Introduction

Middling people at early Victorian Bournemouth may have taken social action together but did not always share the but did not share the same characteristics. Profile analysis suggests that any differences may have more to do with differences in background than rank.

Merry-making and money

Merry-making

At the end of 1845 Christmas ‘merry-making’, held at the Belle Vue hotel, drew about thirty guests. The press described them as ‘a social party of respectable tradesmen of Bournemouth, and their friends’. Although ‘dancing was maintained throughout with considerable spirit’ the occasion remained ‘such as the ladies could partake of’, that is ‘respectable’. The term ‘middling people’ would fit these attendees. Meanwhile, the press had caught wind of a parallel event. Its description would highlight the relative social position occupied by middling people. A ‘ball on a grand scale’ would occur, held ‘under the patronage of some of the most influential gentry of the neighbourhood’. Attendees would include ‘highly respectable families’ wintering in the settlement. The ball did occur. The ‘company included one hundred of the principal residents and visiting gentry of Bournemouth and the neighbourhood’. The varying descriptions thus indicated the existence of the resort’s middling people.

Money

Eleven years later, early Victorian Bournemouth’s tradesmen functioned once more as a group. They appeared at another public event, their presence there based on their status as ratepayers. The Improvement Commission had come into existence, their plans as well as funding suggestions seeping into public knowledge. Anger impelled the ratepayers into the meeting, common interest framing their response to the Commission’s plan that a rating reassessment must take place. Analysis of attendee names identifies most of them as local traders, for the most part retailers and builder-developers, the same types of people who had made merry at Christmas 1845. Then, they had advertised their social identity, a masked expression of relative wealth, but this time they aimed to protect it. This event demonstrated Bournemouth’s middling people in evidence, shared interest cementing social cohesion. Genealogical analysis shows other markers of middling status.

Rents and retinues

Rents

Although Bartlett, perhaps a bootmaker, present at the ratepayers’ meeting, contested his rent at £20 a year, other traders appeared to have paid more. William Rogers and George Whiffen, draper and bootmaker respectively, occupied premises at rentals of just under £50 each. The baker Charles Swetland paid £50. These men therefore paid similar rents to two local professionals: Rev. Bayley (£60) and Dr. Elgie (£45). In comparison, the rents at the affluent Westover Villas might cost only twice this level: numbers 9 (£105) and 6 (£120). Villa 10, however cost £145 a year. The rents paid by Whiffen, Rogers and Swetland suggest that they ran successful businesses, putting them on a level with professional people, who, for the most part, came from well-established families. Samuel Ingram, the successful builder, however, appears to have preferred occupying part of the tenement he had erected for several of his labourers.

Retinues

The two physicians, a curate and a solicitor employed retinues of servants: cooks, housemaids, a nurse, a stable-boy. Most of their wives had lady’s maids. As professional people, having good backgrounds, servant retinues helped their social position as well as their household efficiency. This practice had begun with some of the early settlement’s middling people. In some cases, for example the lodginghouse keepers, the presence of several servants would seem necessary for commercial rather than social reasons. The grocers Cox and Bell, the butcher Domone, and the chemist Belling, all had a servant acting as a business assistant present in their households. In addition, however, they each had a servant present acting in an apparent domestic role. As respectable middling people, they spent to signify their status by borrowing affluent behaviour. Most of the builders as well as the estate agent, however, had no domestic servants.

Dissension in the group

Different strokes

Victorian middling people used their betters as role models, a form of pretending if not pretension. According to the analysis of servants, the retail traders appear to have embarked on this to signify their social status. Some also paid similar rents to affluent people, another indicator of superior behaviour. They may have come from somewhat wealthy backgrounds, however. The grocer Bell, for example, from Poole, belonged to a family living on the productive Newfoundland trade. Most of the builder-developers, by contrast, appear to have come from working families, earning far more than their fathers. They had wealth, rather than wages. To protect this wealth against the Improvement Commission’s programme, they joined forces with other middling people. It seems, however, that they did not venture all the way towards taking on such trappings of respectability as paying high rents and employing domestic servants.

Implications for power and behaviour

Borrowing behaviour from affluent people constitutes an extension of deference. In this case, flattery by imitation, the inferior does not avoid but approaches his superior. This analysis of Bournemouth’s middling people, however, suggests that all who qualified by wealth to belong to that group did not perhaps adopt the same behaviour at all times. The men from labouring backgrounds perhaps avoided some of the middling trappings: high rents, domestic servants. They chose not to defer. One implication of this divergence may have appeared during the drainage controversy of 1865. The local doctors, affluent men having influential contacts leading to the Queen, published their concern about unhygienic drains. They confronted the Commissioners, adopting seigneurial tones and speech patterns. The Commissioners, however, by now including several of the builder-developers, did not back down and gave as good as they got. They did not defer.

Takeaway

During the early period, a group of middling people emerged at Bournemouth. They may have shared attitudes on several issues, but they did not all seem to adopt the same trappings of their new status. The resort’s middling people remained a work in progress.

References

For references and additional points please get in touch.