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.
Tag: Victorian history
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 (209): overview 1890s
Victorian Bournemouth (209) introduces the series covering the final decade of the resort’s early history. It touches on the fundamental changes that occurred in the civic, commercial, and community zones. The inhabitants had reached a new level of civic and social maturity.
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 (203): Natural Science Society
Bournemouth’s Natural Science Society flourished in the resort during the 1880s. The society acted as a forum for people having quite different interests yet all connected by a shared zeal for scientific study and new technology. Thus, to those having similar interests, the society made Bournemouth an attractive destination.
Victorian Bournemouth (199): fine arts
Victorian Bournemouth (199) explores how the resort’s fine arts culture flourished and broadened during the 1880s.
Victorian Bournemouth (195): Q3 summary
Victorian Bournemouth (195) provides a summary of the recent subjects and themes covered in the last quarter’s articles.