The volume presents close observational reporting and interviews with urban street workers and traders, cataloguing sellers of food, second-hand goods, live animals, mineral wares, and small manufactures, along with buyers, collectors, and informal labourers. It combines vignettes, statistics and estimates to show numbers, capital outlay, incomes and seasonal fluctuation; outlines tools, routines and family labour; and describes sanitary and service roles such as chimney-sweepers, sewer-hunters, scavengers, nightmen and crossing-sweepers. Illustrated case studies highlight daily working conditions, economic precarity, and the social mechanisms that sustain and marginalize this class within the city.
