Life was harsh indeed in the tightly packed streets of industrial Salford in the years before the First World War. As he showed in his much acclaimed The Classic Slum, Robert Roberts knew at first hand the poverty and degradation which drove working men to seek oblivion from a pint glass, and their wives to pawn the family's Sunday best to buy bread. But in the shadow of the factory chimneys a child could - and did - lead a life of tremendous vitality and games in the street and by the canal, daring excursions to mysterious foreign parts a mile or two down the road, flickering fantasies at the 'By Joe' cinema, the first whispered instructions in the dark pleasures of the flesh.