Round About a Pound a Week was an influential[1] 1913 survey of poverty and infant mortality in London, by feminist and socialist Maud Pember Reeves, co-authored by anarchist activist Charlotte Wilson.
They wanted to understand and alleviate poverty, so they focussed their attention on a few dozen families in Lambeth, a poor borough in South London and still one of the poorest parts of Britain,[3] and recorded their attempt at social reform over the four years just before the Great War, i.e. 1909–1913.
The families they selected were not the poorest; they were the "respectable poor" of the working class, with the menfolk in relatively stable employment, earning "about a pound a week"; nonetheless, one in five of the children died at birth, and another one in ten before they reached adulthood.
[1] The conditions in the book have been described as "appalling",[4] demonstrating the daily struggle these women faced to feed their families without being "forced to pawn their own boots".
[4] It has also been noted that Reeves avoided the "sense of moral superiority" common in outside observers of these people, seeing them as "independent, resourceful, hard-working, respectable, but poor".