The book tells the story of police work through the words of practitioners. Using the oral testimony of survivors from the period, the author brings to life the often mundane, yet occasionally dangerous, life of the beat police officer. He looks at relations between bookies and prostitutes and between the police and industrial workers and ethnic minorities. He debunks the notion that police work prior to World War II involved crime. The mandate of police officers at that time was to keep Liverpool's streets clean, and arrests other than for minor misdemeanors were rare. Beat policing prior to World War II represented the ultimate in disciplined, supervised, and timetabled work. Police officers whose memories are presented in the book were policing a city in dramatic decline from the days when it led Britain's mercantile empire. The police officers were selected like colonial levies to impose social order on the lower classes of the city. Policing was an entirely male occupation, and internal order in the police organization was maintained by a draconian form of discipline combining the carrots of a better wage than that of most working men and a unique pension scheme. References and notes