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Introduction

Victorian Bournemouth (104) considers some of the main points that have emerged from studying its second period.

Victorian Bournemouth (104): continued and wider attraction

Tourist traffic

Articles on the tourist season of 1864, the increase in numbers of hotels, and the way in which residents absorbed some of the high season visitor volume indicate how Bournemouth became a more popular holiday venue. Perhaps 10,000 people visited the resort for convalescence or a fashionable holiday during that year. Within a decade, this number may have tripled according to one contemporary estimate. Thus, the town’s temporary population may have at least equalled the number of its residents then. Furthermore, on public holidays, a much larger ratio of visitors to residents may have applied. On Coronation Day, Bournemouth acted as a magnet to the dwellers or surrounding towns, keen to celebrate their day out at the resort. Its temporary population made Bournemouth one of the larger urban sites within much of Dorset and Hampshire. Within four decades, therefore, Bournemouth had grown from a green-field site into an important settlement.

Residential traffic

Bournemouth’s resident population grew through migration. People at all social levels settled in the burgeoning resort. Much of the work force which continued to build the town had travelled from their origins. The article about Hinton Martell’s carpenters, however, showed how the town might recruit segments of social networks. Thus, some came to recreate their rural settlements within the thriving resort. The resort’s economy provided sufficient reassurance for such social transfers. The same appeared from its growing attraction to families based in different areas of the British Empire, not least the Indian administration. Older members came to retire, younger to learn at the smart boarding schools. Such numbers of residents offered worthwhile audiences for itinerant entertainers based in London or elsewhere. A variety of acts, both classical and popular, now included Bournemouth on their travels to Dorset and Hampshire. Thus, Bournemouth became a valued site to a range of people.

Victorian Bournemouth (104): markers of establishment

Established life

Despite its growing attraction, not all immigrants remained in the resort. Some continued their travels, either to escape or hunting other opportunities in this country or abroad. Nevertheless, an article showed how an increasing number of couples produced children in Bournemouth. This indicates how the town had sufficient stability and promise to reassure those looking to nest. Part of this reassurance consisted of the increased choices for worship and community experience. The High Church services of St Peter’s continued, but Holy Trinity offered an alternate style of Anglicanism. Furthermore, Dissenters had a widening choice of sites where they might worship. Another type of reassurance lay in the growing number of community events and programmes. Some of this consisted of activities aimed at mutual improvement, others to prevent working people from the mutinous possibilities of excessive alcohol. Furthermore, the Volunteer Rifles provided an inclusive form of entertainment for all social types.

Commercial foundations

One of the aims of Bournemouth’s Improvement Bill lay in the creation of a market building. This suggests that the economy then might have supported traders as temporary as the resort’s visiting population. Perhaps the rapid growth of stable opportunity rendered that initiative redundant before discussions about funding the building had crystallised. During the second period, the number of businesses established enough to gain a directory listing grew perhaps fourfold. Much of this consisted of enterprises involved either in construction or in managing the resultant buildings for the holiday trade. Nevertheless, a range of retailers appeared, not least those selling haberdashery and clothing. As the period ended a range of bankruptcies tarnished the scene. Their number and suddenness, however, suggests that Bournemouth had left the idea of a market far behind, for it now had an economy which might fluctuate through boom-and-bust periods.

Victorian Bournemouth (104): battles for control

Bad drains: bad government

Even a decade after its establishment, the Improvement Commission had not secured control of the town’s drainage system. Bournemouth’s original layout, prompted by physicians, consisted of individual buildings, spaced at intervals, angled to gain advantages of sea breezes. Thus, the need to connect these disparate buildings onto the central drainage required more piping than other settlements of similar population. This increased cost. By then, however, the built environment had crowded into much of the intervening space and beyond. This required further attention for drainage purposes. Christopher Creeke, the town’s long-serving surveyor, had trained as an architect, not a civil engineer. Questions arose about his capabilities to address the continuing drainage imperative fuelled by the town’s remorseless growth. The danger to human health posed by inefficient drains became a subject about which the public debated. To an extent, the continuing drainage issue raised questions about the Commissioners’ suitability for government.

More social groups: more complex government

Several articles have addressed the public crisis surrounding Bournemouth’s drainage which blossomed in the mid-1860s. Championed by the resident physicians, the attack on the Commissioners became almost politicised. Yet, other social groups emerged as having enough impetus to wear the trappings of those attempting to control Bournemouth’s shape and future. For a long time, the reverend A. M. Bennett had used his exclusive position as the town’s clergyman to exert his influence across all social levels and even into the drainage crisis. Alternate forms of worship, however, deflected his attention. The builders, as developers or their representatives, in their role of town creators continued to extend their control through their membership of Lodge and the Commission. Middling people, varied in background but more uniform in outlook, began to inject respectability into a society divided between resident labourers and visiting gentry. Drains did not pose the only challenge for the Commissioners.

Takeaway

Victorian Bournemouth (104) has reviewed articles appearing in the last quarter as well as the major trends that appeared during the town’s second period (1856-1870). It shows the inhabitants of a holiday and convalescent resort having to address the wider issues of infrastructure and governance presented by continued commercial success.

References

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