The action covers a period of roughly four months from August to November around the time of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. Liza Kemp is an 18-year-old factory worker and the youngest of a large family, now living alone with her aging mother. Very popular with all the residents of Vere Street, Lambeth, she likes Tom, a boy her age, but not as much as he likes her, so she rejects him when he proposes. Nevertheless, she is persuaded to join a party of 32 who make a coach trip (in a horse-drawn coach, of course) to a nearby village on the August Bank Holiday Monday. Some of the other members of the party are Tom; Liza's friend Sally and her boyfriend Harry; and Jim Blakeston, a 40-year-old father of 5 who has recently moved to Vere Street with his large family, and his wife (while their eldest daughter, Polly, is taking care of her siblings). The outing is fun, and they all get drunk on beer. On their way back in the dark, Liza realises that Jim Blakeston is making a pass at her by holding her hand. Back home, Jim manages to speak to her alone and to steal a kiss from her.
Seemingly without considering either the moral implications or the consequences of her actions, Liza feels attracted to Jim. They never appear together in public because they do not want the other residents of Vere Street or their workmates to start talking about them. One of Jim Blakeston's first steps to win Liza's heart is to go to a melodramatic play with her on Saturday night. Afterwards, he succeeds in seducing her (although the graphic details of their sexual encounter are not explicitly described):
'Liza,' he said a whisper, 'will yer?'
'Will I wot?' she said, looking down.
'You know, Liza. Sy, will yer?'
'Na,' she said.
But in the end they do "slide down into the darkness of the passage". (The reader never learns whether at that time Liza is still a virgin or not.) Liza is overwhelmed by love. ("Thus began a time of love and joy.")
When autumn arrives and the nights get chillier, Liza's secret meetings with Jim become less comfortable and more trying; they must meet in the third-class waiting-room of Waterloo station. To Liza's dismay, people do start talking about them despite their precautions. Only Liza's mother, a drunkard and a simple person, doesn't know about their affair.
After Liza's friend Sally gets married, her husband doesn't want her to earn her own money, so he stops her from working at the factory; besides, Sally soon becomes pregnant. With Sally married and stuck at home, and even Tom seemingly shunning her, Liza feels increasingly isolated, but her love for Jim keeps her going. They do talk about their love affair: about the possibility of Jim leaving his wife and children ("I dunno if I could get on without the kids"); about Liza not being able to leave her mother, who needs her help; about living somewhere else "as if we was married", about bigamy but, strangely, not about adultery.
The novel builds up to a sad climax, suggesting that all men with the possible exception of Tom are alike, since they all beat their wives, especially when they have been drinking. Soon after their wedding, Harry beats up Sally just because she has been away from home chatting with a female neighbor; he even hits his mother-in-law. When Liza drops by, she stays a bit longer to comfort Sally, which makes her late for her meeting with Jim in front of a nearby pub. When she finally gets there, Jim is aggressive towards her for being late. Without really intending to, he hits her across the face ("It wasn't the blow that 'urt me much; it was the wy you was talkin'") and gives her a black eye.
Soon the situation deteriorates completely. Mrs Blakeston, who is pregnant again, opposes Jim's affair with Liza by refusing to talk to him, then goes around telling other people what she would do with Liza if she caught her, and those people inform Liza, who is frightened because she is weak and she knows Mrs. Blakeston is strong. One Saturday afternoon in November, Liza is on her way home from work when the angry Mrs. Blakeston confronts her, spits in her face, and physically attacks her. Quickly a crowd gathers, not to abate the fight, but to abet it. ("The audience shouted and cheered and clapped their hands.") Eventually, both Tom and Jim stop the fight, and Tom walks Liza home. Liza is now publicly stigmatised as a "wrong one", a fact she herself admits to Tom ("Oh, but I 'ave treated yer bad. I'm a regular wrong 'un, I am"). Despite all her misbehaviour ("I couldn't 'elp it! [...] I did love 'im so!"), Tom still wants to marry Liza, but she tells him that "it's too lite now" because she thinks she is pregnant. Tom says he wouldn't mind that, but she insists on refusing.
Meanwhile, at the Blakestones', Jim beats up his wife. Other residents hear them and young Polly appeals to some for help, but they choose not to interfere in other people's domestic problems ("She'll git over it; an' p'raps she deserves it, for all you know").
When Mrs Kemp comes home and sees her daughter's injuries, all she does is offer her some alcohol (whiskey or gin). That evening they both get drunk, despite Liza's pregnancy. During the next night Liza has a miscarriage. Mr Hodges, who lives upstairs, fetches a doctor from the nearby hospital, who soon says he can do nothing for her. While her daughter is dying, Mrs Kemp has a long talk with Mrs Hodges, a midwife and sick-nurse. Liza's last visitor is Jim, but Liza is already in a coma. Mrs Kemp and Mrs Hodges are talking about the funeral arrangements when they hear Liza's death rattle and the doctor declares her dead.
Output: Who wants to marry Liza?