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Victorian Bournemouth (215)
5th Period

Victorian Bournemouth (215): early mayors

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.

Victorian Bournemouth (214)
5th Period

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)
5th Period

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 (208)
4th Period, Thought-pieces

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)
4th Period

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 (2006)
4th Period

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.