This work is a case study of the origins and evolution of a specific type of urban community known as working-class villages. Such communities are characterized by deprived environments, predominantly proletarian populations, and dense kinship and friendship networks. Historically they have been socially self-contained and have provided their residents with an important source of psychological, social, and material support. The subject community is a riverside district in East London known as the Isle of Dogs.

It is argued that working-class villages like the Isle of Dogs have been shaped by the interplay between purely local factors and larger forces shaping the whole of society. In the case of the Island these local factors included the district's topography and geography, its fine water communications, and its relationship to the greater London region. The larger forces which influenced the evolution of Island society were industrialization, urbanization, and the role of class in dictating the spacial arrangements and social relationships in cities. The study concludes that despite the changes caused by the modern welfare state, redevelopment, and an era of comparative affluence, working-class communities like the Isle of Dogs remain an important feature of both urban and proletarian life.

While making these larger points, the study traces the changing nature of the economy, population, and social life of the Isle of Dogs in great detail. Sources for the study included nineteenth-century census data and tape-recorded interviews with local residents as well as more traditional literary evidence.