TW O S T U D I E S O F K I N S H I P IN L O N D O N

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 L O N D O N S C H O O L O F E C O N O M IC S
M O N O G R A P H S ON S O C IA L A N T H R O P O L O G Y

No. I K

TWO STUDIES OF K IN S H IP
IN LONDON

edited by
RAYMOND FIRTH

U N IV E R S IT Y O F LO N D O N
TH E ATH LO N E PRESS
1956
 First published by
THE ATHLONE P R E SS
UNIVERSITY OF L O N D O N
at 2 Gower Street, London, w.c.i
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Printed in Great Britain by

J A R R O L D AND S O N S L T D .
NORWICH
 ACKNOW LEDGEM ENTS

These studies, brief though they are, arise from the interest of many
people. The field plan and field material are due to staff and post­
graduate students of the Department of Anthropology of the London
School of Economics and Political Science, and the presentation of the
results owes much to their seminar and other discussions. This collec­
tive acknowledgement is a small recognition for the enthusiasm and
sacrifice of time which they have given to what has been an onerous
task for them, already engaged as they were in full-time duties
elsewhere.
In particular, for written material on the South Borough study,
mention must be made of: M rs. Barabara Fisher, Dr. Maurice Freedman,
Dr. W. R. Geddes, M r. D. Munro, D r. K . E . Read, D r. Audrey I.
Richards, D r. J . K . T ’ien, and M iss Barbara Ward (now M rs. H. S.
Morris). Others contributing were: D r. J. D . Freeman, M iss Merran
McCulloch, M rs. Katherine Nelson (now M rs. Matthias), D r. H. J.
Prins, and M r. R. A. Scobie. D r. Elizabeth Bott, Dr. Judith Djamour
(Mrs. M . Freedman), and M rs. Elizabeth Wittermans also assisted in
discussion of the South Borough material; D r. D j amour drafted much
of this study. D r. P. Garigue collected all the field material for the
study of the Italianates and drafted it. For the final revision and
editing of the whole the responsibility is mine.
No financial resources were available for the South Borough study.
For the study of the Italianates acknowledgement is due to the
Behavioral Science Division of the Ford Foundation, upon whose
generous grant-in-aid for my personal research I have been able to
draw for help in the collection of the material and also in the
preparation of the document as a whole.
For facilities in the South Borough study, we were indebted to the
Guinness Trust and to the kindness and help of people in the housing
block studied—in particular to Sid and Stella, Paddy and Gladys, Bob,
and the family of M ay and her mother. In the section of the study deal­
ing with the Italianates, we were indebted to the Italian Consul
General and members of the Italian Consulate, the Italian Cultural
Institute, and the Italian Catholic Church in England, all of whom
were a great help in the promotion of the investigation.
R .F .
 CONTENTS
page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5

I. I N T R O D U C T IO N II
Raymond Firth
General Considerations, 1 1 ; T h e Problem and the Origin of the
Study, 2 i ; Method, 23

I I. K I N S H I P I N S O U T H BOROUGH 33
Raymond Firth and Judith Djamour
T he Background (H .B.B.), 3 3 ; Households, 34; Recognition of
the Kinship Principle, 36; T h e Kinship System, 3 7 ; Knowledge of
Kin, 3 7; Kinship Grouping, 40; Differentiation among K in, 42;
Social Relationships between Kin, 46; Empirical Data: the Ingles
Case, 48; Indices of K in Contacts, 5 1 ; Factors influencing Social
Relations with Kin, 58; Summary and Conclusions, 62

III. KINSHIP OR GA N I S A T I ON OF I T A L I A N A T E S IN LONDON 67

Philip Garigue and Raymond Firth
T h e Social Background, 6 7; K in and Status, 69; Selection of
Informants, 70; Households, 7 1 ; T h e Structure of the Kinship
System, 7 3 ; Range of K in Knowledge, 7 3 ; Social Relations between
Kin, 8 3; Factors affecting K in Relationship, 88; Summary and
Conclusions, 92

BIBLIOGRAPHY 94
IN TRO D U CTIO N

by
Raymond Firth
 IN TRO D U CTIO N

General considerations. The study of kinship is a perennial theme

for the social anthropologist. An understanding of the kinship system
in any society is essential as a clue to the workings of some of the most
fundamental relationships— sexual, marital, economic, in that society.
It also may be of prime importance in the process of socialisation, in
developing patterns of reaction to authority and in providing important
symbols for the moral evaluation of conduct.
In British society, problems of the structure and function of kinship ,
as distinct from the structure and function of the elementary family,
have received little attention as yet. In the past literature on the family
practically no reference is made to the roles of kin outside the im­
mediate groups of parents and minor children. The work of M argery
Spring Rice1 on the health and conditions of working-class wives
focuses on the role of the mother as the ‘abiding personality’ in the
family group but has almost no reference to their lun ties as a whole.
Studies of the ‘great families’2 show the importance of kinship in
political and economic affairs, and indicate the ramifications of kinship
in aristocratic circles.3 But although they provide raw material for the
study of kinship in a certain sector of society, they give no systematic
study to the subject. Radcliffe-Brown has made incidental reference
to ‘the English kinship system’ in his review of the comparative and
theoretic study of kinship organisation. But his statements are of a
very general kind, based on common knowledge.4
Some useful comparative studies are available. Material on Irish
rural kinship has been presented by Arensberg and Kim ball.5 M ost of
the American community studies made by anthropologists have some
data on kinship, although not very systematic. E . C. Hughes has an
interesting table of kin connections of a group of leading men in
‘Cantonville’ and a reference to the factional feuds of French-Canadian
1 Spring Rice, 19 39 : e.g. references (apart from husband) to visiting sisters,
p. 99; sisters looking after children, p. 109; care of old parents, pp. 103, 12 5 ;
adopted children, p. 1 2 7 ; and adolescents sharing rooms with kin, p. 12 7 .
1 For Britain alone there must be several hundred of such studies. In a
recent one, extending over sixteen generations, Joan Wake has pointed out
how the eldest son, the landowner and head of the family, is the only one
who stands out with any real distinction. In the family archives the younger
sons, and the daughters, are ‘usually faint and shadowy figures* (19 53, p. xi).
* A problem of great interest would be the study of the implications in
kinship terminology and behaviour on the penetration of the older
aristocracy by merchant and other groups or individuals who have attained
status by wealth, especially during the last century.
4 In Radcliffe-Brown and Forde, 1950, pp. 5 -7 .
“ Arensberg and Kimball, 1940.
 society which run through extended kin groups.6 A more extensive
treatment has been given by H. Miner. In his study of a French-
Canadian community, he has described their knowledge and use of
extensive genealogical systems, their naming habits, and their patterns
of marriage and family. He has also indicated how travel is conceived
of in terms of visiting kin and how, for example, photographic collec­
tions keep kin ties alive.7 The analysis of the structure of kinship in
the United States made by Talcott Parsons8 sets out the main points,
though this is based on the author’s general knowledge of his own
society and not on specific field research.
Recently some attention has been paid to kinship in Britain. A few
years ago Rees9 analysed the ramifications of kinship in a Welsh village
and demonstrated the solidarity of its ties. Adam Curie10 has pub­
lished a short account of the structure of kinship in a Yorkshire
village, with particular attention to the values of cousinship and of
affinal relationships. More recently, Michael Young11 has published a
study of the role of extended families in an emergency and with his
colleagues has undertaken a more extensive examination of the impor­
tance of kinship in a London residential area.
When the South Borough study began in 1947, the work of Rees
was as yet unpublished and that of Curie and Young had not yet
begun. But their analyses have helped us to bring out the interest
and implications of the South Borough material and allied data.
Most sociological studies stress the importance of the elementary
family. Stress is laid upon the household of husband, wife, and
children as a self-sufficient social unit. This view is typified by
Margaret M ead12 when she speaks of the tiny biological family of the
modern American three-room apartment dwellers who have no kin
within a thousand miles. This emphasis is of course justified. But it
is apt to lead to two misconceptions. The first concerns the structure
of the system. The existence of terms for kin outside the immediate
family is recognised. But it is often tacitly assumed that few relations
with such kin occur. The second misconception concerns content. It
is often taken for granted that even if such relations do generally
occur, they have no special importance. It is true that in many cases
they may seem insignificant. But the critical element in the lack of
attention by social scientists to Western kinship outside the elementary
family is probably not the supposed low level of relations but their
variability. Whereas in a primitive society one normally expects to
have patterns which can be described as universal for that society, in
6 Hughes, 1946, pp. 16 3 -4 .
7 Miner, 1939, pp. 63-90.
8 Parsons, 1943. A s this monograph was going to press a brief account of
a study of American kinship terminology by David M . Schneider and
George C. Homans was circulated in M S . (see Bibliography).
9 Rees, 1950.
10 Curie, 1952, cf. Williams, 1956.
11 Young, 1954a. See also note on p. 94.
12 Mead, 1948. But cf. Bott, 19 55.
modern Western conditions there may be a high degree of variation.
The reason for lack of kinship studies is also, however, as Talcott
Parsons has pointed out, that family studies have been oriented to an
understanding of individual adjustment rather than to a comparative
structural perspective. ^
To an anthropologist, trained to regard extra-familial kinship as a
major structural and organisational feature of any society, all this
comes as something of a surprise. Is there then any contribution he
can make to this problem? He realises that he must approach it with
caution. In the first place, his knowledge of the institutional content
of a Western social system is usually very limited. Moreover, as
Parsons has shown, anthropological methods have been conventionally
used in envisaging such a major structural aspect as kinship in a
society as a whole. Their observations cannot yield this easily in large-
scale Western conditions. Some preliminary comparison of Western
kinship with the conventional anthropological field of inquiry seems
therefore advisable.
The anthropologist approaching the problems of kinship in a
Western society might pose his preliminary questions in some such
form as this: Are there significant differences between at least some
sectors of Western society and some primitive societies? If, as might
seem likely, Western kinship is less formal and less noticeable in the
social field, is extra-familial kinship important at all in Western society?
If kin relations, and in particular extra-familial kin relations, do have
social importance, are there sufficient regularities in the behaviour to
allow one to speak of a kinship system? If so, then what is the nature
of this system?
Let us take up the first question in some detail. The answer would
seem to be that significant differences in the kinship field do exist
between primitive societies and some sectors of Western society. These
can be set out in the following schematic form:
1. The most obvious is a difference in the situation of the elemen­
tary family. Structurally and functionally, it juts out in a prominence
which has been recognised by the overwhelming attention paid to it
by social scientists. In primitive and peasant societies the elementary
family is often so embedded in the larger kin unit and in the household
based upon this, that historically its separate existence as a structural
unit has sometimes been denied. Even now there is a question as to
how far it can be properly recognised in joint family and analogous
structures in India. B y contrast, the elementary family in a sophisti­
cated Western environment is a highly discrete unit in residence, in
property holding, in income control, and in social affairs.
2. In a Western social field, there tends to be a functional separa­
tion of activities in which, for example, occupational roles are clearly
marked off from kinship roles. Or, more precisely, while some occupa­
tional roles in the domestic circle of the elementary family— bed­
making, washing-up, care of infants— tend to have a strong association
with kinship status, income-producing activities tend to be separate
from kinship ties. Compared with major daily work in a primitive
community, that in a sophisticated Western community shows a
marked lack of economic co-operation with kin. Father and son, or
siblings, or uncle and nephew, may never meet in their daily occupa­
tions outside the home. This deprives kinship relations of a very
important element of the content which they normally have in a
primitive society.
3. B y comparison with many, though not all, primitive systems,
kinship in a Western society tends to be of relatively narrow range.
The number of kin of a person tends to be relatively few (though not
so scanty as often seems to be imagined, see p. 38 ) in recognised as
well as in operative terms. Moreover, the lack of a classificatory
terminology tends to inhibit the easy assimilation of genealogically
remote to near kin for many social purposes, as is so characteristic of
most primitive societies.
4. K in groups—save in the special circumstances of ‘upper-class’
with substantial status and property to transmit— tend to be shallow
in depth and relatively amorphous. Formally defined descent groups
of corporate type, if not entirely lacking, tend to be difficult to identify
and classify. The kin groups outside the elementary family are not
structural groups but organisational groups. They are assemblages
ad hoc from among the total kin of members of the elementary family
that would normally come together in virtue of a special social occasion
such as Christmas, or personal occasion such as a wedding or funeral.
5. Relations between kin in a Western society tend to be permissive
rather than obligatory. There are certain specific obligations by law,
as for instance, those of parent to care for young child, or in some
circumstances, for son or daughter to contribute to the maintenance of
a dependent parent. There are specific legal prohibitions, as rules
against incest. But for the most part, the sanctions for relations
between kin are moral rather than legal, and have little weight for
extra-familial kin.
6. In line with this, there is great variation in kin behaviour, in
respect of the same categories of relatives. This variation tends to be
very much greater than with similar categories of relatives in a primi­
tive society. Hence the patterns of extra-familial kin behaviour in a
Western society are usually not capable of being stated in terms of
ideal rules and degree of departure from them. Where they can be
discerned they must be expressed as observed regularities. In the
sense of a general contrast, the pattern may be said to be statistical
rather than normative in character.
In drawing such contrast, it should be pointed out that such
‘polarisation’ is primarily for heuristic purposes. Kinship systems
cannot be completely separated and isolated in terms of geography or
of complexity and sophistication of type of society in which they occur.
But the contrast, though only in terms of relative magnitudes, does
focus on some of the most significant features for inquiry.
The answers to the other questions posed have already been sug­
gested in what has been said, and can be given in detail only by the
empirical material in Chapters I I and I I I . But it will be gathered at
this point that to an anthropologist, kinship, including extra-familial
ties, is found to be socially significant in those sectors of Western
society investigated. There are regularities enough to justify its being
considered as having a systematic form.
In attempting to define the character of this system one important
general point that has emerged is the need to reconsider some of the
basic concepts of kinship, if one is to apply them to the data in a
Western society. This does not mean that a new conceptual framework
is necessary. But the experience of those investigators who have
worked on these problems has shown that the definitions of the anthro­
pologist cannot be simply accepted and applied ready-made to this type
of material. Difficulties of field technique could be foreseen: what was
not so easily apparent was this need for re-appraisal of some of the
theoretical framework.
This arises partly from the permissive nature of the rules of Western
kinship, and the high degree of variation of kin behaviour. It also
comes partly from the relatively amorphous character of extra-familial
kin units.
For instance, in an examination of kin group structure, an anthro­
pologist begins soon to ask about descent principles. In general
English speech, descent can refer to transmission of property or title
by inheritance as well as to transmission of membership in a kin group.
But to anthropologists the term is usually restricted to transmission of
kin-group membership alone. (There is a broader sense in which it
can apply also to any genealogical tie of direct continuity between
generations, as when a grandchild is descended from a grandparent, or
two persons are both descended from a common ancestor.)13 As
W. H. R. Rivers pointed out,14 the precise use of the concept of
descent is valid only when the group concerned is unilateral in selec­
tion of members. The use of the term has little sense, he says, and
therefore little value, where it is applied to bilateral kin groups. Now
it is apt to be assumed that the English kinship system exhibits
unilateral descent groups. T o quote Rivers: ‘Thus, our own family
system might be regarded as an example of patrilineal descent, in that
we take the name of the father; though it is hardly customary to use
the term in this case/ Those groups which control landed property by
entail largely follow this system. But there are few circumstances,
apart from the surname transmission, which seem to entitle the
ordinary English family structure to be regarded as a corporate group
type. The unilateral or unilineal principle is therefore difficult to
1S Radcliffe-Brown, 1950, p. 4.
14 Rivers, 1924, p. 86.
 identify. So much is this so that various other emphases have been
regarded as characteristic. Talcott Parsons writes of the ‘multilinear
American family, which in essentials is apparently of the same kind as
the English.15
The whole problem of what is meant by ‘being a Smith’, and one’s
precise relation to the Joneses if one’s mother was a Jones, is more
complex than may at first appear.
For general categorisation, terms such as aggregate, set, configura­
tion, constellation, web, network, grouping, and group are suggested to
describe the entity empirically composed by and represented by the
people who communicate or come together on certain social occasions
because of their kin relations.
More specifically, one can talk of ‘extended family’ in some circum­
stances of collective living arrangements, or Christmas festivities; and
of ‘kindred’ in orientation to the circumstances of a particular person.
But there is considerable difference of emphasis on the degree of
structural cohesion perceived in such entities, and on the principles
which are thought to activate the people concerned in constituting
an entity. Sometimes there seems to enter into the interpretation an
element derived from the previous experience of the investigator. An
anthropologist, used to more rigid or more highly formalised systems,
is apt to be impressed by the degree of flexibility and personal choice
in these Western kinship units. Whereas a sociologist, used to the
relative flexibility of the Western social arrangements, is apt to be
surprised by the degree of patterning discernible in the kinship field
when he turns his attention systematically to it.
The English kinship system has come to be described as a bilateral
one in view of the relative lack of differentiation in kinship behaviour
between mother’s and father’s kin, apart from transmission of the
father’s surname to legitimate children. But the term bilateral when
applied to kin groups has come to have two meanings. One is to the
set of kin who orient their behaviour to a particular person, Ego, and
who trace their relationship to him through his father or his mother
as the case may be. This set of persons may constitute a group in
virtue of their assembly and common operations in respect of Ego on
particular occasions. But they constitute a group of personal orienta­
tion. Moreover, they are frequently a group only in a theoretical or
ideal sense, since they may never actually assemble as a whole. They
are in a sense a group of potential mobilisation. They may have no
actual corporate existence. Again, their boundaries are relatively
undefined. There come points at which it is difficult to say whether
there are or are not more persons who should be included in the
bilateral kin of Ego. Again, even when it is known that certain persons
belong genealogically to this group, there may be uncertainty as to
whether they regard themselves as in any active sense members of it.
So much is this the case that the term group is often denied to this
15 T h e term omni-directional has also recently been used by some English
anthropologists as a principle of kin affiliation.
bilateral set of kin. I f used at all it is apt to be restricted to those kin
who fairly constantly orient social activity to Ego. Furthermore, the
group lacks the principle of continuity. Actual continuity indeed may
be preserved to the degree that the relations and responsibilities
accepted in regard to Ego are regarded as operative also in the case of
Ego’s children. In this sense, the sporadic and occasional character
often attributed to such kin sets may be empirically false; there may
in fact be some continuity of relationship from one generation to
another. On the other hand, the increasing remoteness of genealogical
connection tends to give good reason for an increasing remoteness
of social connection. Here, proximity of residence and childhood
familiarity may play a great part in the maintenance of kin ties. For
example, children of Ego’s father’s father’s brother’s sons may be
reckoned as close patrilineal kin and this relationship may continue
without evident diminution to their respective offspring. Such con­
tinuity may be stimulated by the absence of siblings for Ego.
It is in this way that the conversion of bilateralism into multi­
lineality occurs. Continuance of the connection through either mother
or father or both into the next generation and the process of cousin
assimilation into a sibling position means that the original duplex field
of selection has now become multiplied to provide four, eight or more
sets of kin who can be referred to.
What is difficult, however, is to ascribe the term descent to this
process. In one sense Ego is a member of the set of persons oriented
towards him. But this membership is of a different kind than that of
the unit ordinarily described as a descent group. B y descent is implied
the limitation and recognition of the continuity of kin ties for certain
social purposes (in particular, membership of continuing named groups)
and the accent is on the notion of continuity. In many of the societies
studied by anthropologists, these continuing named groups are
unilineal in descent principle. Membership of them must be traced
genealogically, but the genealogical tie may be through either mother
or father, or indeed in some cases through either a male or female
more remote ancestor. Such is the type of descent group, corporate
in its activities, which has been described as bilateral (or ambilateral).
Different societies vary in the amount of selectivity allowed in claim­
ing and receiving membership. In some, such as the Maori, a person
may effectively claim membership of both his father’s and his mother’s
groups, the effective operation of his claim in terms of land and status
rights, for example, depending largely upon his residential situation.
Ultimately, without any validation by residence, his claim becomes
extinguished. (This is what I have termed the ambilateral type.) In
others again, choice seems to be more rigid and the person is allowed
to belong to one or other of his mother’s or father’s groups but not
both (for this type the term utrolateral has been proposed).16
In all these cases, there are, empirically, kin groups of a continuing
kind operating multiple social functions (excluding rights over land).
14 B y J. D . Freeman, 19 55, p. 8.
But they are not operating unilineally. These form a bilateral kin
group in the second sense.
The question is, to what category do the kin groups in the English
system belong? As mentioned later, the first term to describe them is
patrinominal because of the use of the father’s name in transmission of
membership.17 As also described later, the kin relation with the mother
is extremely strong. But it does not appear as a formal defining
principle and hence does not entitle the system to be termed matri-
lateral. Whatever term is chosen to designate the system will depend
upon the emphasis seen in it by the investigator.
It would seem that the English system has three recognisable types
of group. One is the elementary family which for social convenience
is referred to patrinominally. The second is an extension of this,
usually in three-generation form with incorporation of affines in the
form of children’s spouses. Again, for social convenience this is com­
monly referred to, patrinominally, in terms of the original father. In
such cases, some grandchildren, offspring of daughters, are included
matrinominally in virtue of the attachment of their mother to her
original family, but this represents incorporation only on limited
occasions and for limited purposes, as Christmas dinner or a birthday
celebration. For other occasions, as for example at school, these
daughter’s children are known patrinominally. Th e patrinominally
extended family is then only a partially operative, and not a completely
regular, social unit. It may well be that for these assemblages and for
other contacts between members of this group it is the original mother
who is the focus, the enduring tie. But it should be noted that for
naming purposes the group is usually called by her husband’s
surname.
Finally, there is the type of group which assembles at a wedding or
funeral and in which may be represented most of the patrinominal kin
groups which have traceable genealogical relation to Ego. This is
assembled on a bilateral basis. But in this it is similar to kin groups
all over the world.
Th e upshot then is that in the English kinship system no single
emphasis seems to be outstanding enough to give its quality to the
system as a whole. There is some patrilineal bias expressed in parti­
cular through the naming system and through some occupational
preferences. There is in the ordinary social field a strong matrilineal
bias with particular emotional significance. I f a single term is felt
necessary it is probably best to adopt the suggestion of W. H. R.
Rivers and to refer to the English kinship system as a familial system,
bearing in mind, inter dia , the lack of descent groups of depth.
So far I have discussed mainly kinship structure. What of the

17 It has been argued that it might be termed matrinominal since the child
always takes the mother’s surname. I f the mother is married, she bears her
husband’s surname, if she is unmarried the child takes her surname. But the
normal adoption of the husband’s surname by the wife renders the term
patrinominal for the descent principle appropriate.
content of kin relations? Mention has already been made of the marked
lack of economic co-operation with kin in daily life. Compared with
the working of a primitive community, the occupational diversity in a
Western industrialised society bars easy kinship relations in the field
of production. This means that kinship, if it is to operate, must do
other things to give body to the relationships.
In many primitive societies, part of this body is given by ritual. In
the nineteenth century it might have been said that for certain sections
of British society some kinship content was to be found in the ritual
field. The custom whereby the younger son might enter the Church
and receive a family living is marginal to the problem. But the
reciprocal moral and ritual support between family observances and
those of the Church was important in many social spheres. This now
operates to a much less degree. But kin group relations would still
seem to be fairly intimately linked with ritual relations in some circles,
say in those of the conventional Nonconformist or orthodox Jewish
families. Jud*aism, for instance, has been rightly called a family
religion, but it could also be termed a kin-group religion since the
emphasis is not simply upon the elementary family but upon the
quasi-kinship of the congregation. Moreover, certain kin associations,
as in the nomination of Cohen and Levi in the reading of excerpts
from the Law, rest putatively upon descent and kinship recognition in
traditional terms. However, in British society at large the importance
of the ritual factor in kinship is probably slight.
The significance of kin ties outside the elementary family in con­
temporary British society lies primarily in the positive social contacts
in visiting, in recreation, in exchange of news and advice, in attendance
on ceremonial occasions and at crises of life, and in the moral obliga­
tions that frequently attach to such contacts.
Kinship recognition and relations are important as a part of social
living in general rather than as components of specific economic,
political, or ritual aspects of institutions.
The problems arising may be further expressed in this way. What,
under British conditions, is the importance of kin outside the
elementary family? What is the character of recognition, the structure
and organisation of their relationships? Can significant patterns be
seen in the apparent maze of interpersonal relations in complex urban
conditions where each individual is apparently following his own
wishes—significant, that is, for the anthropologist in his frame of
reference as a student of comparative social behaviour? In urban
conditions, it is generally assumed that there is a marked tendency for
individuals and the elementary families in which they are set to live
and operate in comparative isolation. This seems to be not merely an
inference from empirical observation of the kinds of relationships
which people have in an urban environment. It also seems to involve
emotional and aesthetic, even moral elements, with the implication that
such isolation (if it exists) is repugnant to good living and to be
deplored. There is also the set of interpretations which link this
notion of isolation with the development of particular kinds or facets
of personality and character.18 Precise information is thus desirable
about the definition of the kinship universe of an individual and of
the elementary family, and of the social use made of it. (Indices of
definition of the kinship universe are discussed later.)
The reputed isolation of an individual or elementary family is
thought to be due not merely to the general demands, occupational and
other, of large-scale social life in modern conditions. It is thought to
be specifically related to the severance of ties from kinsfolk by geo­
graphical dispersion. The degree of propinquity of members of the
elementary family to their kin outside the immediate household may,
therefore, be important as a diagnostic feature in the interpretation of
kinship recognition and inter-relationship. In every society, an
individual needs recognition and support from others in his activities.
In modern Western society, he gets it from the members of his
elementary family, from his friends, from members of work groups,
recreational groups, etc. But it may be argued that not only an
individual but also a social unit, such as an elementary family, needs
recognition and support. Here, too, it gets this from friends, from
associations which it enters into as a group, e.g. a church, a sports
club, etc. But one important field for recognition and support of the
fam ily’s activities is that of its kin. In some primitive societies, as in
tribal Australia or in Tikopia, every personal contact with a member
of the community must be with a kinsman. In others, some choice
between kin and non-kin is possible, though there is always some kin
base. But the degree of selectivity in contemporary Western society
allows not merely of choice between kin, or between kin and non-kin,
but also rejection of kin altogether. This is largely true also of the
modern African or Asian living in cities, though there may be some
difference of degree. But if one assumes that in modern urban life
relations with people who live close to one are much more attenuated
than they are in rural life—in the urban situation one may not even
know one’s next-door neighbour at all—then one might put forward a
hypothesis. In rural English life, an elementary family is supported
by its kin primarily because they are de facto in close geographical
proximity; and this, even in the rural scene, implies co-operation. In
urban English life, on the other hand, an elementary family tends to
be supported by its kin because of the lack of full neighbour relations.19
But experience suggests that such a hypothesis is not likely to be borne
18 Three categories of phenomena m ay be seen under the general head of
‘isolation*: (0) residential separation; (b) separation from others as regards
services and contacts; (c) a psychological, objective feeling of deprivation,
better termed loneliness. These three categories are by no means always
coincident. Indeed, physical and social isolation may not necessarily imply
loneliness at all, but positive preference for separation. W e are concerned
here primarily with the relation between residential and social separation,
i.e. (a) and (b) and not directly with (c) at all.
19 One might expect to find then that people living so in rural England
would tend to travel much less to visit their kin than people so living in
London. T h is is a problem on which we have as yet no adequate information.
out. The general patterns of industrial living have penetrated modern
Western rural society far further than is often thought. For instance,
in a remote Dorset village, a young man who had grown up there, but
been away for a while, said rather ruefully that he did not know the
people who were living two doors from him. Even in a country
village the neighbour relations have far more of the impersonal quality
often attributed solely to urban living than is commonly realised. I
have referred to such a hypothesis, even though it may be unacceptable,
in order to emphasise the relation between nearness or separation of
residence and maintenance or obliteration of kin relations. A ny
investigation of kinship in an urban environment soon brings out the
great degree of variation in relations with kin. The reasons for this
are complex, and their force in various types of kin situation is not
entirely clear. But among the correlates of the varying recognition and
maintenance of kin ties would appear to be the following: residential
accessibility; common economic interests, as in occupation, or in
property-holding; composition of household; composition of elementary
family, especially as regards that of the sibling group; the biological
range of persons available for kin recognition; the existence of key
personalities in the kin field, to take the initiative in kin contacts; and
the phase of development in which any given family finds itself.
Through these combinations of circumstances runs the element of
personal selection, leading again to the question of what regularities
can be discerned.

The problem and the origin of the study. It was with some of these
considerations in mind that a group of post-graduate students and
staff from the Department of Anthropology of the London School of
Economics and Political Science began a kinship inquiry towards the
end of 1947. The problem arose empirically in a seminar on kinship
in which data of a traditional anthropological kind from primitive
societies were being used. When for the purpose of comparison and
illustration some member of the seminar tried to cite data from
English kinship, two points became clear. The first was that the views
of the members of the seminar— including the British ones— as to
what English kinship practices were differed considerably. These
differences seemed to have some reference to their individual social
backgrounds, but not necessarily to be very closely correlated with
these. The second point was that practically all the evidence was
imprecise and impressionistic. It gave little indication of more than
individual family patterns and specific local experience.
It was therefore decided to try to collect more precise first-hand
material by ordinary anthropological methods. For lack of time
and finance, the inquiry was restricted to a single neighourhood in
South London and to a relatively few cases. Through dispersion
of the group and increasing other claims on the time of the few
members available, only preliminary drafts of this South London
material were made. In 1954 it was decided to enlarge the scope of the
study. Rather than return immediately to the South London area,
where circumstances had changed, it was decided to seek some com­
parative material from another sector of London society.
In applying his intensive techniques of first-hand research to the
complex conditions of Western society— as yet very tentatively— the
anthropologist has of necessity to break up the field. He cannot make
the holistic type of appreciation to which he is accustomed in the
primitive society. He must make studies at the village or other small
residential unit level, or in sectors such as minority groups. One might
assume that anthropological research on kinship in British society
must proceed by differentiating groups, categories, or situations and
making intensive analysis of the kinship structure and functioning to
be found in them. Comparative analysis is obviously desirable. For
example, one may compare the kinship system of a rural community
with that of an urban or industrial community; that of ‘working-class’
people with that of ‘middle-class’ people— perhaps using as class
criteria an occupational index along the lines adopted by D . V . Glass
and his colleagues.20 Or, using the criterion of residential scale and
concentration, the kinship system of dwellers in a block of flats may
be compared with that of the occupants of a dispersed housing estate.
In terms of situation, the reactions of persons struck by disaster21 may
be compared in kinship terms with those of the same, or similar,
people at a time of normal social life. Again, the changes in kinship
terminology and in the relations between members of a kinship unit
may be compared in historical perspective on a time scale. Further,
the kinship system of members of specific ethnic groups, or religious
groups or categories, may be compared with one another.
It was to the last-named type of problem that attention was turned.
A research worker was engaged on a full-time basis to take up the
study of kinship of one of the ethnic minority sections of London’s
population. Partly because of the field worker’s fluent command of
Italian, residents of Italian origin were selected. In order to produce
material which would be as closely comparable with that of the
earlier study as possible, the same general methods of inquiry were
followed.
The two studies here presented then involve some comparison of
this kind. But the comparison is not as direct as could be wished.
Both are of urban categories of residence in London. But there are
many contrasts. The South Borough folk live in a concentrated
residential block, a set of flats. The Italianates live dispersed in
various parts of London. Linked with this is a greater class dispersion
of the Italianates, most being more obviously middle class in occupa­
tional terms. In terms of religious association, it is the South Borough
folk who are dispersed whereas the Italianates are unified, on the whole
strongly so, by their membership of the Catholic Church. But the
most significant contrasting factor is that of recognised origin.
20 Glass, 1954.
21 Young, 19 54.
Whereas the South Borough folk are a mixture of local residents of
long standing in the borough with ancestors of local or at least London
origin and of immigrants from other parts of the British Isles, the
Italianates are, without exception, recognised by themselves and by
others as of foreign European origin. The comparison is imprecise,
not allowing of the isolation of a single variable. But the position of
the Italianates as an ethnic minority, with several associated social and
economic characters, is a significant element in the interpretation of
differences in their kinship system from that of the people of South
Borough.
The major proposition from which each inquiry started was as
follows: that the elementary family of parents and young children is
not, even in Western urban conditions, an isolated social unit; though
spatially separate as a rule from its kin it consistently tends to be
brought into wider kin relations. Once this was supported by
preliminary inquiry the problem was to see what the range of extra­
familial relations was, and how far it could be genealogically demon­
strated. What were the most significant relationships, structurally and
organisationally for the members of the households selected for study?
Were these relationships recognised in terms of definite kin groups,
both conceptually and for social action? I f so, did these group mem­
bers use kinship relations as a basis for the recognition or the operation
of other relationships— as, for example, of an economic or ritual
kind?
This problem was not merely an academic exercise in analysis. It
was found to be an issue on which the people involved in these
relationships had views which they were very willing to express. From
the character of these views and the moral connotation attached to the
notion of kinship obligations in many of them, it could be inferred
that these kinship relations were important for an understanding of
social behaviour.

Method . It must be emphasised that neither investigation is pre­

sented as a full-scale kinship study. Both are offered here as
preliminary efforts, issued because of their interest to other workers.
In the first study, a large block of flats was selected in a working-
class area in South London. This block had the advantage of con­
centration and accessibility from the London School of Economics by
evening visits. The block was selected largely on the advice of a
social worker who knew the borough well. It will be referred to here
as H.B.B., and the borough will be known as South Borough. The
H .B.B. buildings dated from 1877 and were erected by a philanthropic
Trust. There are 256 flats in H .B.B., but the kinship relations of the
members of only twenty-five households were closely studied, though
material was collected on a number of other households as well, apart
from much background data. It is estimated that at least seventy-five
persons gave kinship information. In selecting units for study an
attempt was made to get elementary families of different size and age
distribution, and of varying length of residence in H .B.B. in order to
study possible variation in kin relationship. But there was no sys­
tematic attempt at a statistical distribution of types of households. A
purely random selection— ‘knocking on doors’— was rejected, mainly on
advice from H .B.B. residents, lest it create trouble for the team. (One
reason given was that there were some associations of unmarried people
living as husband and wife and inquiry into their kinship might be
taken as insulting.)22 The group of investigators numbered in all six­
teen, working at different periods. Twelve were able to make fairly
systematic inquiries in the field; three others were casual visitors, and
one concentrated upon the analysis of such records as were available
elsewhere, especially a census of flat occupants kept by the Trust
administration managing the buildings.
The field work itself lasted from October 1947 to October 1949, but
intermittently, in South Borough. None of the investigators could
spare more time than an average of one or two nights a week and there
were periods when no inquiry was under way. None of the investi­
gators could manage to live in the buildings or elsewhere in South
Borough, though this was mooted as a possibility by one of them.
The inquiry suffered from the lack of consistent field work because of
this.
T h e data of the Italianate study were obtained by one investigator
working full time from January 1954 to M ay 1954. As with the South
Borough study, no method of random sampling was used and no door-
to-door canvassing. As the research worker was personally acquainted
at the outset with only a small number of Italianates, contacts with
persons whose kinship could be studied were obtained through private
introduction. Unlike the situation in South Borough, members of
the Italianate community live widely dispersed over London; hence,
whereas most of the South Borough research was done in the homes
of the people, much of the Italianate research was done in the place of
work of the subject. This was facilitated by the occupational situa­
tion. Information about the kinship organisation of twenty-five house­
holds was obtained in detail. In nine of these cases individuals were
interviewed singly; in the other sixteen full households were consulted.
Each household varied in size from a minimum of three (the age of
the child sometimes prevented interviewing) to a maximum in one
household of nine persons (of whom six were interviewed). It is
estimated that at least fifty persons gave information about their
kinship.
As far as possible, the methods used in both studies were those of
ordinary field anthropology; intensive interviews, participant observa­
tion, close recording of conversation and of observed behaviour. The
principal instrument used was the genealogy, and the collection of
genealogies was made the focus for the investigation. This had
several advantages. It gave a concrete frame of reference to the
22 Opinion on the wisdom of this advice was not unanimous on the team
and some members would have preferred to have tried a random selection.
investigators and enabled them to write down at the same time much
information which was ancillary to the recording of names in the
genealogy. It was also a demonstration of the essentially neutral
character of the kinship inquiry. Of great importance was the fact that
a visible product emerged, ‘a family tree\ This was usually impressive
to the household concerned and helped to dispel suspicion. In most
cases, when a fair copy was made and presented to them it was very
welcome, not only as a record of their efforts but as something of
value in itself.
It was not possible to check all the genealogical data collected, but
there are several reasons for belief that most of the information is
accurate. In the South Borough study, the census of flat occupants
kept by the administering Trust gave independent confirmation of
household composition and of other details such as occupation and
arrival dates. Some of these data went back for forty years and fitted
well with the results of our first-hand inquiry which had been well
under way before the flat census became available. Again, in a
number of instances, cross-checks were obtained from kin who were
not members of the households studied, or friends of the household
provided checking information about its members. In the Italianate
study, special aspects were also discussed with other persons who were
neither kin nor friends but were in a position to give general back­
ground data or information on specific problems. A s a more concrete
index, photographs kept by members of the household, as well as lists
of their correspondents (as in greetings cards exchanged with their
kin), supplemented the genealogical data. Moreover, in practically
every instance in the South Borough study, and in most instances in
the Italianate study, the interviews covered a period of weeks for each
household,23 and the consistent information gathered confirmed and
expanded the data originally given. Anthropological experience has
demonstrated that over a period of weeks it is difficult for an informant
consistently to give false information, unless he has some definite
object in view, and there was no reason to suspect such in these cases.
Finally, the investigators were able to observe the operation of many
kinship ties in practice by seeing various subjects at work or in their
recreation.
In both studies, the investigators spent much time with the people
in their homes and on various occasions attended dances, school socials,
weddings, and mothers’ meetings. In the South Borough study, some
investigators also joined their subjects in darts matches in the public

23 In the South Borough study, visits were made in some cases to the same
household by different investigators. T h e time occupied varied from two to
about a score of interviews. In the Italianate study the time spent with each
person varied from a single interview to four interviews. A minimum time
of ten hours of interviewing was found to be necessary for determining the
kinship of the members of a household; and the maximum time in one
instance reached nearly twenty-five hours. (For the Italianates, all inter­
viewing was carried out in Italian except when English was preferred by the
informant.)
house; one gave a talk to a children’s Christmas treat. The observa­
tion of actual behaviour was relatively small by comparison with that
used by the anthropologist ordinarily in the field. Nevertheless, it was
in toto considerable and served as a very definite proof that the
material obtained in the genealogies had a substantial correspondence
with behaviour.
In one respect the investigators did not follow conventional
anthropological usage— they did not concentrate on the systematic
study of kinship terminology. This was not ignored, but in the time
available it was felt preferable to give content to the genealogical
material primarily through the non-verbal kinship behaviour.
Certain difficulties were encountered in the course of the investi­
gation. In the South Borough inquiry, initial statements about the
interest of the investigators were received with friendliness but with
caution. In reply to soundings made on behalf of the investigators by
some residents who had become their friends, some mistrust was
shown. One answer was, ‘How do you know they’re not coming to
your place to find out about your business?’ Another answer, from a
woman, was, ‘I don’t want anyone prying into my past life’. M is­
conceptions of this kind, equivalent to a refusal by ordinary interview
technique, usually meant that the person concerned was left alone,
though in one case at least further explanation made them change
their view and they consented to give information. While the investi­
gators expected to meet attitudes of this type, they did not anticipate
a suspicion which apparently arose in the mind of one resident and by
him communicated to others, that there might be covert political
motives in the inquiry. (This was a hazy notion that the investigators
might be trying to form some kind of ‘cell’ of unspecified type.) A
special meeting of several of these residents was therefore arranged
and after frank discussion they agreed that their misgivings were
dispelled.
In general, the inquiry was explained as arising out of an interest
in ‘families’. It was explained that the investigators were interested in
finding out whether there was any truth in a common allegation that
the family in London was breaking up, that the little group of parents
and children lived without much care or interest in their other relatives.
Was it true that the old type ‘big family’ had gone? Was it true that
English fam ily life was ‘going down the drain’ ? Was it also true that
when people moved to another area they usually lost touch with their
relatives? Initially, comment showed a wide distribution of views, and
varying attitudes of concern. As the study proceeded, the residents
interviewed showed growing interest and gave considerable help. In
most cases, indeed, the investigators were endowed in their eyes with
some of the prestige of ‘science’ and partially became instructors in
kinship systematics during the interviews. In the Italianate study,
the inquiry was stated in much the same terms; there were also
indications that certain members of households were not always willing
to state the full facts about either themselves or some of their kin.
Again, while circumstances in the South Borough study practically
forbad any interviewing of people at work, in the Italianate study
this was often a convenient approach. (But in a few cases the in­
formant proved himself to be either too apathetic or too busy to give
the inquiry his full attention.)
Another methodological point arose and finally turned out to be an
asset rather than a difficulty. In the beginning, both in the South
Borough study and in the Italianate study, some attempt was made to
ascertain the kinship knowledge of individuals as distinct from that
of members of families or households as a collectivity. The range of
kinship knowledge possessed by individuals is a pertinent question. In
the South Borough study it was pursued rather unsystematically by
several methods. The kin knowledge of persons in the household was
set down separately, as consistently as possible, noting for instance the
differences in knowledge of husband and wife, mother and daughter.
In one case, two investigators following different leads began without
knowledge to chart the genealogy of two brothers living in separate
flats. (The two records tallied fairly closely and no significant
difference emerged.)
Another investigator experimented with children. He set on a
plaque small models of the ‘lead soldier’ type sexed and labelled with
the names of various kin. He then found out from the child subject
which of these he (or she) was acquainted with, which he had heard
of, and— if he had to exercise preference, as in invitations to a party
—whom he would invite first. With one boy this experiment was
repeated for consistency, which it showed to fair degree. In the
Italianate study, the interviewing of the members of a household
tended to follow a standardised procedure. Each member was asked
to give the extent of his knowledge of his kin, consanguinai and affinal,
by systematic questioning in the conventional genealogical way.
Information supplied by all the household members was then brought
together in a single genealogical table and the differences in knowledge
between household members brought out. In general, in both the
South Borough and the Italianate studies, it was often most difficult
to prevent other members of the household present from answering
questions asked of the person interviewed or from prompting the
person. Differences in knowledge could not therefore often be
accurately measured. It was also found that changes were frequently
made in subsequent interviews as the result of discussions between
members of the household when the interviewer had gone or with
other kin outside of the household. The aim of the investigation was
not an historical one— to obtain the most correct record of genealogical
relationships that could be compiled— but sociologically to interpret
genealogical knowledge in terms of actual behaviour. So consultation
of extra household kin, as in the case of one Italianate by writing to
his kin in Italy to complete a genealogy, were not encouraged. But
this tendency to consultation brought out two points. One was the
genuine interest in the inquiry of most of the people consulted. The
 other was that the kinship information in the possession of an indi­
vidual is not a static quantity. It is not normally exercised by and
for him alone, but tends to be drawn from and contributed to a house­
hold pool. This pooling is a very important aspect of actual kin
behaviour. It is the kin of the household then, not of the individual,
that are socially most significant. This was demonstrated by the fact
that in a number of cases a wife knew as much or, so she said, more
about her husband’s ‘people’ than he did. Phrased in other terms this
might be put as a paradox— a spouse having a greater knowledge of
her affinal kin than her partner’s knowledge of his consanguinai kin!
But such an expression would unduly itemise the field. Husband and
wife share their kin; they tend to act together in kin relations.
Something more must be said about the nature of the sample in
each study. In the South Borough study, choice was made of dwellers
in a housing block primarily for convenience. The method of selection
of households for inquiry was twofold. One way was to follow up
contacts established on a friendly basis with residents aware of the
nature and aims of the study. These residents had themselves been
approached, in the first place, through the social worker already
mentioned. In turn, these residents handed on the investigators to
others, either with or without specific recommendation. The other
way was to use one member of the team as a ‘contact man’. He acted
as intermediary for other investigators after he had come to know
certain families and judged their suitability for interview. Similar
techniques were followed in the case of the Italianate study. These
two methods illustrate the arbitrariness of the selection. It is con­
ceivable that since the choice for interview presumably fell on house­
holds whose members were well disposed towards strangers and
interested in the kinship problem, they might also be persons who got
on well with their kin and maintained wider connections than the
members of the households not interviewed. On the other hand, they
might have been persons who tended to ignore kinship ties in favour
of local friendship, or they might have been persons who prefer
strangers to local acquaintances or kin. There seemed to be instances
of each of these possibilities among the households studied, but
comparison seems to show that there is no evidence of any such general
bias among the various households investigated. But the number of
households in South Borough runs into tens of thousands and the
number investigated was extremely small. Indeed, there is no means
of knowing even the approximate statistical relationship between the
number of persons or households studied and the number in London.24
This means that the results of the two studies are extremely tentative.
Although systematic in many respects within the cases studied, their
generalisations cannot be regarded as representative of South Borough
in the one case, or the Italianate community in the other. On the other
hand, they can rightly be put forward as hypotheses suggesting signi­
ficant patterns in kinship behaviour in urban conditions, and significant
24 Fo r numbers of Italianates in London, see p. 69.
differences between the behaviour of different categories of urban
residents. It is from this point of view that the decision was taken to
publish the results.
In conclusion one may point to the vitality and significance of
extra-familial kinship in those sectors of London society studied. One
proof of this is in the interest which these kinship studies have aroused
in those who have participated in them.
In any society, genealogical tie by itself is no basis for social
relations. It is a conceptualisation of this tie in terms of a social bond,
often with moral force, which gives it its significance. As such, one
may say that the genealogical tie in those sectors of London society
studied is the predisposing feature for a certain set of social relation­
ships. Extra-familial kinship in that society provides for the identifica­
tion of persons. It is an instrument of communication, giving content
and meaning to many types of social action. It is then a frame of
reference for social action and also offers to an important degree
criteria of value in types of social exchanges. Furthermore, it provides
social support on occasions which are regarded by the participants as
among the most important in their personal affairs.
K IN SH IP IN SO U TH BOROUGH

drafted by
Raymond Firth and Judith Djamour

material collected by staff and post-graduate

students of the Department of Anthropology,
London School of Economics and Political
Science

(1947-1949)
 K IN SH IP IN SO U TH BOROUGH

South Borough is a London borough characterised by a strong

community consciousness. The inhabitants refer to the districts north
of the Thames as being ‘over the water’, and a contrast, real or
imagined, is drawn between the prices, fashions, and even morality,
of ‘up there’ and ‘down here’ . The West End is alien territory. Even
neighbouring boroughs south of the Thames are clearly separated from
South Borough. One elderly informant showed considerable know­
ledge of the historical geography of the borough, based partly on what
his schoolteacher had told him, and partly on his own experience in
youth. His wife’s sister’s husband, who was listening, commented: ‘I
don’t know any of this, but then I was born in C . . .’— which was a
borough near by. The traditional occupations of South Borough are
associated especially with the riverside trade. A map of 1799 shows
wharfage, tanning and fellmongering, woolstapling, and glue manufac­
ture. Some of these trades, as well as brushmaking, established later,
have continued until the present day, but in diminished volume; most
of the factories have moved away. Nowadays, a large proportion of
the men work as skilled and unskilled labour in the docks, in leather
factories, in the building trade as carpenters, masons, bricklayers, and
plasterers. Others are employed as lorry drivers, checkers in tea and
other factories, printers, and ordinary factory hands. South Borough
women also work out of the home, often when there is no strong
economic drive to do so, and when they have quite young children.
Some are employed as cleaners. One woman, nearing 60 years of age,
admitted that she did not need to do cleaning, but now that her
daughter was married, and her husband at work all day, she got rest­
less with nothing to do, and so went out to work herself. Young
women, unmarried or married without children, have full-time jobs
as hands in factories or printing works, or labelling bottles in a wine
depot, or as secretaries, typists, or book-keepers. Women with young
children may take a part-time job, as a kitchen hand in a school or
restaurant. Few children nowadays adopt their parents’ occupation;
most occupations—save perhaps with dockers— do not now reinforce
kin structure.

The background (H .B.B .). The residents of H .B.B., though similar

in most respects to people living in a South London street, have a
more definite focus of unity. They are South Borough people, but
they are also H .B.B. tenants. They have a connecting link in their
common relationship to the landlord Trust, and to its superintendent,
who lives in the Buildings. They share, if they wish, the common
facilities provided in the services such as bath houses and a club
house, in which there are sewing classes, ‘social’ evenings, and
Christmas parties for the children, organised by the residents. Apart
from these communal links, co-operative arrangements for cleaning
landings, lavatories, etc., bring the inhabitants of each set of flats on
a landing together.
This does not mean that all the tenants, numbering about 680
in 1947, know one another and constitute an effective social group.
M any of them claimed that they maintained very little relationship
with others in the Buildings, even their neighbours. A frequent com­
ment was, ‘we keep ourselves to ourselves, and then we can’t get into
trouble’. Some of them said they ‘never bothered with the social’,
others that they had never been inside the club house. (The existence
of at least five other clubs, mostly mission-run, as well as a lively
Parent-Teachers’ Association meeting regularly in the adjoining school,
offered alternative facilities. For some men and women the ‘Rose’ or
the ‘Wheatsheaf’ provided the most desirable amenities.)
As far as closer relationships were concerned, the individual flat
remains the dwellers’ castle, outer doors to flats are usually shut, and
there is little free-and-easy visiting of one another’s premises. ‘On the
stairs, if the door is ajar and you happen to look in, they ask you what
the b------h------- you are looking at!’ There are usually five flats on
each landing, and the cleaning of the communal tap-and-sink, lavatory,
and landing, floor and windows, is done by the tenants of each flat
in turn, one week out of five. But this can be a source of friction as
well as an occasion for co-operative arrangement. ‘You always get
someone that never does it. It’s the same on nearly every landing;
there’s always someone who spoils it.’ Each flat has its own day in
the week for using the laundry facilities, and no washing can be hung
out on Saturday or Sunday. I f anyone misses her day she has ‘had it’
— unless she can get someone else to let her use her day. In other
words, the need for sharing tends to divide and individualise house­
holds as much as bring them together.
In contrast to this fierce assertive separateness in ordinary mundane
affairs is a sense of communal unity in crisis. Some neighbourly help
is often given, and communal help may be encountered in instances
where only conventional sympathy might have been expected. One
informant reported that: ‘They all seem to help one another . . . if a
person dies like, always a couple comes round with a sheet to buy a
wreath. Threepences, sixpences, a shilling—that’s a help to whoever
it is in misfortune.’ This informant had himself contributed to about
six such collections in the seven years he had been living in the
Buildings and in no instance had he been acquainted with any of the
deceased. In this, some persons are recognised as community leaders,
and stimulate group activities between neighbours.

Households. The census of H .B.B . taken at the end of 1946 by the

management of the buildings is summarised in Table 1.
 Occupants of Households
Individual occupants— Women (43 widows) 55
M en (4 widowers) 6

Married pairs, no children 44

Elementary families 104
Denuded families (father dead) 30
(mother dead) 4
34
Families with added kin 13
Total number 256

Several characteristics of H .B.B. households are made clear by the

table. The elementary family is the most frequent household type,
followed next by individual occupants and then by the households of
married pairs. Households of other kinds are relatively few. It is
obvious that there is no effective tradition for kin, however closely
related, to live with the members of an elementary family and form an
extended family. It is significant that at the end of 1946, during the
acute housing shortage, only thirteen flats out of 256, or about five per
cent, contained extended households including persons not members
of the constituent elementary family. Another striking feature is the
high number of women living by themselves. Although more than half
of the flats occupied by single women had more than one room
(twenty-five were two-roomed, and four were three-roomed), the
women had not taken in any kin to share the cost of the flat or to
give companionship. The fact that there were nine women to every
man among the individual occupants may be explained (apart from
the higher rate of longer life among women in England) by the idea
among the English that housekeeping is women’s work. Whereas a
man is thought to need the services of a woman, either a female
relative or a landlady, a woman is regarded as being able to live alone.
Moreover, in South Borough, the strong local custom that every
woman goes out to work and earns at least part of her keep— even
when old, or with young children to look after— no doubt facilitates
the solitary position of the widow whose children are all married and
established in separate households.
In view of the strong community consciousness of the residents of
H.B.B., references may be made to their ethnic composition as
illustrated by their surnames. Superficially, to judge from these, the
dwellers of H .B.B . show a surprising homogeneity. Some diversity
is introduced by a few isolated Scots, Welsh, and Irish surnames (the
holders of which have come fairly recently from their respective
countries), but these are not common. For the most part our study
was conducted among people who bore ‘good old English names’.
These names include: Bagshaw, Boxali, Burridge, Bussley, Cockerton,
Dickson, Duckman, Dyett, Edwards, Glasscock, Gosling, Hawtin,
Hazeltine, Holland, Hughes, Izzard, Loker, Pepper, Richardson, Rider,
Sewell, and Skellet.
No particular attitudes of acceptance or exclusion were noticed on
the basis of ethnic differences of surname. On the other hand, it is
significant to note that we are dealing with a population which, unlike
the Italianates discussed in Chapter I I I, distinguish themselves as, if
anything, members of the majority and do not feel that they need one
another as support against the outside world.
Recognition of the kinship principle . The first question to pose is,
do the inhabitants in H .B.B. confine their kinship behaviour to their
own household or elementary family? I f not, in what kinds of contexts
does the kinship principle emerge, and in what terms is it recognised?
The simplest way of illustrating this is by a series of examples from
our empirical records, as nearly raw data.
M rs. W . has a mother, a married sister and a mother-in-law all living
in the neighbourhood of H .B.B. She said that in the winter of 1946 when
she was short of coal, it was very handy to have her relatives living nearby
and to be able to borrow from them, she returning the favour when the
need arose. She pointed out that some of the H .B.B. residents had coal
lockers, but others did not, and it made it very difficult for these to put by
reserves of coal for the winter. When asked if it would not have been
more convenient to have borrowed coal from one of her neighbours in the
Buildings, she said that she always preferred to turn ‘to her own*, and
not to strangers. M r. and M rs. W . always celebrated Christmas by first
paying a visit to her mother, and ended up by visiting his mother.

W illy X ., widowed during the war, had taken his sister, her husband
and children into his flat (just outside the Buildings). ‘It works very well.
She does the housework and shopping, and I just have to pay for my keep/
H e regretted having no children; when told it was perhaps just as well
since he had no wife to look after them, he replied that his sisters would
have done that for him, and brought them up as their own. Speaking of
some other kin, he said, ‘O f course you get lots of quarrels— between
sisters, for example— but they all come together for a wedding/
M artha Y . lived with her mother in one H .B.B. flat, while a married
sister, with her husband and child, lived in ‘the next door block* of the
Buildings. In 19 47 there was an arrangement of ‘helping out*. T h e sister
brought some of her rations in to the mother, and they all ate some meals
there from pooled resources. Martha said that she had two married
sisters, but was much more fond of the one just mentioned as living
nearby. But proximity had nothing to do with it; they were always ‘closer*,
even as children. T h ey had always gone on holiday together. In the
summer of 19 4 7 she, the sister, and the sister*s small child had gone to
Yarmouth together; the sister’s husband had been unable or unwilling to
go. M artha Y . had also a married brother who with his wife, two young
children and mother-in-law occupied one of the H .B.B. flats. T h e brother
and M artha were at a ‘social* together but did not greet each other. One
of the neighbours commented in the conversation with Martha, ‘You two
don’t have much time for each other/ M artha and her mother have no
dealings with the brother and his wife; they disapprove of the wife. ‘She’s
not up to our standard,* explained Martha— she could have made a lovely
home for her husband, but she was always out with her mother.

Frank Z . had a son aged 1 1 , who had taken up boxing, and who went to
train one evening at the Allied Printers*. H ow did he get there? ‘Through
 a relation of mine; he lives at B., works in the Post Office and trains next
door.* Who was he? ‘He married the sister of a wife of one of m y w ife’s
brothers . . . I suppose he’s my wife’s nephew.’
M olly V .’s father had died when she was three years old. H er mother
had married for a second time, long ago, and M olly had several half-sisters.
‘I call them sisters— it’s the same mother, so it’s the same, isn’t it?’ Her
stepfather had survived her mother, and M olly looked after him, in her
own home, after she married; her half-sisters did not. ‘H e’s always been
with us— and I ’ve had to keep him ever since. T h e y don’t bother about
him— and yet he’s their father as much as mine.’
These illustrations, representing a considerable amount of similar
material on what H .B.B . people say about their kin relations, embody
some of the main themes of kinship behaviour in H .B .B .: contiguity
of some kin; close relations with the mother; common responsibility
for children; differentials in sibling ties; suspicion of sister-in -
law/daughter-in-law; vagueness about exact relationship. These are
by no means general, but they are common.
Now let us examine the kinship field more systematically.
The kinship system. The regularities in such kinship behaviour, and
their inter-relationships, as will be demonstrated, allow one to speak
of a kinship system. What are its characteristics, and especially its
structure? We can conveniently start with examination of degree of
knowledge of persons about their kin.
Knowledge of kin . The first point to note is the shallow genealogical
depth of kinship knowledge. Among all the households studied, the
greatest depth found was one instance of seven generations in all,
ascending to the informant’s father’s father’s father. This case was
exceptional, and the information was obtained only because of the
special interest of the informant who wrote to other kin for it. The
normal depth is five or six generations in all, being usually two
generations, ascendant and descendant from Ego, when Ego is an
informant of middle age. Statements about long family trees proved
to be exaggerated. When told by affinal kin in H .B.B . about one
genealogy which stretched back for three hundred years and was in a
family Bible, the investigator found when it was produced that there
was no entry earlier than the middle of the nineteenth century. The
earliest entry related to the mother’s mother’s brother of the informant.
The second point to note is that kinship range has relatively full
lateral extension. There is a tendency to use the available categories
fairly fully. Consonant with a two-generation depth from the in­
formant, the limit of the consanguineal kin range is normally Ego’s
second cousin, once or twice removed. On the affinal side, the limit
is more varied, but as a rule does not go beyond the immediate
descendants of spouse’s siblings, or the persons married to Ego’s
consanguineal kin.
One might expect that kinship knowledge might be extended
laterally to the greatest extent among one’s own generation. On the
whole this tends to be so when the informant is relatively young, or
in early middle age. Then knowledge of kin tapers off—for the
generation below, because they comprise a high proportion of children,
whose numbers are still increasing, and for the generation above,
because their numbers are decreasing through death and long absence.
With advancing age, the kin circle at one’s own generation level tends
to draw in; recognition tends to become more circumscribed with loss
of all effective contact. But this must be qualified by the fact that
some elderly persons, especially women, tend to acquire a wide
knowledge of kin and facts about kin in the generations below them,
as they follow the marriages, births, and doings of the younger people.
Thirdly, although this is essentially a narrow-range system, the investi­
gators were struck by its amplitude— the actual number of kin recog­
nised. The genealogies collected in the inquiry reveal that the total
number of relatives reckoned in the kin universe of any household is
usually more than one hundred. For the twelve households for whom
data are most complete the kin universe varied between thirty-seven
and 246, with an average figure of 146.1 Such figures were surprising
to both investigators and informants,2 neither of whom expected them
to be so high. Asked to estimate in advance how many kin they
thought they could count, most informants would guess: ‘a dozen or
two’, or ‘ about twenty-five’, and were incredulous when told they
would probably be able to count up as many as three times that
number.
A fourth point is the inclusion of dead kin among those cited. This
has several functions. Memory of dead kin is part of the social
personality of an informant; the dead serve as a focus for sentiment;
they are links of justification for active social ties with other kin. All
the genealogical material collected in the survey contained some
references to dead kin. Of 1,15 0 kin cited in a set of nine genealogies
from the families studied, just over 184, or approximately fifteen per
cent, were dead kin. About two-thirds of these dead kin were con-
sanguineal and one-third affinai kin. It might be thought that
preservation of the memory of dead kin would be on the whole a
correlate of the degree to which they serve as links between informants
and other kin still living; that most of the dead kin appearing in the
genealogies would be uncles and aunts, with whose children social
relations were still active. This is not so. O f the dead kin cited, only
thirty-two per cent were of the ‘link’ or ‘channeF type; the remainder
were without issue, and of various generations. In other words, they
are remembered for reasons that may be irrelevant to the practical
issues of continuing social relations. The percentage of dead kin cited
1 T h e kin universe here includes all known immediate affines of consan-
guines, and consanguines of affines. But these categories have been very
incompletely recorded and are not full.
2 T h e figures make some qualification desirable to Radcliffe-Brown’s
contrast between the ‘narrow-range English kinship system* and a wide-range
system in which Ego has ‘several hundred recognised relatives by kinship
and marriage*. T h e upper limits of the South Borough data show that even a
narrow-range system can approach this (Radcliffe-Brown, 19 52, p. 52).
by individual families lay between ten per cent and twenty-five per
cent, and was not in general proportionate to the size of the kinship
universe of each. But there was a tendency for the proportion of ‘link*
or ‘channel’ dead kin to be considerably higher in the families with
the largest kin universe. ^
These figures of dead kin cited must be taken as socially significant
rather than genealogically exact. Just as biological paternity is less
important than social paternity to the anthropologist, so also is
biological death less important than social death. Moreover, in many
cases the kin knowledge of the informant does not go so far as to be
precise as to whether a kinsman is alive or dead. The social effects
are equivalent, save in one respect— the socially ‘dead’ occasionally
manage a resurrection, by appearing on one’s doorstep and claiming
kinship, as happened occasionally during the Second World War.
One must stress here the fact that all the adult members of a house­
hold unit were not equally knowledgeable, nor were they equally
interested in reckoning kin. Moreover, much of the information was
gathered after the informant had appealed to other members of his
kin group for additional details. In many of the households studied
there are what might be termed pivotal kin, relatives who act as
linking points in the kinship structure by their interest in, and know­
ledge of, genealogical ramifications. Such pivotal kin hold more
threads of genealogical connections in their heads than anyone else,
and consequently were able to supply much information when the need
for it arose. The genealogies collected in South Borough, therefore,
although ostensibly centred round one adult informant, Ego, were
often in fact centred round Ego and Ego’s spouse and/or their chil­
dren. The genealogies often included the knowledge of other members
of the household, and were sometimes completed with the help of
Ego’s pivotal kin. In a sense, then, ‘Ego’ is a composite entity, a
familial social person. It might be argued that this was not a very
satisfactory way of finding out the total range of kin of any one person,
and that a more reliable method would have been to place the informant
in one room in isolation with the investigator, and without previous
warning to question him as to all the persons he could enumerate as
being related to him by consanguinity or affinity. However, apart
from the difficulty of arranging for such a test, it did not seem to the
investigators that this was a fruitful method of investigation. For
practical purposes, the informant’s range of kin is not simply the
total number of kin known to him at any one moment. It also includes
the kinsman he might reasonably expect to come into contact with
or know about in various situations, through the intermediacy of
other members of the hoùsehold, or of his parents or other close kin
with whom he is in constant contact. F or instance, during the Second
World War, a young man knocked at the door of an H .B.B. flat where
he was unknown and introduced himself: ‘I am Ella’s boy from New­
castle.’ He was made welcome and given a meal and a bed for the night.
Similarly, if an H .B.B . resident had to go outside London, say to
Birmingham, his close kin would draw upon their knowledge and
suggest a visit to the home of a kinsman there. This often occurred
during the war, but does not seem to be only a war-time phenomenon.
Another characteristic of the South Borough kinship system is the
very high frequency of women who have a greater total kinship know­
ledge than men. In one instance, a wife knew more than her husband
did about her husband’s kin, although she had not been previously
related to them. This emphasis on the importance of women in the
South Borough kinship system also seems to extend to affines. When
one of the investigators asked a husband who had been deserted by
his wife to whom he would turn for help, the reply was: (i) to his
sisters, ‘who would do anything for him’, and (2) to his wife’s mother
and sisters. However, this emphasis is to be taken as a tendency
rather than an accepted norm, for dislike of a female relative may
effectively inhibit this development in the kinship structure.

Kinship grouping. In South Borough, as in English kinship generally,

a primary element in the structure is what may be termed the
patrinominal principle of kin grouping. A wife takes the surname of
her husband, and the children the surname of their father, and this
gives an orientation to kinship thinking. The use of a patronymic
surname may not in itself indicate any particular group formation.
For example, the use of the father’s name by Arabs, Malays, and many
other Muslims shows the relation among him and his children in an
elementary family, but tells nothing about the families of brothers.
It does not indicate lineality. It is where the transmission of patro­
nymics has become hereditary that the basis of wider kin group rela­
tions is overtly indicated. The English system is ‘patrilineal’ in this
limited sense.
In the English system, the patrinominal principle is emphasised by
regarding surname as a right and privilege associated with legitimisa-
tion by marriage of the mother, and by relating various legal provisions
in regard to inheritance, etc., thereto. Moreover, in social practice
patronymics are used as collective terms for sets of kin— the
‘ Smiths . . .’
But in this matter of names there is one peculiarity— the surnames
of some affinals may not be known though the persons are well known.
This first came to notice when an investigator recording a genealogy
asked for the surname of one Albert, who was a sister’s daughter’s
husband of the informant. The informant replied, ‘I couldn’t tell
no more than fly what Albert’s name is. All I know is his name is
Albert.’ The sister and her husband lived in Liverpool and her
daughter and husband in Crewe. But the families met from time to
time on a ‘once a year visit’ . This situation was found to be common.
T o the question, ‘You couldn’t write to them then, since you don’t
know their surnames?’ the answer was given, ‘We do it through Aunt
Maggie. She will forward letters. I f they want to come to stay, they
write to us.’ It was explained that such cases occurred because the
husband or wife, as the case may be, may be introduced only by
Christian name— ‘This is Jim ’. One does not say ‘This is Jim Smith’ !
In this particular genealogy four such cases were noted, three being
of male affines. Others were recorded in other genealogies. This is in
line with an attitude of acceptance of persons in the immediate context
vouched for by kin. It is their kinship position, not their general status
and position, that is important. It indicates of course a relative
weakness in the patrinominal system as a group demarcator.
The question of kinship grouping has especial reference to the
critical role of wife/mother in the system. It is clear that this woman
is a key figure in South Borough kinship. In terms of emotional
relationship, communication, and services (see below) the tie between
a mother and her children is normally very strong, and tends to
remain so throughout her life. Mother and married daughter are
commonly in frequent, often daily, contact, and a married son also
tends to visit his mother at least weekly, if possible. Continuity
between households forming a kinship network is usually provided
largely by the mother. This is epitomised by the remark of one
informant that ‘in England, at Christmas, all the children and in-laws
go to Mother’s’, and by that of another, ‘Since my mother died, we’ve
all drifted away.’ We might speak then of South Borough kinship
as being matri-centred or matral in action, and in sentiment.3
But how far does this emerge in more crystallised form, perpetuated
from one generation to another, in such manner as to constitute a
system of matrilineal descent groups? The answer from the South
Borough material is clear— it does not do so. Analysis of the genea­
logical material shows that on the whole there tends to be somewhat
more knowledge of maternal kin than of paternal kin, and some
tendency to greater intimacy with them. It could be suggested that
while South Borough kinship is patrinominal, the emotional ties tend
to be more matrilateral. It could also be said that in some contexts
kin groups are matral-patrinominal or uxori-patronominal rather than
simple patrinominal; when a man goes with his wife and children to
a celebration at her old home they are merged into a group known
collectively as the A .’s— the surname of her father. The naming of
such kinship sets— as such aggregates might be called4— can alter
according to the dominant social interest and locale of the gathering.
But these are not groups traced exclusively through women, with any
continuity over generations.
Examination of genealogical data from eighteen informants showed
knowledge of ascendants’ names as given in Table 2.
* Some United States sociologists (vide Parsons, 1949, p. 18 1) have suggested
the term ‘mother-centred families* for households in which the mother has
the dominant role. While South Borough households are reminiscent of this,
it is not the sole dominant characteristic of South Borough kinship, nor does
it imply that the authority of the father has given place entirely to that of
the mother.
4 One informant referred to them as ‘cliques*, and they might be so called
because of their selective, exclusive character.
 Table 2
Knowledge of Ascendants’ Names
Father’s father 6 cases M other’s father 9 cases
Father’s mother 4 „ M other’s mother 10 „

In other words, there is a slight preponderance of record of M M as

compared with M F , and more so as compared with F F and F M . But
F F and M F together are as much as M M and F M . Moreover, while
records also show F F F (twice), F F M , M F F and M F M , there is no
record at all of M M M . In a complete absence of record of mother’s
mother’s mother we cannot speak of matrilineal descent groups, and
it is clear that paternal and maternal lines are well intermingled when
it comes to any depth in the genealogies. The strong matral orienta­
tion is then primarily one of everyday behaviour, not one of systematic
unit recognition, and it is not reflected in any clear-cut genealogical
differentiation.

Differentiation among kin . All the persons known to be kin are not
treated in the same way. Not all are known by name. A cousin
living about one hundred miles away may have children whose names
are not known to the informant, but whose sex is known and who are
recognised as kin. They may enter into a more active relationship
later, and then be known by name. It is useful, therefore, to draw a
distinction between recognised kin and nominated kin. The former
category is made up of all persons who are recognised by the informant
as related to him by consanguinity or affinity, whether known by name
or not. The latter category refers to kin whose names are specifically
known. Table 3 shows the range of recognised kin and nominated kin
for the twelve households mentioned above.
Table 3
Range of K in for Tw elve Households
Households Recognised K in Nominated K in Depth of Generations
A 246 176 6
B 231 140 6
C 223 53 5
D 209 16 2 6
E 16 7 137 4
F 160 12 2 6
G 157 14 4 7
H 126 96 5
I 113 99 6
J 52 43 5
K 45 34 4
L 37 14 5
The reasons for the variation in range include: asymmetry due to
early loss of a parent (as in H), or migration of a parent from home at
an early age (as in I), or isolation of an elderly person whose siblings
and other persons of his own generation have died, and who has lost
connection with descendants and more distant kin (as in L).
 Involved in this question of range is the comparative recognition of
patrilineal and matrilineal kin. It has already been stressed that kin
knowledge is usually greater among the women than the men of the
households which were studied. Th is is also linked with the know­
ledge of consanguineal kin and affines of one’s spouse, since in the
next generation these will form the kin universe of the informant’s
children. The situation varies among the households studied. As
knowledge by a husband of his wife’s kin is apt to be smaller than
that of a wife’s knowledge of her husband’s kin, the stress on the
patrilateral direction might thus seem to be reinforced in the next
generation. But a wife normally knows more of her own kin, affinal as
well as consanguineal, than she does of her husband’s. In House­
hold F , for instance, the informant, a widow since 1929, knew eighty-
seven of her own kin by name and twenty-nine of her husband’s. This
emphasis has been passed on to her children. At each level of the
genealogical table, the informant had greater knowledge of her kin
than those of her husband’s. The genealogy virtually fades out beyond
the first ascending and descending generations of her husband’s kin,
whereas her knowledge of her kin reaches up to her mother’s mother,
and down to her sister’s daughter’s son’s twin daughters. In House­
hold H, the wife of the head of the household knew sixty-five of her
kin and twenty-five of her husband’s. She stated, T was never one
to visit my husband’s people.’ In Household K , the informant, a widow
of about sixty-five years of age, having lost her husband in 1927, has
few contacts with her husband’s kin. She recognised thirty-three of
her kin, and only twelve of her husband’s.
An asymmetry may be given to the situation by death or migration,
or by illegitimacy. In Household D, one of the informants, a young
married woman, knew personally ninety-nine persons of the total of
209 forming the kinship universe of the members of the household.
None of these were her father’s kin, whom she reported to be in the
United States. In another case, the investigators could gain no
information about any kin of the wife, beyond that she was brought
up by a stepmother, and that she had lost touch with her kin; all
the contacts of her numerous family were therefore with their father’s
kin. But this situation was unique in the households which were
studied.
It was also found that the matrilateral stress in kinship knowledge
in the kinship universe of a household was sometimes reinforced by
the greater ignorance of the male informants about their own patri­
lineal kin. The following case is also an illustration, not only of the
importance of women in the kinship system as pivotal kin, but of
the possibility of asymmetry in the kinship knowledge of each of the
members of a household.
In Household I, the head of the household, a man of thirty-seven
years of age, did not know the names of his paternal grandparents, and
only knew the names of ten of his own patrilateral kin, including his
father, out of the household’s total kinship universe of 1 1 3 . He could not
 remember his father’s two brothers, although he had been told that he had
seen them twice, and while he knew the names of their children, he had
very little contact with them. H e had not seen one of his patrilineal first
cousins for over twenty years, and he did not know the married surname of
one of that cousin’s daughters. Although another patrilineal first cousin
lived in a nearby district, he did not know the name of that cousin’s wife
or of any of their children. T h e informant, on the other hand, knew quite
well and was intimate with his mother’s sisters’ descendants. He knew the
names of his maternal grandparents, and twenty-eight of his own matri-
lineal kin in all. H e knew something of his mother’s mother’s sister, and
her descendants, though some of these had migrated to Australia two or
three decades previous to the investigation. However, of his mother’s
father’s siblings he knew nothing. T h e reason for this, he said, was that
his mother’s mother had died young, and his mother had left her father
and lost contact with her father’s kin. However, she had maintained
contact with her mother’s sister, who survived to an old age, and so was
able to pass on her knowledge to her son.

The situation indicated here is very different from that common in a

primitive society. In these societies, a system of kin replacement is
ordinarily found. K in have a representative status as well as personal
status, and gaps in the kinship system tend to be filled so that there
is reciprocity of obligations and rights between patrilineal and matri-
lineal branches, and continuity is maintained in each. In the South
Borough system, however, the symmetry of the kin structure depends
much more on the maintenance of contacts between persons as indivi­
duals. There is no regular, recognised system of substitution and
representative status, nor formal conception of a reciprocity of rights
and obligations. Should an elementary family be denuded, or dis­
persed, or should dislikes between siblings or other relatives weaken
contacts, the kinship structure is immediately broken. This breaking
up is due to the high degree of personal selectivity possible in the
South Borough system and exercised in it. In primitive societies, kin
may be bound by elaborate and firm obligations which are apt to
bring them into frequent contact with one another. Even if their
sentiments are lukewarm, the chain of relations is usually sufficiently
strong, especially through their children, to keep the system in force
with broad symmetry. But in the South Borough system the lack of
formalised kin obligations leaves the tie without that necessary support
of periodic repetition which gives it content. On the other hand, the
kin relations in force have a high emotional content, and pattern
the kinship system according to the personalities of the members of the
kinship organisation.
As an hypothesis it might be argued here that the prime
characteristic of the South Borough kinship system lies in this aspect
of selectivity on a basis of emotional attachment rather than on a basis
of formalised ties. It has freedom to treat some kin on a basis of close
relationship and to relegate others to social limbo, to summon up or
lay down the value believed to inhere in kinship more or less at will.
T o be able to treat kinship as an instrument of social expression is
personally important in the South Borough system.
 One field of expression in which a combination of kinship ties and
personal selection may operate is in the assignment of Christian names.
It is of course common in many societies for the personal name to be
taken from or given by a kinsman. It is interesting then to observe
the South Borough situation. Briefly, the investigators noticed that
until a generation ago it was common to call the first son after the
father and the first daughter after the mother. This was observed in
genealogies and reported as a rule by some families. After about the
1930s, however, the names of most of the children born do not continue
this practice. Moreover, many of them bear neither of their parents’
Christian names nor a name of traditional use in the South Borough
and wider English society until then. In the earlier generations names
such as Albert, Ted, Jack, George, Fred, Dick; Annie, Rosie, M ary,
Sarah, Lizzie, Jessie, Ada, occur frequently. Later there is a much
greater tendency to use names suggestive of imitation of upper class
usage, or drawn from film star and other sources, such as Terry, Bryan,
Ronald, Barry, Tony; Carol, Linda, Sylvia, Patricia, M arilyn.
This change was perceptible to our older informants, who suggested
that fin the old days’ not only naming but also other types of behaviour
were different as far as kin ties were concerned.
A fuller analysis of kinship relations would demand comparison of
behaviour among kin with behaviour among non-kin, in similar
circumstances. However, any systematic comparative treatment was
not possible at this stage. The research was concerned chiefly with the
definition of the range of kin, and with some indications of the impor­
tance of kin relationships. In some situations, indeed, these stand out
very clearly. Situations where there is an expected pattern of regular
visiting between a younger woman and an older woman, for example,
are not paralleled elsewhere in social relationships. Among kin, they
are found to occur especially between a married woman and her
mother.
Earlier, the distinction was made between recognised kin and
nominated kin, the latter being the persons known by name. At this
point, it is necessary to draw further distinctions. Not all the kin
known by name are in social relationship with Ego. Thus, within the
range of nominated kin there are effective kin and non-effective kin.
By effective kin is meant all kin with whom some social contact is
maintained, as by correspondence, occasional visits, or attendance at
family ceremonial. It is convenient to distinguish also two categories
of effective kin, the peripheral kin and the intimate kin. With the
latter, social contact is purposeful, close, and frequent. With the
former, it is distant, accidental, or sporadic. Performance of small
services is an indication of the range of intimacy, as when a mother
handles and pays a daughter’s rent and club money, a grandchild gets
newspapers regularly for a grandparent, or a kinsman helps another
to get accommodation in H .B.B . Exchange of Christmas cards (see
below) is also a rough test of kin relationship. A comparison of data
of this kind shows that the proportion of effective kin in South
Borough households varies considerably. In Household D, for in­
stance, about ioo of the over 200 recognised kin (162 being nominated
kin) were known personally to the informants and most of these could
be reckoned as effective kin, although less than a dozen could be called
intimate kin. In Household H, of the 126 recognised kin (ninety-six
nominated kin), about thirty were effective kin and about fifteen of
these could be called intimate kin.
It is important to stress here the importance of household composi­
tion and its effect on the range of kin recognition. For instance, when
an informant regularly visits a kinsman, at the latter’s home, he comes
into contact with other kin living in that kinsman’s household. Several
years or even decades later, when the composition of the kinsman’s
household may have altered entirely, the informant still retains know­
ledge of, and frequently interest in, these other persons. This was
stated to have been so in several of the households studied. Finally,
it should be remembered that non-effective kin, as well as kin not
known by name, are not without social significance. They may later
become effective kin, as when a resident of H .B.B. has to move to the
area where these kin live.
Social relationships between kin . It is not possible, owing to the
limited scope of this study, to present a detailed analysis of the day-to­
day contacts recorded between the members of all the households
which were studied and their kin. However, two extremes in the
pattern of social relationships with kin can be distinguished. At one
extreme are found those households whose members have a bro^d
knowledge of their kin, and maintain contacts with them, which result in
a relatively well-integrated kinship organisation with little asymmetry.
A t the other extreme are the households whose members report a
greater loss of contact with their patrilateral than their matrilateral
kin or vice versa. For instance, in a household in which both husband
and wife have lived in H .B.B. for thirty-five years, and are both South
Borough born, the head of the household could give extensive details
about the families of his mother’s sisters, but admitted knowing
nothing of his father’s sibling’s children. Similarly, he could give all
the Christian names of his wife’s sibling’s children, but could not
name his own sibling’s children. His own children had grown up in
ignorance of a large number of their patrilateral kin.
T h e diagram shows the shallow depth and lateral spread common to
H .B.B. genealogies. (The kin universe here is not quite complete, a few kin
of uncertain genealogical position, and some unnamed spouses, being
omitted.)
It shows also the uneven distribution of effective kin. These comprise 14
of the husband’s and 22 of the wife’s kin, including mother and all living
siblings of each spouse. But not all children of parent’s siblings are regarded
as effective kin.
^T h e diagram does not attempt to show the degree of intimacy of effective
kin nor the relation of kin ties to residence (both of these themes are
discussed in the text). But it may be noted that some of the kin shown as
non-effective in the diagram live in the same housing block as the Ingles
family, or close by, whereas some effective and indeed intimate kin live at a
distance.
 • o Ol
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INGLES HOUSEHOLD

*
111

«I«
 Empirical data: the Ingles case. T o facilitate the presentation of
the data which has been collected it has been thought preferable to
describe the pattern of social relationships existing between the members
of one household and their kin, and to indicate how far it differs from
other households. (This household is the one coded as I, and is here
given the surname of Ingles for the purpose of reference: see genealogy,
page 47.) It has been chosen because, apart from the fact that it was
under observation for nearly two years, it had a relatively ‘well-
integrated’ kinship structure.
At the beginning of the survey, the Ingles household consisted of
the husband, Stanley, aged 37, his wife, Sarah, aged 34, and their
small son, Bernard, aged 7. Stanley had been a building labourer
since he was 18, and he used to work with one of Sarah’s brothers.
One day the latter invited him to his home, where he met his future
wife. At the time of the survey Stanley was employed by the Ministry
of Works, and earned, after various deductions, £ 4 18$. 5 d. a week.
They lived in a flat of three rooms, small but comfortably furnished,
but Sarah in particular wished to leave and move to a housing estate.
Stanley gave Sarah £ 4 a week for housekeeping. Sarah worked on a
part-time basis, preparing meals for L .C .C . school-children. Her earn­
ings were spent on extras and clothes, especially for their son. She
‘likes to keep him looking nice’. She wants him to have a better chance
than she had, and Stanley does not want to see him ‘running round
with a piece of bread and butter in his hand’.5 He does not agree with
those who say ‘Let ’em come up the hard way’. Bernard is carefully
supervised. He plays with a boy in a house opposite, and with a son
of a (divorced) friend of Sarah’s— but he does not play with his
mother’s cousin’s children, though they live in H .B.B.
Sarah was born in H .B .B ., and so was her mother, her mother’s
mother having come to live in H .B.B . when the Buildings were first
opened. Stanley’s parents came from the country.
Stanley’s father, who died in 1939, had been a gamekeeper and a
manservant in Hertfordshire, and later worked in London as a cabman
and a navvy foreman. Stanley’s mother, aged 78, lived in Kent.
Stanley’s father’s siblings all died in the 1930s. His mother’s only
sibling, a sister, is dead. Sarah’s father died before the Second World
War. Her father’s three brothers and sisters were alive in various
districts of Essex. Sarah had not seen them for a very long time. She
was only slightly more familiar with two of her mother’s brothers as
it was more than fifteen years since she had seen them. She had also
never met another of her mother’s brothers, whom she reported to be
living in the Old Kent Road. She was, however, very intimate with
her mother’s sister, who lived in H .B .B . Her mother lived in H .B.B.
until she died during the period covered by the study, and Sarah’s
relations with her were very close. With a stepsister of her mother,
however, also formerly in H .B.B., relations were distant. Stanley had
5 i.e. not given proper meals sitting at a table but fobbed off with a ‘piece*
and told to run outside and play.
two brothers, both married, who lived in different districts of London.
He was on very good terms with one of them, and saw him frequently.
He saw the other brother only at rare intervals, and was not on
friendly terms with him. Sarah had three brothers, two of whom were
married. One of the brothers lived in S.W . London, and the other in
Hertfordshire, and they saw and visited each other frequently. Her
third brother was in a hospital, and she went to see him once a month.
Her only sister married in the 1920s and went to live in another part
of the borough. Sarah saw her very frequently until she died in 1946.
Stanley had not seen his two paternal first cousins for twenty years.
However, he had frequent contacts with his maternal cousins, and used
to visit one of them regularly until his son Bernard was born and it
became more difficult to move with the baby. Likewise Sarah had very
little knowledge of her paternal cousins. She knew only the names
of some of them, and maintained no contacts whatsoever with them.
She was in close contact with one of her maternal cousins, who was
an H .B.B. resident, but had little contact with the others. She did not
know the flat number of one of her mothers stepsister’s daughters
who lived in H .B.B., nor the married names of the other two, one
of whom lived just opposite H .B .B .— and she did not seem to care.
Altogether Stanley and Sarah recognised 1 1 3 kin, and were able to
name ninety-nine. An idea of the frequency of contacts between the
Ingles and their kin can be obtained by listing those they had seen
during Christmas and New Year 1948-9, up to February 1949. During
that time Stanley had gone to see his mother twice. One of his brothers
had called on him at H .B.B., and they had gone for a weekend at this
brother’s home. Stanley had accidentally met the son of a first cousin.
Sarah had seen her mother daily, and her two brothers once in that
period, and she had also visited her brother once in hospital. She had
seen the wife of one of her brothers daily during the period as they
worked together. She had met her other brother’s wife several times,
and had gone to see her dead sister’s daughter and her husband once
a week. She had also taken Bernard to see her mother’s sister, and
several times had met her mother’s sister’s daughter, who lived in
H .B.B. Altogether, taking into account chance meetings, both Stanley
and Sarah had seen and spoken to twenty of their kin in that period,
and fifteen of these contacts had been made by Sarah. This was
during a period of time in which it is customary in England for kin
to exchange visits more frequently than at any other time.
Contacts with affines seemed to be usually very restricted. Stanley
Ingles, for instance, knew the names of his father’s brothers, but did
not know the names of their wives. This was also true of Sarah. The
only affines whom Stanley and Sarah knew well were their own sib­
ling’s spouses. In addition, each of them knew the names of most of
the siblings of these spouses. Sarah, moreover, was very familiar with
each of the siblings of her sister’s husband. This was due to the fact
that Sarah’s sister had shared a house with her husband’s married
sister, and over a period of years Sarah had frequently visited her
sister’s household and met her sister’s husband’s kin at birthday
parties, weddings, and other anniversaries. She referred to two of her
sister’s husband’s aunts as ‘aunts’, and had received a request for a
photo of Bernard from one of them who had moved to Cornwall.
However, Stanley himself knew and saw only his wife’s close kin. He
saw his wife’s brothers and their wives, on the average, once every few
weeks. He also knew and often met the sister of his wife’s mother and
the latter’s married daughter, as they lived in H .B.B . Sarah also knew
well her husband’s two brothers and their wives, and frequently met
her husband’s maternal first cousin and the latter’s husband and three
sons. She had attended the wedding of one of them and had been
invited to the wedding of the other two. As these two weddings had
taken place during the war, while she was living in the country, she
had been unable to come to London to attend.
T he degree to which this family is typical in its kin relations can be
seen by considering various points in more detail, with examples from
other cases studied. A most important theme that runs through these
relations is the notion of contact and communication, personal if pos­
sible, but otherwise by some material token. Hence data on the
frequency with which kin see one another, and the occasions on which
they do, give one type of index of their social relations. Another is
the number and frequency of letters, Christmas cards, photographs,
and other tokens of interest exchanged.
Both husband and wife were on friendly terms with their respective
mothers-in-law. Neither of the two old ladies was materially dependent
upon her children, as each was in receipt of an old age pension.
Sarah’s mother earned a few shillings a week washing dishes one hour
daily in the local school kitchen: Sarah explained that her mother ‘did
not want to be indoors all the time’. Stanley used to see his mother-
in-law almost daily, as she lived in H .B.B . When she lived in a large
flat with several windows, he used to clean them for her. After Bernard
started going to school, the old lady thought that Stanley was too strict
with him, and said so; Stanley seemed to resent the criticism, but
there was never an open breach. On Mondays, she came to her
daughter’s flat to help with the washing, and she often dropped in
on a Sunday for a game of cards. Until she died, Sarah saw her
every day. She used to clean the landing for her when she was in the
larger flat; in the smaller one the old lady did this herself, and a
neighbour helped her clean the windows. In October 1948, after a
sudden illness which lasted only three days, the old lady died. It was
a great shock for her daughter, who lost her voice a fortnight later,
and whose hair turned white in front soon afterwards.
Whereas Stanley used to go down to Kent to see his mother
regularly, Sarah saw her only two or three times a year, though she
often wrote to her. Whereas Stanley always called his wife’s mother
‘M um’, Sarah stated that she never called his mother ‘M um’. ‘Don’t
think I ’ve actually addressed her as “ M um ” — M rs. Ingles. Can’t bring
myself to say it. But when I write to her I address her as “ M um” . But
you can’t wish for a sweeter person— she’s only five foot. I f I ’m going
to call her I call her M rs. Ingles— and somehow she’ll sign herself
“ Stan’s M um” .’ Then, turning to her husband, Sarah remarked, ‘I
believe I used to call your Dad “ D ad” — or was it “ Pop” ? I used to
say, “ Come on, Pop” .’
Attachment of grandmother to grandson also helps to link the
affinal kin. Sarah said, ‘When Bernard was born, he was brought up
with Mum (they lived together in the war, when Stanley was away).
She had lost Dad only a year before and she turned automatically to
Bernard—nothing she wouldn’t do for him.’ Stanley’s mother did
not have such close contact: ‘But she thinks the world of him, just the
same; she’d spoil him if she got the chance.’

Indices of hin contacts. Indication of the range and type of contacts

between members of a kin network can be obtained by listing and
examining relations between persons attending weddings, funerals, and
other ceremonial gatherings. One example from H .B.B . was given by
the funeral (in 1938) of the father’s mother of a male informant (case
A). The total number of kin recognised by this man and his wife was
246, of whom 176 were nominated kin. All were the man’s kin, the
wife claiming that she had lost touch with hers. There were said to
have been twenty-two kin at the funeral: the five surviving children of
the dead woman, four children of the first daughter, two children of a
son, six children of the second daughter, two children of the third
daughter, and three children of the fourth daughter. Eighteen of the
twenty-two kin present were females. Affines were stated not to have
attended. (The informant’s wife did not go.) At the funerals of the
respective fathers of a married couple (in H .B.B . but not cited in list),
there were twelve kin at the wife’s father’s funeral and fourteen at that
of the father of the husband; between them the couple had a kin
universe of over 200 persons.
At a christening (in Household D) there were nine kin of five
patrinominal families present, all matrilateral, since patrilateral kin
were absent in the United States. Four were male and five female.
The single non-kin person present was the woman who had been
bridesmaid to the mother of the child. Conversely, the mother of this
child, over a period of perhaps twenty years, had attended twelve
christenings of kin, in six patrinominal families. M ost of these were
for her sister’s children, but one was for a brother’s daughter and one
for a mother’s brother’s daughter’s son. For the last she acted as
godmother.
As regards kin attendance at marriages, twenty-eight kinsfolk were
at the wedding of the couple whose parents’ funerals were mentioned
above. In Household D, at Ego’s mother’s wedding there were fifteen
kin including, apart from parents and siblings, a sibling’s spouse, a
father’s sister, six mother’s brothers’ children and a spouse of one of
these. By contrast with this was Ego’s own wedding, at which only
two of her kin, her mother and a sister, were present, apart from her
husband’s parents, brother and brother’s wife. Ego’s mother’s com­
ment on this was, ‘None of my sisters came. They didn’t invite us to
their wedding, they didn’t get invited to ours.’ But on another occasion
she remarked that these kin were free to come if they wished, but
since the date of the wedding had been changed several times that
may have stopped them from coming. In other words, it is assumed
that kin may come to a wedding without invitation, but invitations
tend to be regarded as matters of right, and of reciprocity; dignity is
involved in receiving and reciprocating them. On this occasion, apart
from kin, there were neighbours, an intended spouse of a sister, and
half a dozen of Ego’s workmates. (The last is a common category.) In
all about forty guests sat down to ‘dinner’. At Ego’s mother’s brother’s
wedding, there were sixteen kin of seven patrinominal families, and
half a dozen non-kin, including workmates.
In Household I, at the wedding of Stanley and Sarah Ingles, there
were about forty guests. To begin with, Sarah had said that there were
‘hardly any relations’ of hers at the wedding, while Stanley had said
that there were many of his present. At a later interview, when they
were counted, it appeared that each spouse had nine kin present. The
groom’s kin were his parents, a brother with his wife and son, a first
cousin with her husband and two of their sons. The bride’s kin were
her parents, her two married brothers and their wives, her sister with
her husband and their daughter. Stanley’s elder brother and his wife
were not invited. T he reason given was that Stanley, when a boy of
fourteen, was invited to his brother’s wedding. He was working in a
jeweller’s shop, and came straight to the wedding from work. The
bride told him to go away and wash himself; he had already washed,
and bore this in mind as a grudge for nearly ten years, against the day
of his wedding. This is an example of how the issue of wedding invita­
tions is used as an instrument of expression of kin attitudes and of kin
differentiation, especially between close kin.
Another example is a wedding attended by one of the investigators
during the survey. Sarah Ingles’ sister’s daughter was married to a
young man who had been adopted when a baby, and was ignorant
of his own parents and kin. At the house of the bride the investigator
counted twenty-one persons besides the bride, sixteen of them being
her kin, and the others friends. Later, at the wedding ‘lunch’, fifty
named places had been laid, and these were occupied by the sixteen
bride’s kin, two groom’s kin (his adoptive father and mother), and
friends. There were, on the bride’s side: paternal kiny father; father’s
sister, with her husband and their daughter, father’s brother with his
wife and their son and this latter’s wife; maternal kin, mother’s mother,
mother’s sister with her husband and their son, two mother’s brothers
and their wives. The sixteen kin were divided between eight patri-
lateral kin, of whom three were affines, and eight matrilateral kin, of
whom three were affines.
T h e wedding took place during the afternoon, at the local church, a
hundred or so yards away from the bride’s home. Three Daimlers had
 been hired to convey the guests from the bride’s home to the church.
T h e bride was given away by her father, and the service was brief. T h e
groom’s best man was a friend of the bride, as the person intended for
that office was at sea at the time. A fter the service there was a wedding
reception in the hired hall of an Old People’s Home. T h e newly married
couple stood at the entrance and received their guests. T h e groom later
remarked, ‘ Some came I didn’t expect, others whom I expected didn’t come/
T h e meal was over by 4 .15 p.m., and the table was then cleared b y the
catering staff, and dancing began. Late in the evening, when the investi­
gator asked who were a couple of new arrivals, he was told, ‘Oh, they’re the
people who made the cake.’ T h e y had been invited in part reciprocity. A t
9 p.m., the assembly adjourned to a first-floor room in a public-house. Th e
groom remarked that his bride’s maternal kin had all come to the public-
house, whereas her father’s kin had gone home from the hall. T h e bride’s
mother’s brother then pointed out that they had to go because they lived
a long way away, and then added that it was just as well, as the bride’s
father’s sister ‘rather fancied herself’, and would probably object to the
general rowdiness of the other customers at the public-house. A fter
10.30 p.m., some of the guests went back to the bride’s home where beer
and sandwiches were awaiting them in sufficient quantity to last through
the night, or at least so it was claimed. T h e investigator did not follow.
Am ong those who went were the bride’s mother’s mother, as well as the
mother’s brother and his wife, who were offered beds at the house.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, both in the church and at the
reception, the investigator was struck by the fact that groups of kin kept
close together, often as elementary families or groups of married siblings
and their parents. T h e y spoke now and then with other guests who were
non-kin, but, generally, they kept in clusters— ‘kin sets* or ‘kin cliques*—
and these groupings remained practically constant in size at the wedding
ceremony, the meal, and the dancing.

This range of contacts between kin in institutional gatherings of

the type mentioned, christenings, funerals, and weddings, is very
similar, though the last tends on the whole to involve a larger number
of kin directly. But in no instance could an assemblage of more than
about a score of kin be traced in a gathering of rather more than twice
that number. In these instances, too, while the consanguineal emphasis
is dominant as the link between kin, immediate affinal ties are impor­
tant. In no case is the kin range wide.
Another indication of the range of effective kin can be obtained
from the Christmas cards sent and received by members of a house­
hold. During Christmas season 1948 the Ingles family sent out
twenty-four cards and received twenty-one. Of the cards they sent
out, eight were to Stanley’s kin and six to Sarah’s kin. The rest were
to: H .B.B. neighbours (three), a neighbour living opposite to H .B.B .
(one), to Sarah’s women friends living elsewhere (five), and to the
officer under whom Stanley had served during the war. O f the
twenty-one cards received, four came from Stanley’s kin and six from
Sarah’s kin, to them; and six others were specifically addressed to
Bernard, three being from Stanley’s and three from Sarah’s kin. The
other five cards were from Sarah’s friends. In five of the six cards sent
to Bernard, the senders had also sent a separate card to Stanley and
Sarah and received a card from them. In the sixth case the sender
was Robert, the 17-year-old son of Stanley’s brother Thomas. Robert
did not send another card to Stanley and Sarah because his own
parents had done so in their name and his. Robert, however, was sent a
card specifically addressed to him from Bernard. Apart from the
cards enumerated above, other Christmas greetings of this kind were
exchanged within the Ingles household itself: Stanley and Sarah sent
a card to their son, the boy sent one to his father with his mother’s
help, and Stanley and Sarah sent one to each other. ‘We always do;
we post them in the ordinary way.’
In Household D , the mother of the informant sent out eight
Christmas cards to kin and five to non-kin, and received four from kin
and five from non-kin. The kin included members of five patrinominal
families, of the husband, two married sisters, brother and husband’s
brother; the non-kin included daughter’s future husband and his
mother. A remark about one kin card is typical. ‘They sent me one,
so I had to send one back.’ In Household E , husband and wife sent
out twenty-nine cards, of which ten went to kin, and received thirty-
two, of which eleven were from kin. In Household H, five cards were
sent to kin and five to non-kin, while fifteen were received from kin,
and others from friends.
This use of Christmas cards indicates several points. A great
proportion go to kin. They are a highly formal token of kin interest,
circulating even among family members living in the same household.
Particular attention is paid by them to the position of children; they
are one means whereby kin ties are manifested to children. And
finally, there is almost exact reciprocity in them, especially in the case of
kin. These characteristics, exhibited to varying degree by other English
social circles, are lacking in the case of the Italianate families
studied.
Some indication of the range of effective kin could also be gathered
from an examination of photographs held by members of a household.
In the case of the Ingles, 103 photographs were seen by the investigator.
These comprised: twenty-seven of members of the elementary family,
individually or in company with one another, and five in company
with non-kin; nineteen of elementary family and kin, with three in
company with non-kin as well; and forty-two of kin alone, with five
of kin with non-kin. Only two photographs in the whole collection
were of non-kin alone: one was of Sarah’s bridesmaid and the other
of her godson. Thus just over half the photographs had one or more
members of the elementary family in them, while, on the other hand,
two-thirds of the photographs had some kin outside the elementary
family. These kin were, in order of frequency, Sarah’s sister’s
daughter, Sarah’s sister, Sarah’s mother, Sarah’s brothers, Stanley’s
brothers, and so on through all the intimate kin and a few peripheral
kin. The frequency varied from twenty-four photos in which Sarah’s
sister’s daughter was seen, to kin seen on only one photograph. Among
the latter were Sarah’s mother’s mother, Sarah’s mother’s brother,
Sarah’s father, Stanley’s brother’s son, and Sarah’s sister’s husband’s
aunt: ‘don’t know her name’. Altogether thirty-six different kin were
involved in these photographs over a period of time from the First
World War to 1948.
Similarly, in Household E , where the young childless wife had forty-
one photographs of her own kin, the highest frequency was of siblings
and parents, and the range extended to siblings’ spouse, parents’
sibling, and parent’s sibling’s child. Again, in Household D, with
fifty-eight photographs of kin held by an elderly woman, there were
twenty-nine relationships involved. The majority, forty-three of the
photographs, dealt with her consanguineal kin, the highest proportion
of these referring to her sisters, their spouses and children, but in all
twelve patrinominal groups were involved, and the range extended to
sister, daughter’s husband’s sister and brother’s wife’s mother. In
general, photographs, especially of kin, tend to be held by women. The
older the woman, the wider the kin range held, and the more they
serve as kin links.
The range of social relationships between kin can also be measured
through an examination of the services exchanged among them. In
the South Borough kinship system, the exchange of services is most
important between members of the same household. Outside the
household, the exchange of services followed the pattern of personal
selectivity. Services ranged from the sharing of holiday or outing
expenses to the lending of money, clothing, or household articles.
Sometimes accommodation was offered, mostly without the acceptance
of money payment in return. In the instance of one informant, who
had been deserted by his wife, leaving him with a small boy, he
reported that beside the help he had received from neighbours, he
had been asked by his wife’s mother to come and live with them. She
also wrote to him offering to come for a week or so to help him in the
flat. In the fortnight after his wife’s departure he was also visited by
five of his kin altogether, and some of these came two or three times
during that period.
In the households studied, children were expected to contribute their
wages as soon as they start earning. K in were not expected to support
old persons who have their own children working. One of the in­
formants commented that he did not help to support his mother’s
sister (age 68), because she had two of her boys at home and ‘she
would be too proud to accept help’ . He added, however, that he
would help if she was destitute. Grandchildren often carry out
certain services for their grandparents, such as the fetching of daily
newspapers. Intimate kin usually give the children of the household
some money, a few pennies or more, every time they call on the
household. Presents are also sent on anniversaries and birthdays.
There is little free-and-easy use of a kinsman’s hospitality or his time,
and the exchange of services is limited in scope. On the other hand,
when help is given, no immediate reward or exact reciprocity is
expected.
All the methods used to locate the range of relationships between
kin emphasised the personal selectivity of the South Borough type of
SS
kinship organisation. This personal selectivity operates from the
nearest to the most distant kin.
Stanley Ingles, for example, said that he was much fonder of his
brother Thom as than of his brother Walter. T h is attitude was reinforced
by the fact that he and Sarah held Walter’s wife in low esteem. Although
Walter lived much closer to South Borough than did Thomas, Stanley
exchanged visits with Thom as two or three times more often than with
Walter. This, he explained, was due to the fact that he had lived for
several years a few doors away from the house where his sister-in-law grew
up, and they were ‘more or less neighbours really*. She had been one of
fifteen children, of whom eight were now alive. Stanley knew the names
of all of them, the occupation of the men, and of the husband of one of the
women, and their places of residence. Sometimes when he went into the
borough where they lived, Stanley would meet there some of the siblings
of Thom as’s wife. Similarly, he knew the kin of his brother Walter’s
wife. H e could name her three brothers and her three sisters, and knew
the occupation of one of the brothers and the married surname of the
sisters, and the number of children they all had. However, he met them
rarely. T h e reasons for Stanley’s and Sarah’s dislike of Walter and his
wife were due to a number of relatively small incidents. On one
occasion Sarah told the investigator how Walter and his wife were
constantly remarking upon the inadequacy of the soap ration. Before
Christmas, therefore, they saved some of their soap ration coupons, and
made them a gift of three bars of soap. Both Stanley and Sarah had
thought that the gift would prove particularly useful and agreeable. Some
time later Sarah heard that her sister-in-law had ‘turned round* and
commented, ‘Does she think that I need a wash?’ Similar incidents,
magnified, were indices of the latent friction between the two couples and
tended to exacerbate it. Both Stanley and Sarah pointed out to the
investigator that when Thom as came to H .B.B., he often gave Bernard a
small gift, or some money for his Post Office account. But apart from
Christmas gifts, only once had Walter given Bernard anything at all.
Sarah also differentiated in her relationships with her two brothers. She
obviously preferred one of them, and saw him more frequently. This
was accentuated after their mother’s death. Four months after it Sarah
remarked to the investigator that she had seen her brother Richard only
twice since the funeral, but that her brother Harold had called in
frequently. She added, ‘Harold, well— he’s Harold.’ W hile a journey of
half an hour by public transport is no apparent handicap for kinsmen
in exchanging frequent visits, they may live almost next door and yet remain
indifferent or aloof. T h e lack of contact of Sarah Ingles with her mother’s
stepsister’s three daughters, one of whom lived in H .B.B. and another
close by, has already been mentioned. She had a similar relationship with
the son of her mother’s sister. Th is young man, married and with a child,
lived in South Borough, but Sarah never exchanged visits with him and
rarely met him. T h e reason seemed to be that she intensely disliked the
cousin’s wife, a native of South Borough, whom Sarah described as a
‘trouble-maker*. She added, ‘ I wouldn’t speak to her if she was standing
thereV
It is interesting to compare the relationship in such cases, particu­
larly between the Ingles and their kin, with the type of relationship
existing between the members of an Irish household recently arrived
in South Borough, and their kin.
While there was no open breach or serious quarrel between the
Ingles siblings, but merely a decrease in contacts, the relationship
between the members of Household E and a brother of the man of the
household was quite different. Violent arguments, with threats of
physical violence, and periods of complete estrangement followed by
reconciliation, occurred during 1948 and 1949. The following is an
account of a quarrel which took place in that period.
Paul E . was a young Irishman working in London, and married to an
Englishwoman. H e was a building labourer for a large concern, and in
his spare time he made rugs. H e had a brother, Edgar, who worked in a
London leather factory, and who lived in South Borough. In the spring of
1948, Edgar’s manager mentioned that his son had started making a rug
which he could not finish. Edgar mentioned the matter to his brother,
and Paul agreed to finish the rug for thirty shillings. However, he found
that the pattern was very complicated, and the rug already badly out of
shape, so he decided that after all he could not finish it. When Edgar heard
this he became incensed with rage (according to Paul because it had been
agreed that Edgar was to receive a third of the sum, and he resented not
having all the money), and said, ‘ So you won’t do as you promised. Y o u ’re
no brother of mine.’ T o mark the severance of the relationship, Edgar
sent his children to collect the rug and the materials as well as some of his
clothes which had been hitherto kept in Paul’s wardrobe. T h e children
also received instructions not to indulge in talk with their uncle. T h is in
turn irritated the latter, who commented, ‘T h e y ’re m y own nephews and
nieces.’ H e told one of them that his father was a coward for not coming
up to collect his things himself. Edgar in reply sent a message asking him
to come down in the street and fight it out. Paul declined because, he
said, he was an A rm y boxer and could have seriously injured his brother.
Meanwhile kinsmen in Ireland had been told of the quarrel when
Edgar wrote to them. In the summer, Paul and his wife were told about
Edgar’s letter when they went on holiday there. Soon after his return to
London, Edgar saw Paul in the street, called him out, put out his hand,
and said, ‘Forgive me.* Paul shook it and the quarrel was made up. Relating
the incident to the investigator, Paul praised himself for not bearing
malice. A few months later, the investigator asked Paul how relations
were with Edgar, and Paul replied, ‘A s bad as before— worse.* H e then
proceeded to describe in detail the story of another quarrel which this
time centred around the sale of a disused wireless set.

Characteristic of this type of relationship is the overt recognition

that brothers should not quarrel, but should be friendly to each other
as well as render each other services and that they should not interfere
with relations with each other’s children. The use of kinship terms
implies rights and obligations, which remain operative even if siblings
quarrel. In the kinship system of the Ingles, siblings who dislike each
other drift apart, and there is no reference to kinship obligations. B y
contrast, as reported to one investigator, English kin relations are weak
in Irish eyes.
The high degree of personal selectivity of the South Borough type
of kinship organisation can also result in a complete or almost complete
break in social contact with all kin.

In Household L , a retired docker of 7 3 years of age was living alone in

a single room in a house just opposite H .B.B. H is wife, aged 8 1, had
died in 1946. (Gossip had it she was his mother’s sister.) Contacts with
other members of his kin group had practically ceased. H e said he
received visits, but could cite only two recently, from a cousin and a grand­
son, both on occasions when he was out. (Th ey may have been mentioned
 to bolster up his pride. H is neighbours said he was very lonely and had
visitors rarely.) H e last saw his only brother, who lived in Sussex, five
years ago, and he did not know where all his stepbrothers lived, nor when
he saw them last. H is wife had two brothers and one sister, but his
knowledge of them was tenuous; none of them attended his wife’s funeral,
because, he said, he could not find out exactly where they were. H e had
affectionate memories of his wife’s mother, and of her kindness to him
and the inheritance she left him. H e had an only child, a son, and two
grandsons, but his relations with them were not close. H e spent the
Christmas of 1946 alone, for his daughter-in-law’s father died just before,
and she felt too disturbed to have the old man over for the day. Indeed,
his son, though living only in a near-by borough, did not even come to help
him with the w ife’s (son’s own mother’s) funeral; everything necessary
was done b y neighbours. H is room, though rather dirty and disorderly
when seen by the investigator, was kept in some order by one of his
woman neighbours, to whom he was ‘a very lonely old fellow*. M ost
probably the basic reason for this severance from his kin was his personal
failings— he confessed that he drank too much and that his character was
unreliable as a result; he gave illustrations of his untrustworthiness with
money because of this.

It seems that filial ties can give way before social inconvenience.
But since, according to his own account, the old man’s father’s father
had been a lock-keeper at Watford, his father a pit-sawyer in South
Lambeth Road, he had been a docker, his son was an engine-driver,
and his elder grandson was in training as chef at a hotel, this job
situation may also have had some effect. It is obvious that in an
industrial society disparate employment of father and son can aid such
severance of filial ties, by ensuring that the men are never in contact
during their working days.

Factors influencing social relations with kin . What are the most
important points to consider with reference to frequency of contact
with kin? One is the factor of geographical accessibility. Obviously,
if a kinsman lives a hundred miles away, physical contact will
inevitably be infrequent, while if he lives in South Borough, and
especially if he lives in H .B.B., physical contact will tend to occur at
least every few weeks. Here, however, a distinction must be made
between accidental and purposeful contacts. For example, the members
of the Ingles household frequently met the two daughters of Sarah’s
mother’s stepsister because one of them lived in H .B.B. and the
other opposite the building. But there was no intimate relationship
between these two women and the members of the Ingles household.
They did not exchange visits, and Sarah did not even know the number
of the H .B.B . flat where one of them lived. When speaking about her,
Sarah added, ‘Never been in her place; never even spoken to her
husband.’ Again, Sarah and Stanley Ingles did not even know the
name or surname of the other woman’s husband, and it was only after
the investigation had been in progress several months that they found
out what the married surname of the woman was. On the other hand,
Sarah sometimes went out of her way to see Catherine, one of h e r
first cousins who also lived in H .B.B ., although she did not meet her
as often as she met the two other women. In none of these three cases,
however, could it be said that an intimate relationship existed.
With Catherine’s mother, however, the relationship was entirely
different. This woman was Sarah’s mother’s sister, and lived in H .B.B .
Sarah arranged to see her at least once a week, on Tuesdays. They
exchanged visits, and there was a strong bond of affection between them.
Although close geographical proximity thus makes meeting possible
and easy, it is conditioned by a strong sense of selectivity. When
affection exists between kin a distance of a few miles is no impediment
to frequent contact. Thus every week Sarah Ingles sees her sister’s
daughter Anne, and Anne’s husband, although they live in another
borough of London. Either the younger couple come to H .B.B., or
Sarah, accompanied by Stanley, goes to see them where they live with
Anne’s widowed father. It is also possible to maintain intimate
relationships with kin who are seen once every few weeks. This is so
in the instance of Stanley’s mother’s sister’s daughter, Clara. The
Ingles used to visit Clara and her husband and their three sons, who
lived in Surrey, once a week before the birth of their own son,
Bernard. Now they have less leisure to do so. However, the two first
cousins continue to value each other’s friendship, and both Sarah and
Stanley appeared to have great respect for Clara’s judgment. The
fact that Clara approved of the field-worker’s investigation (she
thought the compilation of a genealogy to be a ‘good idea’) was an
asset in the research. Clara was able to give Stanley several details
about some distant kin of theirs who had settled in Australia, as well
as about the parents of these distant kin. Stanley had a kinsman in
another London borough who stood in a similar relationship
to him as did Clara. This was the son of his father’s brother.
Stanley had not seen him for many years and did not know the name
of his wife or of any of his children. He did not offer any explanation
for the contrasting attitudes he had towards this man and Clara, who
were both his first cousins. It is clear that, apart from very close
relationships such as parent-child and between siblings, there is no
expected pattern of regular visiting between kin in the South Borough
type of kinship organisation. Neither Sarah nor Stanley found it
necessary in most instances to give any reasons why they had not
seen such and such a kinsman for many years. They simply contented
themselves with a statement of the plain fact that they had not seen
a parent’s sibling, or a child of a parent’s sibling, for a decade
or two.
The operation of the geographical factor in determining the contacts
between kin can best be seen by making a survey of the residential
distribution and type of contact in respect of the kin of this one house­
hold. At the time of the interviews the Ingles ( 1 1 3 recognised kin, and
99 nominated) had ten kin (six adults and four children) living in
H.B.B., and related to Sarah. In South Borough there were seven more
(four adults and three children), also directly related to Sarah. In
other districts of London and Greater London, there were another
twenty-one (of whom twenty were adults) kinsmen of Stanley, and
twenty-three (all adults) of Sarah. Outside London, Stanley had four
(all adults) kin in Kent, and Sarah had two (all adults) in Hertford­
shire and another five in Essex. Then there were several kinsmen of
Stanley abroad in Australia, with whom he had no contact whatsoever.
Of the seventeen kin in South Borough, the Ingles household was on
intimate terms with only two: Sarah’s mother and her mother’s sister.
With the others, contacts were mostly of the peripheral variety. Of
the forty-four kinsmen in the other boroughs of Greater London,
Stanley and Sarah maintained regular and intimate contacts with ten
of them, equally divided between Sarah and Stanley’s kin. Of the
eleven kinsmen outside London, intimate relationship existed with four
of Stanley’s kin and two of Sarah’s.
There was a tendency in the Ingles household for all visiting to be
done together, although Sarah was more active in keeping contact
with kin. However, there does not appear to have been more weight­
ing in favour of the husband’s or the wife’s kin. Finally, it seems
that although co-residence in H .B.B. or South Borough favours close
and intimate relationship between kin, it does not necessarily result in
such relationships. Personal selectivity is the operative factor.
On the other hand, it cannot be assumed that movement away of
kin in residential terms necessarily destroys social contact. Indeed,
the presence of kin some distance away may have a valuable social
function, in giving a focus of interest, an alternative to home sur­
roundings, a welcome resting-place for relaxation and social inter­
course. The regular visiting of the Ingles family to their kin in Abbey
Wood, Stoke Newington, Neasden, and Sidcup, with the reciprocal
calls, is among the most important elements in their social universe.
It has been stated in a number of studies that there is a close
connection between kinship and occupation, class and social status.6
The evidence collected in this survey shows that diversity and homo­
geneity are combined in most genealogical tables. Branches of the same
kinship group were located at different levels of social status. There is
no doubt, however, that the social status of kin was directly related to
the factor of personal selectivity. Most informants gave the impression
that they were very sensitive to social prestige as expressed in terms
of the enjoyment of income, or of style of living and ‘good manners’.
Some informants told of stories that the fam ily once ‘had money’, or
had an ancestor who belonged to the gentry. Others pointed out that
they considered their families as superior to other families of their
kinship group. In the same way, resentment was also shown against
kin ‘giving themselves airs’. One informant remarked about her
sister’s daughter that ‘she thinks you are a bit of dirt under her’, and
described the family into which the latter had married as ‘the kind of
people you do not mix with. I see them every day at the market. They
don’t speak to me, I don’t speak to them.’
Some preference was shown for contacts with kin of a higher
6 Hollingshead, 1949; Parsons, 1943.
Status. Frequent contacts between the members of the Ingles house­
hold, for instance, and their kin, apart from contacts with their own
parents and siblings, occurred only with Stanley’s mother’s sister’s
daughter. She was the only child of a prosperous oil and colour
merchant who had once owned five shops. She owned the house in
which she lived. Her three sons all had occupations judged to be
better than that of Stanley. Comments were passed, with some envy
and admiration, by the informant and his wife, that one of the sons,
as well as the mother, owned a television set.7 The impression in
general was that this was not snobbery, but respect for economic and
social stability.
Another factor influencing relationships between kin was the
exchange of services. It has been already pointed out that the exchange
of services is directly related to kinship organisation. There is no
doubt, however, that the services each person needed from, or could
offer, to his kin, were a strong reinforcement to kinship ties. In one
instance, a skilled workman who frequently had to travel to various
areas in England always tried to seek accommodation from his kin.
From his point of view it was much more convenient and comfortable
to stay with them than with strangers. Another informant remarked
that before the Second World W ar he used to offer hospitality to his
kin who came from outside London. He could not do so any longer,
and he gave this as the explanation why he has become less intimate
with his kin. In a third instance, a daughter of one of the informants
had married a fisherman, and now lived in a cottage by the sea. She
had regularly invited for summer holidays her parents and siblings,
as well as her uncles, aunts, and cousins. All these kin spoke of her
with great affection. There are also many instances of work found for
kin, and of recommendations given for securing accommodation in
H .B.B., or membership of a trade union or other association.
These services, however, were rendered as much, if not more,
because of the ties of sentiment between the persons involved, as
because they were kin. On one occasion (Household I), Stanley’s
wife’s sister’s daughter’s fiancé was thinking of leaving his work as a
seaman, and settling on shore once he was married. The informant
made inquiries on his behalf, and was able to find him work as a
stoker in a boiler house. The investigator was present the evening the
informant told the young couple the result of his inquiries. There was
no doubt about the affectionate ties which united the young couple to
the informant and his wife. These were such that the young couple
arranged to spend their honeymoon at the same place and at the
same time as the informant had planned to take his family on holiday.
Neither were they the only kinfolk there. Other kin (the informant’s
wife’s brother and his family, and the informant’s brother and his
family) had also decided to join the young couple there. In the same
fortnight of Ju ly 1948, there were in that seaside resort ten persons of
the same kinship set, all staying in the same boarding house. It
7 This was in June 1949, when few people owned television sets.
appeared, however, that they had not come together primarily because
of their kinship ties, but because of their preference for each other’s
company. This personal selectivity also included people not related
to the informant, as a personal friend of the informant and his wife
who had come to share their holidays with him. It is difficult to say
whether the element of personal selectivity is a recent development or a
traditional attitude in the South Borough type of kinship organisation.
Summary and conclusions. From this analysis, tentative as it has
been, certain conclusions can legitimately be drawn.
1. In the type of London environment described here, in a ‘working-
class’ neighbourhood with manual occupation dominant, kinship ties
outside the household and elementary family unit are important for
social relations.
2. This importance lies in part in exchange of services, but has
mostly a social content of information, companionship, and moral
judgment. T o an important degree, kinship ties provide ready-made
channels for social intercourse of a meaningful kind.
3. As between the various households studied, considerable varia­
bility occurs in range of kin known and utilised, as shown by frequency
of contact and exchange of services. But use of the total field of kin
as compared with non-kin, and the general regularity of pattern, are
such as to allow one to speak of a kinship system.
4. In this system the genealogical depth is shallow and the range
of kinship ties narrow in its categories. But the system is more ample
in actual numbers of kin recognised and involved than is likely to be
suspected at first by field-workers or by the subjects themselves.
5. There is a marked grading in the operation of ties with kinsfolk.
These grades broadly correspond to degrees of genealogical nearness,
but the correspondence may be by no means close in any individual
case. Nor is it governed by any very definite prescriptions about
conduct (save in the case of parents).
6. Frequency of contact and intimacy of social relations between
kin are not necessarily a function of geographical proximity.
7. Personal selectivity is shown to a high degree in recognition and
maintenance of kin relations. This tends to operate for elementary
families as units. But it often also operates among individuals in the
elementary family. In this selectivity, early experience in childhood
and adolescence is probably important as a determinant, but we have
not estimated this. On the other hand, the character of affinal kin
is a significant element, since such affinal roles in themselves predispose
to strain.
8. In the maintenance of kin relations a personal element is often
apparent in the emergence of ‘pivotal kin’ on whom other members,
especially in an elementary family, depend for much of their kin
knowledge and communication.
 9- In group terms, the system may be termed patrinominal and
familial in its day-to-day operations, while using the bilateral principle
extensively for mobilisation of kin for important social occasions. In
this latter reference, considering the significant degree of selectivity
applied, the system may be described as an ‘optionally bilateral1 one—
in contrast to the ‘prescriptive bilateral’ kin systems of many societies,
where custom dictates the assemblage.
10. As social instruments in such kin selectivity are communication
items such as wedding invitations and Christmas cards, which by
being sent or withheld in initiation or exchange serve to acknowledge
or disavow interest in the relationship.
1 1 . The parent/child relation is basic to the kinship system, with its
uniqueness of terminology and obligations reinforcing one another.
This relation is, however, extended to step-parents/stepchildren, and
for young children may be accepted by parents’ siblings.
12. In particular, there is a very strong link between children and
their mother. This has such force that it may be regarded as a special
characteristic of the system, which may be thus termed matri-centred
or matral. This link is most characteristically expressed in the relation
between a married daughter and her mother (though not perpetuated
in any unilineal form). It also may condition other kin patterns, such
as the provision of a substitute mother by mother’s sister if the mother
dies when the child is young. The matral focus may be reinforced by
differential distribution of marital partners in later life; women left
as widows seem to be an especially strong focus for the sentiments of
their children.
13. There seems to be a stronger affective attitude, positive or
negative, between siblings than between more remote kin, but the
moral obligation is not strongly emphasised. Siblings may be ignored,
but more often they seem to provide a locus for emotional attitudes
of some intensity, and an important field for social relationships.
K IN SH IP O R G A N ISA T IO N OF IT A L IA N A T E S
IN LO N D O N

by
Philip Garigue and Raymond Firth

(I 954)
 Ill

K IN SH IP O R G A N ISA TIO N OF IT A L IA N A T E S
IN LO N D O N

This study was undertaken specifically to provide comparative data

for the South Borough kinship material by the investigation of
Londoners of admitted immigrant origin and, therefore, possibly
different kinship patterns. Choice fell upon the ‘Italian’ community.
This included persons of Italian nationality, born in Italy or Britain,
and persons of British nationality, born of parents or grandparents of
Italian nationality.
To these categories the generic name of Italianates has been given
for the purposes of this study.1 This title does not represent a homo­
geneous group. It includes, on the one hand, recently immigrated
Italians without kin in England and with little knowledge of English
ways or language; and, on the other, Londoners having distant
relatives in Italy, who themselves have never been there, and whose
mother-tongue is English. The characteristic they all have in common,
which brings them within the scope of this study, is the fact that,
although they live in London, their kinship ties include relations with
persons who live, or have lived, in Italy. They are persons for whom
the Italian connection is significant.
The primary aim of the study was to provide comparative material
for a non-immigrant oriented group, but the general description also
shows the functions of the Italianate kinship organisation in itself.
The social background. Italians have been coming to London since
the Middle Ages. Until the Reformation many bankers and merchants,
architects, actors, doctors and surgeons, and clerics, in London
especially, were of recognised Italian origin. With the Reformation,
the Italians as a special group tended to disappear. B y the beginning
of the nineteenth century, however, they formed again one of the most
numerous foreign communities in London. T he élite among them
were the political refugees who, like Mazzini, Antonio Parrizzi, or
Gabriel Rossetti, influenced the intellectual life of the city. Besides
these there were also a small number of merchants who represented
important Italian commercial firms. The largest number of Italians,
however, were those employed as labourers, servants, or cooks; or
the players of barrel-organs, or vendors of ice-cream, who became so
familiar in London streets.
While certain districts of London, such as Soho and Clerkenwell, have
1 In Elizabethan^ England the word ‘ Italianate* was used in two senses.
In the first place, it meant that something had become Italian in character.
Secondly, it meant something of Italian character, form, or origin. In this
study it is the second meaning that is used.
for a long time had a high density of Italianates among their popu­
lation, Italians have spread into every borough since the nineteenth
century. B y 1940, Italianates had come to occupy a preponderant
position in the catering trade; they were important in the hotel
business; and there were few major shopping centres in London
without an Italian restaurant or grocer. Italianates, however, were
not limited to these occupations, and Italian names were to be found
in almost every trade or profession.
The high frequency of contact, and the large number of associations
and other services run by Italianates for other Italianates, make it
possible to talk about an Italian community in London. The immigra­
tion of Italians had always been large enough in the modern period
to more than replace those who returned permanently to Italy, and
those— perhaps few—who had become assimilated.2 The preference
of these immigrants for each other’s company had been one of the
predominant characteristics of the Italianates. Before the end of the
nineteenth century, the Italian community had its own church, hospital,
and schools. A number of economic, political, and leisure associations
were also started which helped to maintain and even to increase this
community feeling. The association of Italian ice-cream vendors, for
instance, had 4,200 members in 1933, and the Italian Co-operative Club
had 1,230 members in the same year. Clubs were also formed linking
together persons who came from the same region in Italy. These
provided their members with weekly social evenings, or annual dinners
or dances. With the rise of fascism, a branch of the ‘Fascio’ was
opened in London, which had a youth group and several other
sections.
The coming of the Second World War brought about the disintegra­
tion of this community. Nearly all its associations were closed down,
and their premises taken over by the Custodian of Enemy Property.
The Italianates of British nationality were called up for military
service and many of the Italianates of Italian nationality were interned.
Kinship ties were placed under great stress, not only by the separation
of kin living in Italy and in Britain, but also by differences in national
allegiances and politicai loyalties. In some households, for instance,
one brother was interned while another was called up to serve in the
British Army. In other households, the son was called to serve in the
British forces while the parents were told to report weekly to the police,
or even taken into internment. Some Italianates of British nationality
preferred to go to gaol rather than fight against their Italian kin.
When the Badoglio Government joined the Allies in 1943, many of
the regulations against Italians were lifted. A volunteer pioneer
company was formed in the British Army of Italianates who had been
in internment. B y the end of 1945, the Custodian of Enemy Property
had returned much of the property owned by Italians; soon after
* Assimilation involves changes in the language, food habits, interior aspect
of the home, leisure activities, frequency of travel to Italy, education of
children, and religious life. These distinguish Italianates from persons of
English descent. But assimilation also often means change of name, break
from parental and other kin ties, and neglect of former cultural links.
 1946 they were again allowed to leave Britain to visit their relatives
in Italy; and by 1950, the Italian community had reorganised once
more, associations were reactivated, or new ones replaced those which
had been closed down in 1940. Finally, Italian immigration into
Britain was allowed once more.
The final demographic position is not at all clear. In 1933 members
of the Italian community in London published a guide-book contain­
ing an alphabetical list of 2,906 persons of Italian origin (Guida degli
Italiani a Londra, Ercoli & Sons Ltd., London, 1933). The persons
listed were mostly heads of households. Hence, it is reported that a
large number of Italians were not included. Practically no persons
were included who were of Italian descent but not of Italian origin,
i.e. not born in Italy. Since then, the coming of the Second World
War, with the return of Italians to Italy and subsequent post-war
immigration, has changed the position of the Italian community in
London. It is estimated by official Italian sources that there were
about 30,000 persons of Italian nationality in the United Kingdom in
1925. That number steadily increased during the period of the two
world wars. After the Second World W ar just over 30,500 persons
of Italian nationality came to the United Kingdom, and 900 returned
to Italy, leaving a balance of nearly 30,000 new immigrants between
the years of 1947 and 1953. M ost of the new immigrants went to
places outside London, but it is estimated that the great majority
of Italians reside within Greater London.
At the present time one main characteristic of the Italian community
in London seems to be an emphasis on cultural differences between
Italianates and other Londoners. M any Italianates are convinced that
having an Italian name may be basis enough for some discrimination
to be directed against them, even if they are of British nationality and
speak English as their mother-tongue. While no special effort was
made in this study to determine the extent of this discrimination,
there is no doubt about its presence. It is also equally certain that
there is a high preference among Italianates for each other’s company.
While both these factors must be seen in relation to the personality,
social status, knowledge of English ways, and personal history of the
Italianate, the operation of discrimination, as well as that of preference,
makes most Italianates aware of their ‘Italianità*, or background of
Italian culture. Integration of Italians into English society is very
slow; it probably does not become fully effective before the third
generation.

K in and status. Within the Italian community, social status depends

upon a number of factors, which in combination help to give to the
community its characteristic structure. Individual position seems to
be dependent on a combination of: (a) occupation and wealth;
(6) membership and/or position in an official Italian organisation such
as the Embassy, the Consular Service, the Italian Cultural Institute,
and the official Tourist Agency; (c) membership and/or position in the
various non-official organisations, such as the Italian Catholic Church,
and the many clubs; and (<d) secondary factors, such as education and
status of kin in Italy.
Summarised briefly, the Italianates in London can be divided into
three main categories, the last of which is further subdivided. These
are based primarily upon occupational stratification, but persons in
each of them tend also to form a social group.
1. Higher status category: persons heading the various official or
non-official organisations, and the prosperous professional men in
London as heads of important firms, or as lawyers, doctors, and
university professors.
2. M iddle status category: employers, such as restaurant owners
and hotel proprietors, and those who run a small business, importing
firm, or craft-manufacturing firm.
3. Lower status category: skilled and unskilled non-professional
workers, such as craftsmen, domestic workers, manual labourers, etc.
They can be divided into two sub-groups or sets: (a) Those of British
nationality, who are of second generation or later in London, but who
retain certain contracts with the Italian community through their
membership of the Italian Catholic Church, or through the fact that
they send their children to Italian schools. Th ey mainly constitute the
workers of higher skills. (6) Recently arrived immigrants, who are
here on a work permit, and who may have no kin in London. For the
most part they display lesser occupational skills.
The social stratification and the kinship organisation of the
Italianates are particularly interdependent. Social status seems to
give a range of possibilities which influence relationship with kin.
There is evidence to suggest that a given kinship network includes
persons who are, on the whole, of the same status level in Britain and
in Italy. Economic possibilities tend to determine the range of
frequency of contacts between kin. Among persons of higher status,
there is much contact among kin owing to the fact that most of
them return to Italy each year, and often more than once each year.
The presence of some of them in London is no more than a
geographical extension of their Italian residence, and their normal
relationship with their Italian kin seems little disturbed by it. The
economic resources of persons of middle status allow them periodic
return to Italy only every two, three, or more years, and little travel
within Italy once they are there. Few persons of lower status possess
the means necessary to afford a holiday in Italy, and travel there is
only for very important reasons. The second generation of the lower
status category often grow up without ever returning to Italy, and
have little knowledge of their kin there, in contrast to the second
generation of the middle and higher category status, who have practi­
cally always first-hand knowledge of their kin in Italy.
Selection of informants. It was felt that these marked status dif­
ferences should be allowed for in choosing persons to be interviewed,
and an attempt was made to get a fair distribution among the cate­
gories. Table 4 shows the status level of subjects and indicates the
type of study carried out.
Table 4
Italianates Studied
High Status 2 University professors Household Study
i Writer it it
i Restaurant-hotel owner a a
Middle Status 6 Restaurant owners » tt
2 Grocers a a
i Journalist it it
Low Status: 2 Chefs it it
first and second genera­ i Mechanic it tt
tions i Stonemason Single Person Study
i Clerk tt tt tt
i Caretaker it tt it
Low Status: 2 Maids it tt it
recent migrants 2 Chauffeurs it tt tt
i Valet tt tt tt
i Railway worker tt it tt
Total 25
The difference in attitude towards English and Italian culture,
which was thought to be related to the length of residence, and the
regional differences in Italy, also influenced the selection of persons
to be interviewed. Table 5 shows both the length of residence and the
region of origin in Italy.
Table 5
Point of Origin and Length of Residence
Household Studies Single Person Studies
Birthplace of head of household Date Birthplace Date*
London 1886 London 19 18
1900 1920
19 11 19 2 6
19 2 1
Northern Italy Parma 1950
Northern Italy Piacenza 19 10 Venezia 1950
Milan 19 19 Piacenza 1951
Piemonte 19 2 1 Trieste 1951
L a Spezia 1934 Trento 1953
1937
Tu rin 1947 Southern Italy Naples 1952
Central Italy Massacarrara 19 19
Toscana 1920
Florence 1945
Rome 1947
Southern Italy Sardegnia 1946
Matera 19 4 7
* Dates refer to birth in London or date of arrival in London.

Households. It is frequent for Italianates to include in a household

persons who are not members of the elementary family, so that the
group forms what may be termed an extended family. This is
especially the case among households of which the head is a restaurant
owner or hotel owner, the reason in this case being the need for
relatively unskilled labour (waiters, cooks, servants, etc.) which can be
easily supplied by the employment of kin.

Table 6
E m p lo y m e n t o f K in b y H o u seh o ld H ea d
T y p e of Profession of H o u seh o ld M e m b e rs K in em ployed b y
housing household ,--------------- ^----------- —n head o f household
head E lem en tary O ther kin
fa m ily
Flat Restaurant H , W , 2 Ch — 2 Sis, W 3rd cousin,
owner Ego’s distant
‘cousin*
Flat Restaurant H , W , i Ch — W
owner
House Restaurant H, W , 2 D, D H , D Ch, W , 2 D, 2 DH,
owner i S D H , W Sis, W Sis, W S isD
W S isD
Flat Caretaker H , W , i Ch — W
Small house Journalist- H, W, 2 S — W, i s
publisher
Flat Cook H, W , 1 D — —

Flat Writer H , W , 2 Ch — —

House Grocer H , W , i S, S W , 2 S C h W , D H , Sis S, B S

iD DH, i D
Ch
Flat University H , W , 3 Ch — —
professor
Flat Restaurant H , W , 2 Ch W Sis W , BD
owner
Flat University H, W , i Ch — .—
professor
Flat Restaurant H, W — W
owner

Table 6 does not give an adequate sample, for it is thought to under­

represent the proportion of extended families actually found among
Italianates. But the table does indicate the relation between added
kin in the household and type of occupation. Short-term accommodation
is also frequently given to kin. Thus, in one case, a restaurant owner,
housed in a flat, had just previous to the survey provided one of his
father’s brother’s son’s sons with lodging as well as employment for
six months. He was also expecting the arrival of a mother’s brother’s
son from Italy, whom he would provide with lodging.
As the size of most London flats does not allow for many relatives
to live together, it is the practice for part of the premises of a restaurant
to be used as accommodation for some of the relatives who work for
the head of the household, especially if he owns more than one
restaurant. It is also the practice, when the economic position of the
head of the household allows it, for a whole house to be bought, and
its various rooms, or floors, divided between the married children or
other relatives. The evidence obtained suggests that there is a marked
preference for living with one’s parents, even after marriage. This
preference, however, decreases rapidly after the second generation.
This, and the fact that a large number of Italian ates do not have
their parents with them, either because these are in Italy, or are
dead, or because their place of work has forced them to move after
their marriage, partly explains the frequency of elementary family
households. All the households, except in one instance, in which a baby
was expected, were composed of a minimum of husband-wife-child.
It seems, from the genealogies collected, that childless marriages are
rare. The number of siblings actually found in the marriages of the
persons forming the kinship networks of the members of the twelve
households reached a maximum of five in Britain and of twelve in Italy.
The authority structures within each of these households were
variants of the Italian cultural norm. No important decisions were
taken without the father’s authority; and choice of schooling, future
professions for the children, place of holiday, membership in asso­
ciations, friends visited, and so on, had to be approved by him.
Unmarried children are kept under the authority of their parents well
past their majority, and this authority is said to be exercised for their
good. There are, however, some marked differences between house­
holds, which are specially noticeable when both Ego and his wife are
second generation. While it cannot be said that the second generation
have broken away from the authority of their parents, they are more
prone to adopt an independent attitude, or to accept in turn such an
attitude from their own children.
The structure of the kinship system. Italian kinship, like English
kinship, is patrinominal. The old distinction between the agnatic and
the cognatic lines, which existed in Roman Law, has disappeared from
the modern Italian Code. What remains is an emphasis on the authority
of the father as the patria potestas.3 Traditional mores, in Italy, still
maintain the importance, not only of the male head, but also of the
male line, which, especially in the rural areas, is of great significance.
Even second generation Italianates in London, depending on their
degree of assimilation, unconsciously stress this characteristic. Infor­
mants of both sexes, even if they felt emotionally closer to their
mother’s kin, would underline in their statements their formal relation­
ships with their father’s kin. They would, for instance, when asked to
give a list of their kin, and after naming the members of their elementary
family, practically always go on to name their kin on their father’s side.
Range of kin knowledge. Like South Borough people, the Italianates’
knowledge of their kin is of shallow genealogical depth. In the instance
of the twelve households for which data is most complete, it varied
from five to six generations. Some Italianates offered to write to their
kin in Italy and obtain more information about their ancestors. This
was refused and it was pointed oüt that it was the extent of their own
knowledge which was required. Italianates, however, seem to make a
8 Calisse, 1928, pp. 56 6 -8 9 ; and Salvioli, 1930, pp. 3 7 4 -4 38 .
fuller use of lateral categories than do the English. The limit of
lateral kin, in some instances, reached to third cousins in the consan-
guineal field, and to two degrees removed in the affinal. As can be
seen from Table 7, the number of lateral kin in the largest generation
ranged from nearly one-half to nearly one-third of the total number of
known kin.

Table 7
D e p th o f G enerations an d Lateral D istribution
H o u seh o ld I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Generation
4th ascending
3rd 5 5 6 4 z 5 i
2
4 3 i 5 2
2nd 47 23 27 7 10 14 9 23 7 8 15 13
ist 96 73 78 4 1 20 51 42 71 29 28 42 34
Ego 15 1 141 88 10 9 67 67 70 51 44 68 36 61
ist descending 83 61 34 63 88 51 58 4 41 36 26 13
2nd 4 5 2 — 32 —
— — 25 i i —

00
00
T otal kin 3 8 6 30 8 2 3 5 2 2 4 2 1 7 18 0 155 1 4 9 1 4 2 1 2 5 1 2 3

M
Knowledge of the members of a household about their kin tends
to be most extensive at the level of the head of the household’s (Ego’s)
own generation. In the three instances in which this is not so, that
of Households 5, 8, and 12, this was explained as due either to a
complete break in kinship ties or to a high frequency of infant death
in the generation previous to Ego’s own. In Household 5, for instance,
Ego, now 60 years old, was brought up by an elder brother after the
death of both parents, and then left his brother’s home when very
young. He has never returned to the village of his parents, and has
lost touch completely with his father’s and mother’s kin. In House­
hold 8, three out of five of Ego’s wife’s father’s siblings died as infants.
Neither does Ego’s wife know any of her mother’s kin. Her mother
was a Greek, living in Cairo, where she married her father. Soon
after Ego’s wife’s birth her mother died, and her father returned to
Italy where he, in turn, died. She was brought up by her father’s
brother. In Household 1 1 , two out of five of Ego’s father’s siblings died
as infants, and another who was married had no children. Also, three
out of six of Ego’s wife’s mother’s siblings died as infants, while another
had a childless marriage. These three instances are quite unusual,
and were rated by the informants themselves as extraordinary events.
The total number of kin recognised by the Italianates is in general
significantly larger than the number recognised by South Borough
people. The twelve households cover a kinship range of 123 to 386,
and have an average of 203. This compares markedly with the twelve
South Borough households’ range of 37 to 246, and their average of
146. It also seems that Italianates are more aware of the number of
their kin. Unlike the South Borough folk, when asked to guess how
many of their kin they could remember, many of them came quite
close to the figure obtained after the interviews.
 While it is obvious that there are demographic factors limiting the
size of each kinship network, the fact that most informants gave long
lists of affines suggests that consanguinity, and therefore the demo­
graphy of descent, is only partially responsible for the total number
of kin each informant remembered. The members of Household 3,
for instance, included the head of the household’s father’s brother’s
daughter’s husband’s kin (thirty persons altogether) as affines. In this
instance, however, not only did these affines live in the same village of
origin as Ego, but they also had the same surname as the members of the
household without, however, any known consanguineal link. There is
no doubt that a very important relationship exists between the type of
place of origin, the generation of residence in London, and the total
number of kin remembered. The two largest kinship networks, while
including many persons living in Britain, were of households of first
generation, and in both instances the heads of the households came
from small Italian villages. Of the four smallest kinship networks,
three were of second-generation households, and one was of a first­
generation household whose members traced all their kin to Italian
urban centres.
No two members of the same household were found to have the
same knowledge. Even siblings brought up together showed d if­
ferences which, while slight if they had always remained together,
became very important if, for any reason, they had become separated.
The information given by the members of Household 1, for instance,
was obtained from the head of the household, his wife and his two
sisters. At the first interview the head of the household listed a total
of 186 persons he recognised as kin on his side, and his wife recognised
a total of fifty-two as her kin. At subsequent interviews, these figures
were respectively increased to 198 and fifty-eight, making a total of 256.
An interview was then arranged with Ego’s two sisters, who were living
above a restaurant owned by their brother. At that interview not
only was the total raised to 386, but many persons of whom their
brother could not remember the Christian name were named by the
sisters. Again, the exact degree of relationship changed according to
their claim, and his acceptance, that their brother was making a
mistake. These differences in knowledge were explained as caused by
the fact that brother and sisters had become separated when they
reached adolescence. The brother came to Britain in 1937, where he
subsequently married, and did not return to Italy until 1947; one of
the sisters joined kin of theirs in Scotland, where she remained through­
out the war; the second sister left the village to join relatives elsewhere
in Italy, and only came to London after the Second World War. This
sister was also in Italy when distant kin, who had been lost sight of,
and who lived in Ireland, came to visit the village and renew their
contact with their kin there.
Like the members of the South Borough households, the Italianates
also sometimes mentioned one of their kin as the person ‘who knew all
there was to be known’ about their kinship network. In the two
instances when these persons were interviewed, they were, in fact,
able to enlarge the range of lateral recognition, or increase the genera­
tion depth to a maximum of six generations. It seems that these persons,
as in English kinship, occupy a position of pivoted kin . In these two
instances, their special knowledge seemed to have been due to certain
events in their own personal history which focused their interest on
kinship affairs: they had had to act as legal or business representatives
during the time when some of their kin were interned, or they had
lived in the village in Italy from which some of their kin had migrated
and left them responsible for their properties, or because of their age,
had passed through most of the history of the persons forming the kin­
ship network. These persons, who were respectively a head of a house­
hold’s elder sister and a head of a household’s wife’s mother, held high
status among their kin, and this was demonstrated by special attention.
As in South Borough kinship, the Italianates recognise more kin than
they can give Christian names for. This difference between recognised
and nominated kin operates even if a person had been met, or if
notification of a birth, and the name of the newly-born, was given.
Table 8
R ecogn ised and N o m in a ted K in
H o u seh o ld N o , R ecogn ised N o m in a te d L iv in g Generation
kin kin kin depth
i 386 260 320 6
2 308 263 148 6
3 235 19 1 18 2 6
4 224 15 8 188 5
5 2 17 160 163 5
6 188 156 147 5
7 180 120 129 5
8 155 120 126 6
9 149 1 14 85 6
10 14 2 71 126 6
11 12 5 105 76 6
12 12 3 10 7 97 5
Variations between nominated and recognised kin seem to have been
due to a variety of factors. It was only when this discrepancy became
abnormally great that a single factor could be distinguished as the
major cause. In the instance of Household io, where the ratio is only fifty
per cent, and in which both Ego and his wife were of second-generation
immigrant origin, this was explained by Ego as due to the fact that he
had himself not known personally many of these kin, and only heard
about most of them from his brothers and sisters. It was only lately
that he had been able to return to his father’s village in Italy where he
learnt about the existence of kin who were to him previously unknown.
It seems that a higher ratio is related to frequency of contact, and
especially of constant contacts over a period of years, with either a
person who is a pivotal kinsman or with the place of origin of the
kinship group. A high ratio such as that of Household n , whose
members had been in London since 1947, and had returned each year
to Italy for two and more months at a time, was directly related to the
fact that both husband and wife had lived nearly the whole of their
lives in one place, and that few of their kin had migrated either to
other places in Italy or outside Italy. The greater the loss of personal
contacts, even though letters or postcards were exchanged, the greater
the gap between recognised and nominated kin.
The proportion between recognised and living kin, which ranged
from fifty to ninety per cent, on the contrary, seemed directly related to
one major factor in all instances, namely the age of the informants. In
Household 9, where the ratio is nearly sixty per cent, both Ego and his
wife were over 60, and none of their children were interviewed. In
Households 10 and 12, where the ratio varies between ninety and
eighty per cent, the heads of households and their wives were all under
30 years of age.
Another factor which can be said to influence knowledge of kin
directly is the generation of residence in the United Kingdom. As can
be seen from Table 9, the proportion of kin living in the United
Kingdom increases significantly as the composition of the household
changes from first to second generation, and it is when both Ego
and his wife are second generation in London that they report the
majority of their kin as living in the United Kingdom.
Table 9
G eograp hical Location o f K in
E go L iv in g hin K in in U .K . Rem arks
D ate o f arrival
1947 12 6 3
1947 76 3
1947 147 72 W ife of English
descent
1946 148 85 W ife is second
generation
1945 163 3
1937 12 9 6
1937 320 121 W ife is second
generation and
Ego had second
generation kin
19 2 1 16 3 13
Born L o n d o n
19 2 1 97 62 Ego and wife are
second genera­
tion
19 11 126 103 Ego and wife are
second genera­
tion
1900 18 2 52 Ego, only, is sec­
ond generation
1886 84 36 Ego, only, is sec­
ond generation
The whole problem of the factors influencing the knowledge of kin
is complicated among the Italian ates by the frequency of cousin
marriages. This , while it seems to increase the total cohesiveness of
 the kinship organisation, blurs the distinctions between patrilineal and
matrilineal kin, and in some instances the traditional emphasis on the
male line is spread indiscriminately among all kin. Altogether, nine
cousin marriages were reported by the informants, and one marriage
with an adopted daughter who was held to stand in the relationship
of first cousin. In one household, not only were Ego and Ego’s wife
second cousins (their mother’s mothers were sisters), but their fathers
had made first-cousin marriages. The situation was further compli­
cated by the fact that the same surname was used by some of Ego’s
and Ego’s wife’s affinal kin. Tw o more ‘cousin’ marriages were further
reported by the head of this household and his wife, between persons
also using the same surname, but in this instance the exact degree of
kinship could not be traced. The frequency of marriage between
persons of the same surname is reported to be very high by informants
coming from small Italian villages. In the instance of this household,
the informants not only reported that all the persons of their own
generation in their kinship group were cousins to them, but they had
also learnt the habit, from their kin in the village, of calling ‘cousin’
all persons in the village who were of their generation and had the
same surname as themselves irrespective of whether any actually
known degree of kinship existed.
Summarising briefly what had been said so far about the kinship
organisation of the Italianates, it seems that some of its features,
such as shallow depth of generation, presence of pivotal kin, propor­
tion between recognised and nominal kin, are similar to those of the
South Borough kinship organisation. There are, however, other features
which are peculiar to the Italianates. These are, the greater lateral
range of recognition, the larger average number of recognised kin,
the significant increase in the locally resident kin (from Italy to the
United Kingdom) from first to second generation, a higher proportion
of cousin marriages, and a greater use of the classificatory meaning of
kinship terms between persons of the same surname who come from
the same village. The operation of these special features are most
clearly seen when the knowledge of Ego and Ego’s wife are compared
with their total knowledge.
Table io
Spouse*s K in Knowledge
Household N o . Total kin Ego Ego’s wife
i 386 — —

2 308 2 14 154
3 235 113 205
4 224 95 176
5 2 17 12 6 209
6 188 130 121
7 180 16 4 69
8 155 159 151
9 149 12 5 99
10 14 2 96 no
11 12 5 51 97
12 12 3 92 85
 The number of kin each informant could remember depended, in
the first instance, on the number of their own kin, previous to marriage,
they could remember. Knowledge of the partner's kin was gradually
acquired. The most extensive knowledge of the total kinship universe
was possessed by informants who came from the same village in Italy,
or who had lived for some time with the partner's kin. The effects
of propinquity were most noticeable in cousin marriages. In one
instance, the wife knew more of the husband's kin than he did himself
(cf. South Borough, p. 40). In all the instances of extensive knowledge
by one partner of the total kin, it was less dependent on the
maintenance of the integrity of the elementary family, as in English
kinship, than on the type of community of origin of the household
members. In households coming from Italian villages, information
about kin in Italy and elsewhere depended not on a link with one
household in that village but on a series of links with a number of
households sharing information about consanguineals and affines
scattered over a number of countries. Information about kin thus
reached members of a household in London through a variety of
channels, which, at one stage, linked kin and community in Italy.
This factor, however, decreased in importance with households which
traced their origin to Italian urban centres, and with households of
second and later generations in London. Kinship was still very impor­
tant for all those Italianates who frequently returned to Italy and
became involved in the affairs of their community, either because
they owned property or had invested capital in the properties of kin.
It decreased in importance with those Italianates who rarely went
back to their village of origin, or who had no continuing interest in
the affairs of that community.
The situation described here is very different from that described
in South Borough kinship. While there is a tendency for similarity
to increase with generations of residence of the Italianates in London,
there is a fundamental difference due to cultural origin. This cultural
difference is important enough to influence the behaviour of second,
and later, generations of Italianates in London, even if they do not
return to Italy. Even when personal attachment may be lukewarm, the
fact of the maintenance of any ties between Italianates in London and
their kin in Italy will make for cultural continuity. Thus, while the
factor of personal selectivity can be said to operate as with the English
Londoners, an element derived from Italian culture will always enter.
While this study is not directly concerned with describing Italian
culture, enough statements have been collected from informants to
warrant the suggestion that, in Italian culture, kinship is less an
instrument of social expression, as in English kinship, than a formal
tie implying rights and obligations.
To the majority of Italianates, especially those of the first genera­
tion or those who make frequent visits to Italy, and are most fully
aware of Italian culture, their own kinship universe is seen as an
organic whole. The history of each kin group has great significance for
them, even when there is no personal memory of ancestors for more
than two or three generations. Claims of family histories of three or
four centuries, and even longer, are commonly advanced. Enough
statements were collected about these ‘traditions of origin' to show
the existence of a deep emotion for the various degrees of relationship
which linked the living kin to their past ancestors.4 In one instance,
the head of a household proudly displayed a certificate, given to his
father by the Heraldic Office of Florence, tracing his family surname
to the twelfth century. This was framed and hung in his bedroom.
In three instances, the surname of the head of the household was said
to be the same as that of the village of origin, and descent was claimed
to be direct from the founders of that village, which, in one case,
was said to be ‘as old as Italy'. In three more instances, coats of arms
were shown, and the history of the ancestors retold, narrating their
services with the kings of the various kingdoms and republics of Italy,
or the Popes of the Catholic Church.
Y et it is significant that, like South Borough people, the Italianates
have a depth of no more than six generations in their kinship system.
Pride is often expressed, not only in the ‘traditions' but also in the
number of kin. This pride is often transferred to affines, especially if
they themselves can claim kin of high status. T o show the importance
of his kin group, one informant stated that he could practically travel
the whole length of Italy, and to a good many places in England,
without having to sleep in a hotel. This recognition, and pride in
kinship, is also based on the recognition that reciprocal rights and
obligations exist between kin. These range from the expectancy that
kin will exchange visits, and must inform each other of all important
events, such as births, marriages, and funerals, and must also show
themselves ready to provide hospitality, or help each other when
necessary. All these rights and obligations form a well-graduated scale,
which at its strongest implies that parents will provide what is needed
for the upbringing of their children, but children must see that their
parents are well provided for when they themselves in turn begin to
earn their living. It also implies that widows and orphans will be
brought up by the kin of the deceased parents, or that unmarried
sisters will find a home with their married siblings.
This complex system of what is expected as the ‘right' behaviour
between kin varies in Italy according to the region of origin, and in
England with the degree of assimilation. In all cases, however, recogni­
tion of some elements of Italian culture involves the recognition that a
formal code of rights and obligations exists between kin. All informants
reported having been asked to help some of their kin to migrate to
Britain. Those Italianates who spend their holiday in Italy report
that special days are set aside during their stay there for visiting kin
4 T h is is commonly expressed as ‘ I f Grandfather were alive . . ‘What
would Uncle have said . . .?* etc. (These attitudes which may range from
aesthetic sentiment to moral sanction, are to be distinguished from the notion
of intervention of the spirit, common in ancestor cults.)
who live in the neighbourhood, and sometimes protracted journeys are
undertaken to visit kin who live at great distances in Italy from the
place chosen for holiday. One informant reported that he travelled
as much in his car in Italy visiting relatives as he did to get from
London to Italy and back. When parents of Ego and his wife are from
different regions in Italy, the holiday will be split in two. The first,
and sometimes the largest part, will invariably be spent in the
home of the parents of the head of the household.
Among Italianate kin in Britain this range of expected behaviour is
also found to operate. Instances of failing to do so are reported to
give that person a ‘bad name’ among other Italianates. One informant
reported that during the ‘great depression’ of the 1930s in England,
the business of the head of the household nearly failed. He was able
to repay his debts and restart again by borrowing various sums of
money from different kin. Later, when the head of the household
died, these same kinsmen again helped by providing for the widow
and her two children until the latter were able to start earning their
own living. At the present moment, the widow herself is employed
in one of the restaurants owned by a distant ‘cousin’, whose exact
relationship is not known to her. Similarly, it is reported that kin will
help each other financially, and otherwise, in each other’s businesses.
A newly arrived kinsman will be given hospitality, work will be found
for him, and sometimes he will be helped in starting his own business.
Brothers and sisters form partnerships linking a series of small
restaurants, or pool their resources in times of food rationing or other
restrictions. Business preference, including important rebates, will be
given to persons claiming distant ‘cousinship’. During the Second
World War many Italianates of English nationality took care of the
financial affairs, and the families, of their kin of Italian nationality
who were interned. Sometimes accusations of ‘black-marketing’ were
directed at some Italianates for the preferential treatment they gave
to kin when resources were scarce.
While awareness of kinship obligations can be said to exist as a
dominant characteristic of Italianates, the way in which these rights
and obligations operate, as well as the degree of sanction involved in
carrying them out, suggest a high degree of objectivity about them.
This attitude was well summarised by one informant in the statement,
‘You never know how far you can trust people, even your best friend,
but you can usually trust a relative, and help him as much as you can,
because he loses too much by being dishonest with you, and because
you, in turn, may one day need a favour from him’.
In trying to obtain more precision about the operation of kinship
obligations, and the range of kin, it has been found difficult to obtain
data exactly comparable with those for South Borough. The criteria
which were used to locate the range of effective kinship among South
Borough people, that is to say with those kin with whom contacts are
maintained, could not be taken over. It was found, for instance, that
because of the formal nature of Italian kinship, personal contacts are
 maintained over a much wider range. This range practically always
included all nominated kin living in Britain or Italy, and even some
recognised kin for whom the Christian name was not known or not
remembered. Furthermore, while visits are exchanged more frequently,
letter-writing is restricted to kin with whom legal or business affairs
require correspondence, or whom very strong emotional ties unite to
the writer. The exchange of greetings cards, such as Christmas cards,
has not been generally adopted in Italy as a traditional custom.
Notices of marriage or death, on the contrary, are almost invariably
sent by Italianates to all kin who are recognised as such and whose
address is known. It was, therefore, decided to try to estimate the
emotional content of these contacts to see whether they would be
equivalent to those found in South Borough. It was found, however,
that this proved equally difficult, and no method could be standardised.
The meaning attached to kinship terminology, as well as to kinship
in general, varied between the various regions in Italy, as well as
between persons of different degree of assimilation in London, and
differences were found which made it impossible to give a clear-cut
classification.5 When each informant was asked to state who were his
effective kin, that is to say, who were the persons he would place in
the categories of peripher cd and intimate kin, there were important
variations in reaction. It was then explained to the informants that
by intimate was meant those kin ‘no one could replace’ in the affection
of the informants, and by peripheral kin those persons who stood in
the opinion of the informant in an emotional relationship similar to
that of ‘friend’. T o these clarifications one informant replied that only
his father, mother, wife, and his children were his intimate kin, as
for them ‘he would rob and even murder’, and he would not do that
for anyone else. Another informant replied that all his siblings and
their wives or husbands, as well as their children, and the siblings of
his parents, as well as those of his grandparents, were his intimates,
as no one could replace these in his affection. When asked about his
peripheral kin, another informant replied that ‘no friend stood in the
same relationship to him as a kinsman’, while another answered that
‘all his relatives, apart from his intimate ones, were his best friends to
him’ . The correlation of these two categories as the effective kin
cannot, therefore, be said to be comparable in all instances. While an
effort was made to obtain comparable answers, Table n is to be taken
as an approximation only.

5 T h e semantic values of Italian kinship terminology are close to those of

English. However, there are regional variations in the use of these terms, as
well as colloquial variants. In certain regions of northern Italy colloquial
usage often transfers meaning from one term to another. Babbo (father), for
instance, is used instead of suocero (father-in-law). T h e subject is too
complex to be dealt with in this report. It has been noted above that exten­
sion of the kinship term is often used to cover persons of the same surname,
living in the same community, even when no degree of kinship can be traced.
 Table i l
E ffe c tive K in
H o u seh o ld N o . L iv in g kin E ffe ctive kin Intim ate kin P eriph eral kin
i 320 158 56 106
2 148 29 19 10
3 182 67 43 24
4 188 36 21 15
5 163 36 12 24
6 147 37 25 12
7 129 50 29 21
8 126 34 16 18
9 85 47 23 24
10 126 42 27 15
11 76 48 37 11
12 97 24 9 15
It seems that the total size of the kinship universe, or the number of
living kin, is not the primary factor in determining the number of
effective kin. On the contrary, it seems that the recognition of the
Italian cultural stress of the formal nature of obligation between kin
is directly related to the number of effective kin. A rejection of these
obligations towards kin, or at least towards certain categories of
distant kin, is paralleled by the recognition of only a smaller number
of effective kin. It is characteristic that the households who main­
tained the closest contacts with their kin in Italy give the largest
number of effective kin.
Social relations between hin . T he pattern of social relationships
existing between kin can best be analysed by giving a short outline of
the actual relations of members of a household with their kin. House­
hold 3 was chosen for this, as it is believed that it presents a great
many features common to the majority of Italianate households. For
the purpose of the description this household will be called Pastore.
A t the time of the survey the Pastore household was composed of the
husband, Guiseppe; his wife, Teresa; a daughter, Alice; her husband,
Domenico; and their own baby daughter, aged two; another daughter,
Maria, with her husband, Antonio; a son, D on Pietro; the w ife’s sister,
Lina; and a w ife’s brother’s daughter, Paola. T h e y all lived in one large
house, of which the ground floor was the restaurant owned by Guiseppe.
A ll the members of the household, except Don Pietro, worked with
Guiseppe in running the restaurant. Don Pietro was a young Catholic
priest, who, because he was temporarily without a parish, was living with
his parents.
Guiseppe and Teresa are first cousins, but their two fathers were only
stepbrothers, as their father’s father had married twice. T h e two brothers
had migrated from their village, which is also called Pastore, at the end
of the nineteenth centuiy. Guiseppe’s father came to London, and Teresa’s
father went to the United States. Guiseppe and his three brothers and
one sister were born in Britain, and Teresa was born in the United States.
Both their fathers returned to Italy after they had saved some money, and
Guiseppe was educated there. However, Guiseppe’s father and mother
died when he was still young, and as he was of British nationality, he
decided to return to London to earn his living. Later he was joined by his
three brothers and his sister. T h e five of them pooled their resources and
they were able after a hard beginning to open a number of tea-rooms and
restaurants, of which they owned about a dozen at the time of their greatest
 expansion. T h e y also employed a number of relatives and persons from
the same region in Italy as themselves. Guiseppe went back to the village
in Italy to marry Teresa, and their children were all bom in London. How­
ever, while the sisters were partly educated in London, and partly in Italy,
Don Pietro was educated entirely in Italy, finally becoming a Catholic priest
in 19 52. While in Italy, Guiseppe’s children stayed with their mother’s
parents (who are also Pastore, as the head of that household was brother to
Guiseppe’s father). Don Pietro named his mother’s sister as emotionally
equivalent to mother to him, and he seemed as deeply attached to her
children as to his own sisters. H e said that she was responsible for
directing him towards the Church, and he recognised that he owed the
formation of his moral character to her. Don Pietro and his sisters
named a number of cousins of both sexes, living in their village in Italy,
as emotionally as close to them as their cousins living in London.
During the war, Guiseppe and his brothers were not called up, but served
in the Civil Defence in various places in London. A fter the war, Alice
met Domenico during her holiday in the village, and after their marriage
he came to England to work for his father-in-law. Their young daughter
was born in London. When this daughter was about eighteen months of
age she developed meningitis and had to go to hospital. She had been
getting better gradually, but her illness was a great shock to the whole
household and Teresa could not mention it without tears coming into her
eyes. Domenico became very depressed, and after six months of illness
was forced to go to Italy, to rest for a short holiday in his parents’ home.
H e returned, bringing back with him his father, who stayed with the
Pastore family for a fortnight and saw his granddaughter when she was
allowed to come home for a few days. Alice’s sister, Maria, married a
second-generation Italianate, Antonio, whose parents were friends of the
Pastore, and who themselves originally came from a village near by to that
of the Pastore. T h e marriage ceremony of M aria and Antonio was
celebrated by Don Pietro, and M aria was expecting her first baby at the
time of the survey.
Just after the Second W orld W ar one of Guiseppe’s brothers, who had
remained unmarried, died. A s he had been the effective head of the
business partnership among the brothers, the remaining brothers decided
to reorganise their business. T h ey kept a restaurant each, selling the
others, but continued to pool their financial resources as previously. One
of the brothers had got married, at about the same time as Guiseppe, to
a second-generation Italianate whose parents came from the same village
as the Pastore, and whose surname was also Pastore. N o actual degree of
kinship could, however, be traced by the members of Guiseppe’s house­
holds between these Pastore and themselves. In discussing the relation­
ship between the members of the household and their kin, Don Pietro
jokingly remarked that it was difficult to remember what was the exact
degree of relationship beween all the various Pastore, because not only
were they called Pastore and came from the village of Pastore, but they
also called each other cousin, uncle, or aunt (according to age), so that
unless you were present at their marriage, or had documents showing the
exact relationship between them, you soon forgot the degree of kinship.
A fter the Second W orld W ar both Teresa’s sister, Lina, and her brother’s
daughter, Paola, joined the household from the village.

The number of living kin of the Pastore, as given by Guiseppe,

Teresa, Don Pietro, Alice, and Domenico, was 182, of whom sixty-
eight were in England— sixty-six in Greater London and two in
Bedford. In London, these kin were distributed in a number of house­
holds. One was that of Guiseppe’s brother, which also included
another brother and the sister, who had remained unmarried. The
kin of Guiseppe’s brother’s wife formed three separate households in
London. Another household was headed by Guiseppe’s father’s
brother’s daughter’s husband, whose kin formed another branch of
the Pastore. Another household was that formed by Antonio’s kin.
All the heads of these households were restaurant owners, and all
had, at one time or another, rendered each other services, either of a
minor or a major kind. While relationship was maintained with all
of them, an order of frequency of contact could be determined. It
gave the following pattern:

1. Contacts were most frequent with Guiseppe’s brothers and his

sister, who formed one household. Either for business, or other
reasons, members of each of the two households visited each other
once or more times each week. At Christmas, Easter, or one of the
children’s birthdays, the two households came together. Before their
marriages Guiseppe’s daughters had been in frequent contact with the
children of Guiseppe’s brother.
2. There were also very frequent contacts with the household
composed of Antonio’s kin. Although previous to the marriage of
Maria and Antonio contacts had been those between good friends,
contacts had become more frequent and more regular since the
marriage, and the parents of Antonio frequently came to spend the
evening at the Pastore home.
3. Contacts were frequent with the members of the household
headed by Guiseppe’s brother’s wife’s brother, who were also Pastore,
and who were old friends of Guiseppe and Teresa.
With the other households there were only intermittent contacts.
The last time when all of the London kin of the Pastore had come
together as a single group was at M aria’s wedding, when they all came
to the ceremony at the church and at the reception afterwards in
Guiseppe’s restaurant. As one of the members of the household put
it, ‘even the little children were there’. They also met occasionally,
when a member of these households chanced to meet a member of
Guiseppe’s household, either at Sunday M ass or at one of the social
events run by the various associations of the Italian community.
With the kin of the Pastore who lived in Italy, contact was most
frequent with the members of the following households in the village:
i. Contact was closest with the members of the household headed
by Teresa’s father, which also included Teresa’s brother and his wife
and their children. It was in this household that the children of
Guiseppe had lived while they were in Italy, and it was to it that they
returned for their holidays. Teresa’s parents acted as legal repre­
sentatives for Guiseppe’s property in the village, and the frequent
letters between them also included information about legal or business
affairs. The two households communicated regularly, a letter being
written or received practically every week.
 2. Next in frequency of contact was the household headed by
Guiseppe’s father’s brother’s son. Tw o members of this household
had also moved to Bedford, in England, and contact was maintained
with them, especially by Don Pietro, who went to Bedford each fort­
night to celebrate M ass there.
3. While in Italy, contacts were frequent with the members of the
household headed by Guiseppe’s father’s brother’s daughter’s hus­
band’s brother, who was a Pastore, but with whom only the affinal
link could be traced. Don Pietro and his sisters used to spend some
time every day at their house, and greetings cards at Christmas or
Easter were exchanged.
4. The same types of relationship were also maintained with the
members of the household headed by the husband of another of
Teresa’s sisters.

In all these instances close contacts were due to long and intimate
relationship between the members of the Pastore household in London
and the others. Although each member of Guiseppe’s household
who was interviewed gave a slightly different order of preference,
they all agreed to nominate these households as those with which they
were in most frequent contact. It was also the members of these
households in England and Italy who formed the category of effective
kin, with the exception of the members of the household of one of
Teresa’s brothers who had migrated to Paris, but with whom contact
of an intimate character was maintained either by letter or during
personal visits of a few hours during journeys to Italy when they
would sometimes stop in Paris to see them. The forty-three intimate
kin of the sixty-seven effective kin were either direct ascendants or
descendants of Guiseppe and Teresa, or their siblings and their
children. Exceptions were Antonio’s parents and siblings, and a
number of the members of the household headed by Guiseppe’s
father’s brother’s daughter’s husband’s brother, who had been a child­
hood friend of Teresa and Guiseppe, and whose children were also
childhood friends of Don Pietro and his sisters.
With all the other living kin some contact was maintained either by
letter or by greetings cards, especially at Christmas, or by visits during
holidays. Although the exchange of Christmas cards is not general
among Italians, the Pastore had adopted the habit of sending some
to their effective kin, and these had taken to replying with them. For
Christmas 1954, the Pastore had sent over fifty cards to their kin.
Th ey were not sure of the exact number, as they had sometimes sent
more than one card to one household, either because more than one
member of that household had sent them cards, or because they them­
selves wanted to send personal cards to specific members of these
households. During their holidays in Italy, the Pastore used to visit
some of their kin with whom they did not exchange cards, but these
were only short visits, and as most of them were distant kin they did
 not expect to be written to: they only expected the exchange of visits
when the Pastore were in their neighbourhood.
The same difference of frequency of contact between effective and
non-effective kin wàs found to exist when the many photographic
albums possessed by the Pastore were examined. These albums
contained photographs of all the direct ancestors of the Pastore except
Teresa’s mother’s grandparents, and covered practically all the
effective kin listed by members of the household. These photographs
could be divided into two groups. A small number were formal, pro­
fessional photographer’s prints which were especially frequent among
those of Guiseppe and Teresa’s parents and their own generation. The
rest of the photographs, and by far the greatest number, were amateur
pictures taken in Italy during the time Don Pietro or his sisters lived
there. Significantly, there were a large number of recent photographs
of young babies, born after the Second World War to various kin of
the Pastore.
Summarised briefly, the major attitude of the Pastore towards kin
was that of a strong interest, not only in the affairs of those whom
they listed among their effective kin, but also of more distant kin who
lived in the neighbourhood of their village in Italy. They possessed a
strong attachment to their community of origin, and compared it
favourably to other places in Italy. In London, they formed with their
kin a self-contained group, and their social contacts did not go much
beyond the range of the Italian community. None of them were
members of any English organisations— political, leisure, or otherwise
— and they had no close English friends.
The self-contained character of the activities of the kin group is
the element most noticeable among the majority of Italianates in
London. This is especially marked when they form more than one
household. This can be best illustrated by a description of a carnival
dance given in support of the restoration of the Italian Catholic
Church in London. This dance was attended by nearly 2,000 persons
and took place in a large hall off M arble Arch. It was attended by the
Italian Consul, who made a short speech; and the Italian Ambassador
also paid it a visit. Apart from a number of youths who came singly,
and stayed standing at one end of the great hall, the majority of the
people came and stayed in groups, sitting around small tables.
The composition of these groups can best be shown by listing the
membership of one of them, of which the investigator was a member.
The group arrived together, in two private cars. There were four
sisters, two married and two unmarried, and their brother with his
fiancée, who was also an Italianate of the second generation. There
were the two husbands of the married sisters, and one sister of one of
the husbands. Later the group was joined by the brother of the second
husband and his wife. During the whole evening the party stayed
together, with only some short periods during which some of the
members paid a caU to other relatives or friends in the hall. A number
of persons also came over to pay a call on the group. The investigator
was introduced to seventeen of these callers, eleven of whom were
given various degrees of kinship, and six of whom were friends. The
kin were, respectively, the (four sisters’) father’s sister’s daughter and
her husband; one of the husband’s mother’s mother’s brother’s
daughter’s daughter and her husband; as well as her brother and two
of her husband’s kin. Four others were also presented, a husband and
wife, and their two sons, for whom the terms uncle, aunt, and cousins
were used, but for whom no exact degree of relationship could later be
given by any of the members of the group. The husband of one of
the married sisters could go no further than ‘he had always called that
person “ uncle” because he had heard his mother calling him “ cousin” ,
but he did not know how he was cousin to his mother’ . Most of the
dancing during the evening was done between the members of the
party, although a few youths came to ask the unmarried sisters to
dance. At the end of the evening the party went back as a group, in
the same way as they had come.

Factors affecting kin relationship. One of the main characteristics

of the kinship universe of the Italianates is its geographical dispersal.
Each kinship group not only links persons residing in a number
of countries, but also persons living in a number of localities
in each country. This geographical dispersion is explained by the
informants as caused by the long history of internal and external
migration. T o it is attributed most of the gaps in kinship knowledge.
It seems, however, that it is the combination of geographical dispersal
and length of residence away from the village or other place of origin
in Italy which permits extreme ignorance about kin to develop. While
many Italianates of the first generation look forward to the day when
they will return permanently to Italy, most of them gradually come
to look on their residence in London as permanent. With the birth
of their children here, and the formation of households by these
children, the desire to return permanently to Italy is weakened. This
attitude is even stronger among the second generation, among whom
Italy is mainly looked upon as the place to go on a holiday. Very few
of them seem to return permanently to Italy. This, they say, is due to
their upbringing in England which makes them look with critical eyes
on certain aspects of Italian life, and also because their prospects of
earning as good a living there as in London is very unlikely. Among
the third generation this critical attitude is further increased, and
while none were found who denied their Italian ancestry, they feel that
they belong in England.
The gradual cultural assimilation of Italianates— or perhaps, more
correctly, their integration into British life— is far from being the
sharp ‘Americanisation’ reported for the Italians in the United States.6
The process seems to be spread over a number of generations, rather
than concentrated in the first and second generations, and is slowed
down by the many factors which combine to create a community
9 Campini, 1948; and Child, 1943.
 feeling among the Italianates in London, and which tie them back to
their kin and their place of origin in Italy. Very few first-generation
Italians take out English nationality papers. Even among the second
generation, who automatically acquire British nationality, some like
to retain their Italian nationality. In one instance, it was found that
one man had even returned, before the Second World War, to Italy
to carry out his military service there. Some second-generation
Italianates permanently return to Italy. Assimilation, however, does
mean certain differences in the attitudes of the various generations
towards kinship ties. There is a gradual change in the inner authority
structure of the family, and a greater degree of ‘autonomy’ seems to
operate between husband and wife, and parents and children, among
the second and later generations, than among the first generation.
There is also an increase in the ‘individualisation’ of kinship obliga­
tions, and the range of effective kinship is greatly reduced. The much
more individualistic attitude of the English towards kin is gradually
accepted as the norm, and it operates to decrease the formal recognition
of kinship ties and kinship obligations. No sharp cultural conflict was,
however, found to exist between parents and children in each of the
households which were studied. The frictions which were seen to
exist seemed to be those normally found between generations in all
Western European families, and are reported to be similar to those
existing in post-war Italy itself. There was no outright rejection of
parental authority, and respect and affection were the norms.
On the contrary, there were many features directly showing the
elements of cultural continuity existing between the generations, and
the retention of kinship solidarity in the third and later generation.
Characteristic of this continuity was the retention of the traditional
use of Christian names to record kinship ties. In the traditional
Italian system, the Christian name of a person is always followed by
the Christian name of the father (i.e. Pastore Giovanni fu Domenico,
if the father is dead, or di Domenico, if he is still alive). This is
invariably dropped when the English naming method is used. What
is almost invariably retained of the Italian traditional system is the
naming of the child after the parents’ parents. First choice is that
of the father’s father’s Christian name in the case of a boy, or father’s
mother’s Christian name in the case of a girl. Second choice are the
Christian names of the mother’s parents. Sometimes a very dear
relative, either a sibling or cousin, or uncle or aunt, who has died,
will be remembered by the use of his Christian name. Combinations
of Christian names are also used, and more than one Christian name
is normally given to a child on baptism. In this manner both patri­
lineal and matrilineal grandparents are recorded. In the instance
of a respected parent of very high status, who had himself three sons
and two daughters, nearly all the children of the four married siblings
had been given their grandfather’s name as first or second Christian
name. The use of Christian names not previously used by kin is rare.
There were only two reported instances, in the third generation, of
English Christian names being used, and in each of these two instances
one of the parents was of English origin. In the one instance of the
English-Italian household included in the survey, the naming of
children followed the Italian traditional method, but the names were
written and used in the English manner.
The interdependence of cultural traditions and kinship is seen at
its closest in the marriages of Italianates. Both the discrimination
against them, and their own preference for the company of other
Italianates, results in a high frequency of inter-Italianate marriages.
Only four marriages between persons of English descent and Italianates
were reported in the genealogies of all the members of the twelve house­
holds studied. T he English-Italian marriages known to the investi­
gators, as well as the one included in this survey, were all war-time
marriages in Italy between members of the British Armed Forces
and Italians. Marriages between Italianates and Londoners of English
origin are infrequent enough for comments to be passed on them when
they take place, and some Italianates of long residence in London have
no personal knowledge of such marriages. No particular study was
made, however, of the kin relations in such mixed marriages.
Preference is explicit for marriage with a person who either came
from the same area or whose parents came from the same area in
Italy as one’s own parents. This can be said to be an extension of the
traditional Italian campanelismo, which is expressed in Italian by the
proverb, Mogli e buoi dei paesi tuoi. The investigator was also told
that this campanelismo also made for certain antagonism between
northern and southern Italians and prevented marriages between them.
Moreover, it made for protracted investigation by parents of the
history and family of their future in-law not personally known to them.
It was said that in one instance the head of a household wrote to the
priest of the Italian village from which his future son-in-law came to
obtain information from him. In another instance, kin in Italy were
asked to contact, and visit, the parents of a prospective in-law in
another region of Italy. In all instances, engagements are reported to
have been long, lasting at least many months, and sometimes two or
even three years.
Cultural reinforcement from Italy of the Italianates’ attitudes
about kinship decreases in intensity not only with the generation of
residence in London, but also with shortness of the length of time
each Italianate has spent in Italy. T h is cultural reinforcement is
always strongest among those who have spent their youth, or have
been educated, in Italy. Two, out of the four second-generation
households studied, had sent one or more of their children to be
educated in Italy. None of the households whose head was of first
generation had, however, done so. This can be partly explained by
the fact that the adolescence of most of their children came during
the years of the Second World War, and because five of these eight
first-generation households only came to London after the Second
World War. Although there are no data to show how frequent is the
return of young children to Italy for their education, the effects of such
a return must be to reinforce the strength of Italian culture and kin­
ship ties among Italianates, since they invariably go to live in the
homes of kin. This reinforcement seems likely to be the stronger if the
children live with their grandparents in the village of origin, and
receive from them those elements of Italian culture which can be
regarded as more traditional than those they would have learnt if they
had lived with younger persons.
The economic activities of most of the Italianates in London also
give strong reinforcement to their kinship structure. There is a con-
tinous exchange of services of some economic value between kin in
Britain, and also with kin in Italy. The pressure of unemployment in
Italy has maintained the desire for emigration among Italians.
Italianates are constantly approached by their kin, either during their
holidays in Italy, or by letter, to help them to migrate to Britain or
elsewhere. Whenever possible these kin are helped. Sometimes an
elderly Italianate who is loath to shut down his various restaurants, or
other economic enterprises, will bring over from Italy some relatives
and train them in his business to work for him or his son. Among
kin in London, economic co-operation is the norm, and complex
economic organisations are sometimes built between kin. Some of the
most important catering firms of present-day London are run by
groups of Italianates who are linked by kin ties, and who occupy the
various strategic positions in the firm’s organisation. Capital, often at
long-term and without interest, is loaned kin, and important informa­
tion about business affairs is circulated among kin. These often place
them in favourable positions. Between Italianates in London and their
kin in Italy, an impressive flow of remittances, gifts, and other
economic services takes place. It is usual for Italianates to invest
some of their capital in Italy by having a house built for them, or by
becoming landowners. It has been established by Italian official
sources that certain Italian migrants in Britain send nearly one-third
of their wages to their kin in Italy. This money is used by their kin
either for the necessaries of life, or to invest in property which will be
administered by them for their kin in Britain.
Another of the primary factors making for the continuity of the
kinship organisation of the Italianates is their religious attitude. The
teachings of the Catholic Church about the family tend to become the
family ideals of the Italianates. The authority of the parents is
reinforced, and obedience to them is regarded as the proper behaviour.
Respect towards members of the older generations is stressed, and the
subordination of women to men is made an important factor in the
upbringing of children. Among the members of the households which
were studied, it was normally expected that boys should have more
personal liberty than girls. However, it was also expected that both
boys and girls should live at home under the authority of their parents
until they married. Marriage is considered to be the primary aim of a
girl, and is held to be a religious and permanent institution. There
were only four instances of registry marriages among the members of
the kinship groups studied, and one divorce. The four main sacra­
ments of baptism, first communion, marriage, and death are also events
for the meeting of kin and become, especially for the last two, formal
occasions which Italianates consider of first importance. Although
baptism and first communion imply only the gathering of the intimate
kin, others being notified by letter, a marriage or a funeral brings
together nearly the whole of the kin living in Britain, and some kin
in Italy may even travel to London for the occasion. The weekly
attendance at M ass is regarded as a family practice, and the Sunday
morning Mass at the Italian Catholic Church in Clerkenwell Road, or
at other Catholic churches in London frequented by Italianates,
becomes also the meeting place for kin and friends who exchange
news before or after the service. The various Church organisations for
the education of children, or for the leisure activities of the Italianates,
are closely linked with the activities of the families of Italianates, and
it is very often through them that future spouses meet.
Summary and conclusions. The kinship organisation of the
Italianates can be classified according to its position in relation to two
extreme types: kinship groups in which the majority of members are
located in Italy, and whose cultural characteristics are derived from
traditional Italian culture; and kinship groups in which the majority
of the members are in Britain, and whose cultural characteristics show
a high degree of assimilation by its members to English culture.
Each shift in position between these two extremes represents a change
in the behaviour of kin towards each other, and a change in the struc­
ture of the kinship grouping. The following conclusions must, therefore,
be taken as generalisations to be qualified according to the position
held by the actual kinship universe in relation to the two extreme types.
1. Kinship ties are, for Italianates, one of the major elements
influencing behaviour. The closer these ties are to traditional Italian
culture, the stronger they will be as factors separating the kin from
other persons, and in giving kin preferential treatment.
2. While certain elements, such as depth of generation, presence of
pivotal kin and preferences between kin, are closely similar in their
operation to those found in English kinship, Italianates have an
average greater range of recognition and a greater degree of formalism
about the recognition of obligations between kin.
3. Among Italianates, the domestic family of husband-wife, while
considered as the basic unit, as in English kinship, is frequently also
part of an extended family, or of an economic group composed of kin.
4. The kinship organisation of the Italianates also represents their
links with Italian communities, and with certain aspects of Italian
culture, and thus acts to slow down their assimilation into English
culture and society, and serves as a cushion between them and the
discrimination against them.
 The various changes in the kinship organisation of the Italianates
between the two extremes also represent the accommodation of each
Italianate to the conflicting claims of English and Italian culture and
social organisation. These conflicting claims are solved at the
personality level, and accompanied by changes in the attitudes of the
Italianates to their kin. Because it is essentially a slow process of
adjustment, without pressure from the English, and because the kin­
ship organisation is reinforced at each stage by cultural links to Italian
culture, the process of assimilation is spread over a number of genera­
tions which form gradual stages between one another.
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 L O N D O N S C H O O L O F E C O N O M IC S
M O N O G RA PH S ON S O C IA L A N T H R O P O L O G Y

1. T h e Work of the Gods in Tikopia. Volume I. B y Raymond Firth. 1940.

188 pp. with diagrams and illustrations. O ut o f print.
2. T h e W ork of the Gods in Tikopia. Volume II. B y Raymond Firth. 1940.
I 9 ° PP* with diagrams and illustrations. 105.
3. Social and Economic Organisation of the Rowanduz Kurds. B y E. R.
Leach. 1940. 8 2 pp. with diagrams and illustrations. O ut of print.
4. T h e Political System of the Anuak of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. By
E. E. Evans-Pritchard. 1940. 16 4 pp. with diagrams and illustrations.
O u t of print.
5. Marriage and the Fam ily among the Yako in South-Eastern Nigeria.
B y D aryll Forde. 19 4 1. 12 4 pp. with diagrams and illustrations. 105. 6d.
A va ila b le from International A frica n Institute.
6. Land Tenure of an Ibo Village in South-Eastern Nigeria. By M . M .
Green. 19 4 1. 44 pp. with diagrams and a map. O ut of print.
7. Housekeeping among M alay Peasants. B y Rosemary Firth. 1943.
208 pp. with maps, diagrams, and illustrations. O ut of print.
8. A Demographic Study of an Egyptian Province (Sharqiya). B y A . M .
Ammar. 1943. 98 pp. with diagrams, maps, and illustrations. Out
of print.
9. Tribal Legislation among the Tsw ana of the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
B y I. Schapera. 1943. 96 pp. with folding map. O ut of print.
10. Akokoaso: A Survey of a Gold Coast Village. B y W . H . Beckett. 1944.
96 pp. with coloured diagrams. 3rd Impression 1956, 125.
11. T h e Ethnic Composition of Tsw ana Tribes. B y I. Schapera. 1952.
140 pp. 155.
12. T h e Chinese of Sarawak: A Study of Social Structure. B y J u - K ’ang
T ’ien. 19 53. 94 pp. with maps and diagrams. 2nd Impression 1956, 215.
13 . Changing Lapps. B y Gutorm Gjessing. 1954. 68 pp. with map. 1 2 s.
14. Chinese Spirit-M edium Cults in Singapore. B y Alan J. A . Elliott.
19 55. x79 PP-» 6 plates, 18s.
15. T w o Studies of Kinship in London. Edited by Raymond Firth. 1956.
16. Studies in Applied Anthropology. B y L u cy M air. In preparation.
About 135. 6d.