The rising industrial elites of the early industrial city might very well have perpetuated this pattern. They were quite capable of commanding the necessary wealth and power to keep themselves apart. But the growing petit bourgeois could not. Not only could they not afford a phalanx of servants to protect them in their necessary travels about the city; they were doubly hampered by having no traditional or legal supports for the deference they undoubtedly felt they deserved. And even if they had, they were confronted by an enormous population of rural immigrant floaters who had little knowledge of, or respect for, city ways.

XREF: Relates to broader themes of Victorian-era class segregation and the role of social deference in urban life.

Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order a…, loc. 346