ABSTRACT
South Borough is a London borough characterised by a strong community consciousness. The inhabitants refer to the districts north of the Thames as being ‘over the water’, and a contrast, real or imagined, is drawn between the prices, fashions, and even morality, of ‘up there’ and ‘down here’. As far as closer relationships were concerned, the individual flat remains the dwellers’ castle, outer doors to flats are usually shut, and there is little free-and-easy visiting of one another’s premises. In contrast to this fierce assertive separateness in ordinary mundane affairs is a sense of communal unity in crisis. Some neighbourly help is often given, and communal help may be encountered in the instances where only conventional sympathy might have been expected. One might expect that the kinship knowledge might be extended, laterally to the greatest extent among one’s own generation.
