ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses - from the standpoint of the historian - some of the difficulties which arise in any attempt to establish the nature of the shapes on the ground. It examines the analagous problem of establishing the identity of the shapes in society. The chapter describes the attempts which historians have so far made to link the two. The practice of equating working-class areas with ‘darkest Africa’ and the fear of the unknown and irreligious masses who inhabited these regions bear witness to the perception, by middle-class contemporaries, of an unprecedentedly segregated, urban society which had evolved by the middle of the nineteenth century. The social cachet of a good address there might still, in Victorian times, be as highly prized as ever; but even in this citadel of the beau monde such residents were far outnumbered by the rest of the population.
