ABSTRACT
THE people of Ship Street live in a nexus of streets all within about ten minutes' walking distance of each other in the middle of Liverpool. The area is a typical slum of today, having been devastated in the past by neglect and poverty, and in the near past by enemy bombing. The people are being gradually moved out of their generally large houses into Corporation flats, this movement gaining some impetus during the last year of this five years' research. This alteration in their manner of living has not led to a related change in their ways of life. The ritual and traditions of the past, carried out in the large houses and streets, are now preserved in the present in the corridors and yards of tenement flats. Ship Street, is, to the best of my knowledge, a pseudonym. All the names of the people appearing in this book have been falsified and any possible identifying mark has been eliminated. Even the initials by which people are called are false.
