London detective recalls 1930s poverty. Hetty battles brother's criminality, manipulative mother favoring racketeer Wilkie for gain. Slums contrasted with new high-rises.

Surrounded by new 1950s East End high-rise flats, a London detective thinks back to how different things were in the late 1930s. Then it was an area of overcrowded tenements teeming with impoverished unemployed people with little or no hope. He relates the story of attractive young Hetty who desperately tried to stop her younger brother descending into crime while her mother was endlessly urging her to take up with Wilkie, a smooth local racketeer, in the belief this would get the family out of poverty.—J-26

A family live in slum accommodation in London in 1938. A local man, Wilkie, formerly a penniless immigrant, has made good by small time crime, and encourages a teenager, Tommy, to do some small time criminal work for him. Tommy steals a lorry driver's wallet, but doesn't get much further. Wilkie is in love with Tommy's sister, but she wants nothing to do with him, while Tommy's mother thinks association with WIlkie will enable Tommy to escape the slums. In fact Tommy has soon spent the money he stole, and in trying to get more by selling a jacket, he shoots and kills an old lady who runs a shop. Tommy goes on the run, but soon returns to his family, where he tries to keep the police at bay with the gun. Family tensions run high as the police close in.—Hazel Freeman