ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relationship between the petite bourgeoisie and the town was more than economic activity alone, and it is upon these wider spheres. Shopkeepers and master artisans were central to neighbourhood life, helping define both neighbourhood sociability and the urban space within which it took shape. Economic, social and ideological forces thus bound the owners of small enterprise to their towns. The nature of those ties meant that notwithstanding the fact that the expansion of small enterprise rested on the growth of large towns, it was in the small and medium-sized towns that petits bourgeois felt most at home. The shops and workshops that played such an important role in the popular neighbourhood were only a section of small enterprises. In the working-class districts of British industrial towns at the end of the nineteenth century, shopkeepers frequently organised seasonal rituals and informal neighbourhood charity.
