. Collins 1854), reproduced in facsimile with introductory notes by H. J. Dyos by Leicester University Press, 1973

GLANVILLE, Philippa, London in Maps (London: ‘Connoisseur’ 1972)

HALL, P.G., The Industries of London since 1861 (London: Hutchinson University Library 1962)

HYDE, Ralph, Printed Maps of Victorian London, 1850-1900 (Folkestone: Dawson 1975)

METCALF, Prescilla, Victorian London (London: Cassell 1972)

SHEPPARD, Francis, London 1808-1870: The Infernal Wen (London: Secker & Warburg 1971)

STANFORD, Edward, Edward Stanford, 1902, with a Note on the History of the Firm (London: Stanford/1902)

STANFORD, J.K., and GODFREY, E.G., The House of Edward Stanford Limited, 1852-1952 (London: Stanford 1952)

1. H. Mayhew and J. Binney, The Criminal Prisons of London (London Griffin, Bohn & Co. 1862). pp. 7-10
2. Obit. by J. Bolton in Geographical Journal (1910), vol. 36, 363-5
3. The biographical information provided here is taken from the following: (i) Edward Stanford, 1902, with a Note on the History of the Firm from 1852 [by Edward Stanford II] (London: Stanford 1902); (ii) ‘Edward Stanford, a Personal Reminiscence’, by E. Marston. Publishers’ Circular (1904), 581; (iii) obit. in Geographical Journal (1904) vol. 24, 686-7; (iv) House of Edward Stanford Ltd., 1852-1952, by Lt Col J. K. Stanford and E. G. Godfrey (London: Stanford 1952)
4. London Gazette (1853) 1958
5. H. R. Mill, The Record of the RGS, 1830-1930 (London: RGS [1980]), p.68
6. Advertisements in Stanford’s Map of Twelve Miles round London, 1860
7. Athenaeum (1858)
8. Art Union (1842), pp. 82, 140, 163
9. Punch XIV (1848) 857
10. M.B.W. Printed Minutes, 1856, p.60
11. Presented Papers, M.B.W., 693
12. M.B.W. Printed Minutes, 1856, p.254
13. The Times, 9 Jan. 1861
14. Athenaeum (1862) 857
15. For descriptions of the various editions see No. 91 in R. Hyde, Printed Maps of Victorian London (Folkestone: Dawson 1975)
16. Building News, 23 Oct. 1891
17. For example Black Hall Lane on sheet 18 changed to Bleak Hall Lane
18. S.B.L. Printed Minutes, VIII, 17 Jan. 1877, p.125
19. ibid., XIV, 24 Mar.1881, p.667
20. ibid., XXIII, 6 Aug. 1885, p.560
21. ibid., XXXIV, 23 Apr. 1891, p.1162
22. Building News, 23 Oct. 1891
23. S.B.L. Printed Minutes, XXXV, 9 Jul. 1891, p.448
24. A Catalogue of Maps,Atlases & Books Published and Sold by Edward Stanford (London: Stanford 1912)
25. Advertised in The Times, 15 Jan. 1864. The only copy seen by the author was in the collection of the late Alexander Baxter
26. Advertised in The Times, 13 Jan. 1864
27. ibid.