Victorian Bournemouth (215) has reviewed the profiles and activities found for the borough’s first decade. Commonalities and differences appeared. At the heart of this analysis lies the finding that almost all the mayors hailed from humbler backgrounds compared to the elevated social positions they reached in Bournemouth. In a new position, the magistrates had to learn the best way to manage affairs during their years. Analysis of their business and civic records suggests that while religious and community participation seemed mandatory, each found a way to build a proprietary reputation.
Latest Posts
Victorian Bournemouth (214): civic success
Victorian Bournemouth (214) has considered the origins, careers, and community participation evident for those serving as aldermen during the 1890s. The analysis has shown that most emerged from humble backgrounds, but, by commercial success and community involvement, they achieved social elevation and respectability. This formed the basis for their securing political positions far distant from their social origins. Their stories illustrate how, at Victorian Bournemouth, political influence became a reward for merit and enterprise. Aldermen, therefore, offered a model for advancement to younger ambitious men. Indeed, some became mayor.
Victorian Bournemouth (213): rising men
Victorian Bournemouth (213) discovers that the resort’s earliest councillors epitomised respectability achieved through hard work and seizing opportunities. Their professional success laid the groundwork for attaining public office. The collective values of these individuals, shaped in the market’s melting pot, perhaps provided Bournemouth with a modern outlook, one that rejected inherited tradition. Other communities seeking to balance their society’s modernity with tradition would have found Bournemouth’s achievements instructive.
Victorian Bournemouth (212): public men
Victorian Bournemouth (212) finds that in its first decade the council included men representing different segments of the local economy.
Victorian Bournemouth (211): 1890s’ Council agenda
Victorian Bournemouth (211) finds that during the 1890s the Council managed the infrastructure, shelled old chestnuts, and protected borders.
Victorian Bournemouth (210): a new frontier
Victorian Bournemouth (210) has sketched areas where the resort’s society, economy, and community had undergone substantial change during the decade. To some extent, its world tilted towards upside down. Changes in the economic and social structure occurred. So, also, did relationships with the adjacent settlements. As much change in this decade as in several previous seems to have occurred.
Victorian Bournemouth (209): overview 1890s
Victorian Bournemouth (209) introduces the series covering the final decade of the resort’s early history. It touches on the fundamental changes that occurred in the civic, commercial, and community zones. The inhabitants had reached a new level of civic and social maturity.
Victorian Bournemouth (208): Q4 summary
Victorian Bournemouth (208) has revisited articles published in the preceding quarter. Most of its attention has fallen on social rather than economic or commercial subjects. It has looked at examples taken from the lifestyles of gentility and labouring people. Furthermore, it has examined the occasions when the lives of these people, as a rule separate, interlocked and the results of such encounters.
Victorian Bournemouth (207): soup kitchens
Victorian Bournemouth (207) shows how squabbling amongst respectable people hampered the workings of soup kitchens administering charity to the poor during harsh winters. Lives already made difficult through economic recession became worse when extreme weather occurred during the 1880s. Conflicting social agendas and territorial issues set respectable charitable people against each other making the provision of soup a political matter, leaving people in need to shiver and starve.
Victorian Bournemouth (206): Methodist ministers
At Victorian Bournemouth, the foundation of several chapels provided wide opportunities for Wesleyans to worship. Their ministers had similar social backgrounds: middling, respectable. Often, their father’s occupations in trade and commerce, perhaps helped them to introduce efficiency into their Bournemouth incumbency, for example clearing debts. Others found high positions within the Wesleyan organisation. Their focus on working people enabled them to combine without provoking anxiety amongst middling people and the gentry.