Lodginghouses: opportunity at early Bournemouth

Introduction

Lodginghouses developed into an important part of early Victorian Bournemouth’s economy, the fluid nature of the category reflecting the dynamics of the ever-expanding town. Not least, this business afforded opportunities for women to establish personal and economic independence.

Early trends

The earliest found directory (1849) listed a single lodginghouse keeper, Mrs Slidle. Before going on her own, however, she had managed the Belle Vue, which she transferred into a hotel, acquiring a licence. If tourists did not stay at the hotels, they took a large property purpose-built for self-accommodation, families bringing servants. Westover Villas, an architectural showpiece of the resort, catered for such parties. Other villas appeared, whose design and siting suited convalescents, an important category for early Bournemouth. By 1855, however, directory listings showed that the number of lodginghouse keepers neared ten. During the early 1850s, press visitor lists showed a substantial growth in the number of accommodation addresses. Furthermore, close analysis of the earlier villas suggests that their interior designs had changed to apartments. Now, several unconnected parties could stay at the same address. Opportunities for lodginghouses came into focus as the tourist pattern matured.

Changes in the holiday trade

For some time, listed visitors had included parties consisting of more than one surname, suggesting that tourists had gone beyond affluent nuclear families. A series of visitor lists appearing in the summer of 1856, moreover, indicates that people came for short stays, rather than for seasons. The lists connect visitors with their holiday home. Hence, repeated mention of the same property during June and July, but different surnames of guests, suggests turnovers lasting a couple of weeks. People came for ‘holiday fortnights’. Guest rotation occurred in Westover Villas as well as such other properties as Granville Cottages and Bourne Villa. Three parties stayed in Victoria Villa during this period. According to the 1851 census subdivision of its interior had already occurred. Genealogical examination of identified guests at this time suggests that most if not all would have belonged to the respectable class. Working-people’s holidays lay in the future.

Bournemouth lodginghouses

Economic importance of lodginghouses

In the thirty years up to 1871, Bournemouth’s population experienced substantial growth. By then the town held about five times the number listed for 1841. Directory listings of the town’s businesses grew longer. Between 1855 and 1859, lodginghouse keepers would rise from nine to thirty-eight, suggesting greater interest amongst short-term guests wanting serviced accommodation. By this time, an Improvement Commission existed to supervise building. Early, uncoordinated development had caused professional medical people to publish their concerns about the resort’s unhealthy drains. People could stay in Bournemouth now with greater confidence. The town’s economy now appears to have had parallels at two other watering-places: Blackpool and Harrogate. In 1837, the category accounted for about a quarter of businesses at the latter. In 1848, however, at Blackpool, every fourth business catered for guests as a lodginghouse. A third of businesses offered accommodation for tourists at Bournemouth during the late 1850s.

Lodginghouse keepers of early 1850s

For the early 1850s, in the census and a directory, names of people who worked as lodginghouse keepers have survived. A minority of the names appeared in both – a four-year period – suggesting that most people entered and departed the business with relative speed. Unlike artisans involved in building who might come from the same district and share kinship, no fixed geographic pattern applies to the lodginghouse keepers. They differed in age and marital status, some men, some women. Not all the men perhaps worked in the business despite identification as lodginghouse keepers, their wives perhaps managing the guests. Of the single women listed, both spinsters and widows worked in the trade. Few lodginghouse keepers perhaps had had little or no specific training. Their wide demographic spread and previous experience suggests that anyone could become a lodginghouse keeper if they could afford a lease, however short term.

Blackpool parallels

Fluid nature of the category

Although applying to the 1880s and after, John Walton’s monograph on Blackpool lodginghouse keepers provides good evidence to bear in mind for the situation at Bournemouth. He highlighted the fluid nature of the way in which many lodginghouse keepers engaged with the category. For example, some took a property only for the season. Others used guest revenue to augment a pension or their husband’s income from another activity. Some, dazzled by the number of summer visitors, committed to leases without realising that volumes would drop in the winter. Bournemouth, however, had two seasons, its winter climate kind to invalids, so such cash-flow problems would occur less often. Walton’s analysis of directories suggested that very few people managed (or wanted) to last long in the business. It took time to build a reputation and to develop a profitable list of return visitors. The category attracted many amateurs, but few professionals.

Opportunities for women

Blackpool’s market in the later Victorian period consisted for the most part of working-class visitors. Bournemouth, thirty years earlier, appealed to a different social group, although some changes from the exclusive aristocratic trade had already occurred. Nevertheless, his observation that the business category offered opportunities for women to achieve income and a measure of independence seems relevant to the situation at Bournemouth. In the early 1850s, at least as many women as men, if not more, ran the lodginghouse trade in the resort. Although some, like Charlotte Coles, had husbands to deliver additional income, most of the others lived as single women: spinsters or widows. Amongst these only a few appeared to have created businesses which had long term value. Ann Carter, for example, a local woman, ran a lodginghouse for around thirty years at Bournemouth. Mary Ware, a Cranborne immigrant, did the same before retiring to her homeland.

Takeaway

Towards the end of its early period, Victorian Bournemouth’s economy began to include lodginghouses, kept by a variety of people: old and young; male and female; married and single. Soon the category would expand much, affording further opportunities in particular for females to achieve financial and personal independence, given a fair wind and hard work.

References

John K. Walton, The Blackpool Landlady (Manchester, 1978)

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