WRETCHED housing, starvation wages and an indefatigable sense of community: a description of the existence of thousands of York citizens at the turn of the 20th century. For generations, their plight, and that of the rest of Britain's poor, had been ignored. Then, in one world-changing report, it was exposed in all its shameful detail.

That report - Poverty: A Study Of Town Life by Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree - was published 100 years ago. It changed public and state attitudes to the poor, immediately and immeasurably.

To mark the centenary, specialist publishers The Policy Press have produced a near-exact facsimile of the report, complete with two colour maps of 1901 York.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the son of the great social reformer Joseph Rowntree would be concerned with the welfare of the working class.

Born in 1871, Seebohm Rowntree was the third child of Joseph and his second wife Emma Seebohm, who was from a Danish Quaker family.

Seebohm Rowntree was educated at Bootham School and at Owen's College, Manchester, where he studied industrial chemistry to prepare for his job at the Cocoa Works.

He never completed his degree, returning to York at 18 to set up a chemistry laboratory at the factory. Throughout his life he combined managing the factory with research.

Seebohm Rowntree's "primary reason for writing Poverty, and more especially, The Human Needs Of Labour (1918), was concern about the efficiency of British workers - thus nutritional efficiency became the key criterion of his poverty standard". So writes poverty specialist Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, of York University, in his preface to the new edition.

Using his scientific training, Seebohm Rowntree distinguished between primary and secondary poverty. In primary poverty were those whose total income was not enough to "obtain the minimum necessities of life for mere physical efficiency. And let us clearly understand what 'merely physical efficiency' means," he wrote.

"A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk.

"They must never purchase a halfpenny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert.

"They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage... The children must have not pocket money for dolls, marbles, or sweets...

"Should a child fall ill, it must be attended by the parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by the parish. Finally, the wage earner must never be absent from his work for a single day."

In secondary poverty were those who would have enough money to reach the bread line if some of it were not spent elsewhere on something "useful or wasteful".

With a full-time researcher and a team of volunteers, he set out to survey York's poor. They visited 11,560 families in 1899, seeing 46,785 people. Of these, Seebohm Rowntree classed 20,300 as visibly poor: more than a quarter of the city's population.

Among the main slum districts of York were Aldwark, Leeman Road and Walmgate. Another, Hungate, was described by Rowntree in the opening chapter of Poverty.

"Though not large in extent, it is still large enough to exhibit the chief characteristics of slum life - the reckless expenditure of money as soon as obtained, with the aggravated want at other times; the rowdy Saturday night, the Monday morning pilgrimage to the pawnshop, and especially that love for the district, and disinclination to move to better surroundings, which, combined with an indifference to the higher aims of life, are the despair of so many social workers."

Reproduced in the report were some sample pages from the researchers' notebooks. These reveal the typical occupations of the working class man: "labourer, shoemaker, railwayman, bricklayer, waterman".

The women worked just as hard. "Wife works in fields," the notes state. "Goes out washing and cleaning. Chars."

But it is the column headed 'Remarks' that is the most revealing. These are the moral judgements of Seebohm Rowntree's assistants on the homes they were visiting.

At one house in an unidentified York street, the researchers found: "Very poor, untidy woman, very little furniture."

Other comments on different households included: "Disreputable old woman, ill; ought to be in Workhouse. Hawks when able. House very dirty, probably used as a house of ill-fame."

"Five children, (three by first wife). Husband not quite steady, wife delicate-looking. Respectable; one boy sent to a truant school."

"The property is in bad condition throughout, in fact in some cases it is dangerous to life and limb to enter the doors."

More detailed notes reveal the overcrowding and poverty in sharper relief.

"Labourer. Foundry. Married. Four rooms. Four children. Steady; work regular. Man has bad eyesight, and poor wage accordingly. Family live in the midst of smoke. Rent cheap on account of smoke."

"Out of work. Married. Four rooms. Five children. Drinks. 'Chucked his work over a row'. Very poor; have to pawn furniture to keep children."

"Rag and bone gatherer. Married. One room. One child. Not very steady. This house shares one water tap with eight other houses, and one closet with three others."

"Joiner. Married. Four rooms. Six children. Poor and untidy. Infant very sickly. Buried two children within two years."

These sort of descriptions go on page after page. They are supplemented by anecdotal evidence. "If there's anything extra to buy, such as a pair of boots for one of the children," one woman told the researchers, "me and the children goes without dinner."

What keeps the reader from a state of total despair is the sense that many poverty-stricken families retained a fierce sense of pride and a purpose - to offer a secure, loving environment for their children whatever the odds.

We have the benefit of knowing that these words did make a difference. Seebohm Rowntree's report was ground-breaking because it linked poverty to ill health and slum housing. The authorities had to act.

By 1908 York Corporation had begun to start a programme of slum clearances that would last for many years. New welfare support was introduced.

Today, the squalor described in Poverty is a thing of the past. But York, despite its wealthy facade, still has poverty and social deprivation.

Recent research by Prof Bradshaw discovered that "poverty in York might well be above the national average".

He writes: "In York there are three or four specific streets, modern slums, in which no one should be expected to live (and no one wants to), mainly because of the anti-social behaviour of the residents. But a much more serious issue is still poverty - dispersed, not amenable to the neighbourhood or local action, requiring national redistributive social policies."

If such policies are enacted, he states, "the prospects for reducing poverty are good." He concludes with the words: "We try, Seebohm, we try."

Poverty: A Study Of Town Life by B Seebohm Rowntree, is published by The Policy Press, price £16.99. For information on how to obtain a copy ring: 01235 465556.