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) 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.
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.
Victorian Bournemouth (205) examines how Joseph Cutler used a public dinner given in his favour as a platform for furthering his political career. A divisive civic figure, Cutler had his eye on the first borough elections, his dream the mayor’s regalia. The dinner eschewed politics for bolstering his public image. The resort’s power brokers declined their invitations. A splendid occasion failed in its apparent purpose, for, at next year’s elections, voters did not favour Joseph Cutler .
The family of bride and heiress, Lena Lance, could have formed the basis of a novel written by Trollope, Hardy or others. Humble origins to substantial wealth in a generation. A rich old man living in a coterie of single women kin to his wife. A sensational court case about forged wills, an uncertain solicitor, and much money. A society wedding sparkling with bling. Marrying into money only a generation older, she escaped Bournemouth’s nouveau riche nervous society for Midland respectability.