Customary culture persisted in many sectors of plebeian London throughout the period of this study, and indeed well into the twentieth century. The factors identified at the outset – the spatiality of neighbourhoods, economic insecurity, the forms and practices of formal assistance, and the lack of mobility – combined to create conditions that allowed customary cultural practices and priorities to remain plausible for many, if not most, plebeian Londoners. Reputation and the respectability emanating from it remained crucially important, but in this fluid urban context needed to be re-established on a daily basis. Consequently, people defended their respectability with alacrity against perceived slights and insults. As quarrelsome as they were mutually supportive, plebeian Londoners also developed strategies to try to contain violence and resolve disputes, although clearly these were not always successful. Reputation and respectability brought access to important resources in the battle to make ends meet: borrowing networks, pawning and credit were all dependent upon being well thought of by others in the neighbourhood.

The spatial configuration of the streets and houses in plebeian neighbourhoods did not lend themselves to the new codes of urban civility that posited a privatized family life centred on the home – and lived largely within it. Courts, yards and alleys remained sites of sociability, and homes all too often consisted of flimsy demarcations within subdivided houses, offering scant privacy and little comfort.