Cosmopolitan worlds in early Victorian Bournemouth

Introduction

‘Cosmopolitan’ could have described early Victorian Bournemouth’s tourists, but the term might also have applied to the resort’s immigrant residential population. Demographic analysis of the population living in the Wimborne, Allen, Cranborne, Crane (WACC) hinterland offers insight into this aspect of the resort’s residents. The demographic analysis applied here depends on data from the census and parish registers.

Data analysis

Natives sometimes a minority

From 1851, each census recorded both the place and county of origin for every resident. According to this data, the proportion of native residents in the WACC parishes ran at about half, although variations occurred. Residents of Long Critchel, for example, included only just over a third of natives. Edmondsham natives, however, accounted for over half the recorded residents. Witchampton, Hinton Martel and Gussage All Saints all performed at the average of around half. In addition, around a quarter of the residents registered as living in each community came from another parish in the WACC district. The remainder came from elsewhere in Dorset or beyond. Hence, about half the residents in each place came from outside. In other words, the parishes had a cosmopolitan population, natives sometimes a minority. The analysis also illustrates the extent to which people moved around the district as the settlement examination of James Joy showed.  

Measuring increases in natural surplus population

Population totals for each place have survived since the 1801 census. Figures for baptisms and burials, however, in some WACC parishes extend back into the seventeenth century. Comparing baptisms with burials provides an indication of population dynamics. Where burials outnumber baptisms by a significant proportion, a local mortality crisis may have happened, for example, a plague. The opposite signifies that a ‘baby boom’ has occurred, the residents including large numbers of fertile couples. During the eighteenth century, WACC burial and baptism totals remained close, but natural surpluses began to occur in the early 1800s. On occasion, in such places as Moor Critchel, St Giles, Witchampton, and so on, baptisms ran at double the burial levels over this period. This did not, however, happen at the same time, so that surplus bubbles appear to have rippled around the district. This may reflect the passage of itinerant workers during their fertile period.

Perpetual migrant motion

According to successive census totals, during the first part of the nineteenth century, the WACC population increased. Witchampton grew from 374 (1801) to 588 (1861). Horton-Woodlands increased from 672 to 926, Hinton Martel 209 to 357, Gussage All Saints 301 to 496. Incorporating the natural surplus balances into the calculations, however, provides an insight onto migration levels. If these parishes had retained their natural surplus population, the following respective expected census figures should have occurred in 1861: 602, 1041, 382, and 547. Hence emigration took place across these parishes because they contained less people (census) than they should (net surplus). This happened for almost every decade in these and other parishes in the area after 1801. The rate, however, varied. This analysis enhances the native population statistic discussed above. Many natives left their settlement, replaced by immigrants to create a cosmopolitan population in each parish.

Discussion

Opportunity only twenty miles distant

As noted, rural employers tended to offer fixed-term assignments on their farms and to restrict the availability of housing within the parishes where they paid their poor rate. This resulted in much of the working population existing in perpetual motion throughout the area. Settlement examinations acted as a safety valve to reduce pressure on local poor relief funds. By the nineteenth century this economic practice and its social repercussions had operated for at least three hundred years, no doubt longer. Until community health improved, the system seems to have retained some equilibrium. Once the baptisms exceeded burials on an increasing and regular basis, however, stress would have entered the system. Competition for work will have become intense, while employers would have had the advantage in wage negotiations subject to overall national guidance. Bournemouth’s growing economy, only a twenty mile walk away, helped to reduce that pressure on WACC communities.

Different types of cosmopolitan worlds

Early Bournemouth’s commercial model depended on people from elsewhere visiting the town. The resort’s natural attributes attracted affluent people, invalid and fun-seekers, from many parts of the country. A cosmopolitan community developed, constructed from a constant stream of holiday immigrants, staying for varying amounts of time. In parallel, a longer-term residential population grew, comprised of people migrating from elsewhere in Hampshire, Dorset and wider: a chemist from Cornwall, a family of drapers from Salisbury, the post-office manager from Iwerne, Dorset, his wife born in Banbury, Oxford. Hence, this community of small businesspeople also had a cosmopolitan nature of its own. Embedded into it came the people whose families had wandered around the WACC hinterland for generations in search of work. As shown above, even though existing in a secluded, rural context, inhabitants in each parish encountered many from elsewhere. They, too, lived in a cosmopolitan world.

Rural culture no disadvantage in cosmopolitan Bournemouth

Early Victorian Bournemouth offered opportunity to those who wanted it. Take, for example, John Hibidage, carpenter, from Witchampton, who had married a woman from Poole, present in Bournemouth by 1841. This surname occurred often in the itinerant WACC district, frequent at Chalbury and Moor Critchel in addition to Witchampton. By 1851, he worked as a builder, employing staff. Charles Mate identified him as one of Bournemouth’s main builders. His estate included many properties, which he had built and rented. The carpenter had floated upwards to become a capitalist. His rural background appeared not to have disadvantaged him. Successful migrants would have needed to adopt a flexible attitude, adapting behaviour according to the requirements of a given situation rather than tradition or custom. The cosmopolitan world of the WACC communities prepared opportunists like John Hibidage for a similar culture, blossoming at different social levels in early Victorian Bournemouth.

Takeaway

Despite coming from such rural districts as the WACC hinterland, the apparent cosmopolitan culture of those communities perhaps prepared opportunistic migrants to succeed in a similar varied world at early Victorian Bournemouth.

References

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