ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the size of households in Freetown as compared with the Protectorate, and of their composition in terms of the kinship relations in which the members stand to one another. It focuses on some rites de passage, or ceremonies by which a person passes from one social state to another, and by an equally brief discussion of the available information about the income and expenditure of representative households. The heads of households studied in the sample survey were also questioned about the number of visits they received from friends and relations in the Protectorate. The Protectorate household usually consists of several brothers, their wives and children, living in a group of adjacent huts. The composition of tribal and Creole matricentric households does not differ significantly, apart from the more frequent appearance of grandchildren in the tribal and of wards in the Creole households.
