This is a comprehensive account of the impact of economic change on social polarization and the provision of welfare in nineteenth-century London. As well as making an important contribution to the historiography of London, it is a major study of the nature of nineteenth-century urban development.

Through the use of a wide variety of sources, the author sets micro-scale studies of individual neighbourhoods and trades within the context of long-term economic and geographical change within the capital. Unlike previous studies, this approach explicitly links the everyday activities of London's working class with much broader and long-term processes that shaped the city's social, economic and administrative structures during the course of the nineteenth century.

This makes the book particularly valuable for urban, economic and social historians as well as for geographers seeking to understand the complex processes of rapid urban change.