In 1937, Mass-Observation began its Worktown study in Bolton, recording everyday behaviour in streets, cinemas, churches, workplaces, and pubs. The project treated the pub as a key social institution rather than merely a drink problem. Its findings later fed The Pub and the People.

Mass-Observation's Worktown pub research, co-founded by poet Charles Madge in 1937, made pub life an object of literary and sociological attention. This initiative influenced the documentary imagination that shaped mid-century British poetry and prose, highlighting everyday experiences and social dynamics.