Credit and Community: Working-Class Debt in the UK since 1880

Credit and Community examines the history of consumer credit and debt in working class communities. Concentrating on forms of credit that were traditionally very dependent on personal relationships and social networks, such as mail-order catalogues and co-operatives, it demonstrates how community-based arrangements declined as more impersonal forms of borrowing emerged during the twentieth century. Tallymen and check traders moved into doorstep moneylending during the 1960s, but in subseque...