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.
Tag: genealogy
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): 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 (212): public men
Victorian Bournemouth (212) finds that in its first decade the council included men representing different segments of the local economy.
Victorian Bournemouth (210): a new frontier
Victorian Bournemouth (210) has sketched areas where the resort’s society, economy, and community had undergone substantial change during the decade. To some extent, its world tilted towards upside down. Changes in the economic and social structure occurred. So, also, did relationships with the adjacent settlements. As much change in this decade as in several previous seems to have occurred.
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 (205): Joseph’s dream
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 .
Victorian Bournemouth (204): ‘a fashionable wedding’
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.
Victorian Bournemouth (202): Oddfellows
The Oddfellows in Victorian Bournemouth evolved from a small lodge in the 1850s to a significant mutual aid society by the 1880s, supporting working people with sick-pay, health-care, and funerals. Their financial model centered on investing membership fees into mortgages, demonstrating their growing social respectability and communal identity amidst changing attitudes towards laborers.
Victorian Bournemouth (199): fine arts
Victorian Bournemouth (199) explores how the resort’s fine arts culture flourished and broadened during the 1880s.