It recounts the brief life of Dicky Perrott, a child living in the "Old Jago", a fictionalisation of the Old Nichol slum in Bethnal Green.

A bestseller in its time,[1] it recounts the brief life of Dicky Perrott, a child growing up in the "Old Jago", a fictionalisation of the Old Nichol,[2] a slum located between Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road in the East End of London.

The late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing, who read the novel on Christmas Day 1896, felt that it was "poor stuff".

[3] The novel opens after midnight on a hot summer night, when many of the residents of the Jago, likened to “great rats”, prefer to sleep in the street to avoid the oppressive heat and stench of the closely packed houses.

A man lured into a dwelling by a woman is brutally coshed, robbed and dragged unconscious into the street where others remove his boots.

As dawn breaks his father, Josh Perrott, returns home with a club sticky with blood and hair, suggesting another robbery.

Looking for cake and tea Dicky visits the East End Elevation Mission where well-intentioned middle-class ‘missionaries’ seek to educate and civilise.

Sally Green, of the Leary clan, whose method of fighting is to hold down her opponent and chew viciously on the back of the neck, triumphs over the Rann's female champion, Nora Walsh, and proudly displays a bunch of her clotted hair as a trophy.

Dicky encounters Aaron Weech, proprietor of a local coffee shop and a ‘fence’, a handler of stolen goods.

The Ropers, already despised and resented due to their perceived relative gentility, return and are attacked by the Jagos, until they are saved by the intervention of the clergyman, Father Sturt, who cows the crowd and retrieves the stolen property.

Father Sturt arranges for the Ropers to take up lodging in nearby Dove Lane and Dicky secretes the music box in the cart carrying away their belongings.

Josh Perrott defeats Billy Leary in their fight, winning £5 in prize money and bets, and celebrates with Hannah in a pub.

Looey dies whilst left behind in their room, and as Dicky sobs over his sister's corpse, Josh and Hannah return to the pub.

Father Sturt, after finding Dicky weaving rush bags, sees hope that the boy can make an honest life and secures a job for him at Mr Grinder's hardware shop.

Following a violent outbreak of the intermittent rivalry with the neighbourhood of Dove Lane the residents of the Jago invite their enemies to a social evening in Mother Gapp's pub.

Josh's attempts to dispose of the watch are frustrated and he finally offers it to Weech, who betrays him, leading to a sentence of five years imprisonment.

Daughter of a boilermaker, a relatively prestigious occupation, and thus fallen on hard times and very much ill at ease in the Jago, where she is resented.

Her occasional forays are disastrous, she is assaulted in the street by Sally Green, and while she relaxes in Mother Gapps with the victorious Josh her neglected baby dies.

The pitiable life and shocking death of ten month old Looey is made more poignant by the matter of fact way in which it is presented.

Always jovial and sharp, he is sufficiently self-aware and industrious to make something of himself with his fruit and vegetable enterprise and secure a chance of escape from the Jago.

In a novel where human beings are regularly compared with vermin, Gullen's donkey provides Dicky with an unusual father-figure, a dumb creature whom he seeks out and can confide in.

In shocking scenes of violence Sally Green is repeatedly stabbed in the face with a broken bottle by Nora Walsh, and a carman, venturing into the citadel of the Jago is robbed and kicked unconscious.

We see that despite the best efforts of Father Sturt and Dicky himself, the boy is dragged back from hope of a respectable future into a life of crime that is nasty, brutish and short.