Although privileged in historical studies, ‘top-down’ institutional and charitable provision needs to be assessed in wider context, taking account of the various networks, formal and otherwise, by which migrants themselves adjusted to new surroundings. Working through family links, social connections and regional solidarities, many arrived in Liverpool through chain migration, with those already at destination helping newcomers (in classic ‘moving European’ fashion) to find jobs and housing, thereby protecting them from disorientation, dislocation and anomic behaviour. Unknown arrivals who lacked such support mechanisms had to integrate themselves into street or court networks of mutual aid. Invariably run by women, those who gave expected to become recipients themselves when the wheel of fortune, or the family cycle, took a turn for the worse. Newcomers to the north end courts were quickly welcomed and enlisted, as an interviewee reported to Hugh Shimmin: