Violence. Servants. Giving. Tourism.

Introduction

Victorian Bournemouth (130) surveys articles written in the second quarter, covering a range of subjects. These included incidences of mob violence, advertising for domestic staff, patterns found in church donations, and developments in the tourist business. Overall, they support a view that Bournemouth had advanced from a resort colony into a complex urban society.

Victorian Bournemouth (130): mob violence

Key details

A series of articles analysed and assessed the implications stemming from two incidences of violence conducted against people. In both cases, the process ended in court. The first instance concerned debt, the second ‘grassing‘. To address the problem of a debtor, a landlord organised a gang, armed with clubs, to assault him at his premises, part of The Queen’s Hotel. As revenge against a man giving evidence in court, the defendant’s friends threatened the witness in person and attacked his house, including tossing inside a burning effigy. Both indicate how, by the 1870s, Bournemouth had changed. Once an Arcadian resort colony, it had developed into a society where serious aggression had a role in inter-personal relations. The incidents provide insights into the workings of power, the fault lines dividing social types, and how the society recovered from them. In addition, the Springbourne assault depicted how personal networks might play a role. 

Implications and meaning

The assault on The Queen’s Hotel resembled how a manorial lord might take matters into his own hands. His armed gang assaulted both person and property. Society accepted his right to do so, for the magistrates imposed no penalty. Thus, privilege and wealth enjoyed some primacy at Bournemouth. A similar assault perpetrated by working people on a middling man, however, received strong punishment. The convicted had to perform hard labour terms in prison lasting at least a year. Hence, society did not accept disorder perpetrated by working people. The attack on Arthur Adams has a wider interest in its depiction of kindred and friendship networks functioning within Springbourne’s society. Several members of Arthur’s family lived nearby. During the incident they closed ranks not only by sending for the police but by taking action as well. Arthur’s brother-in-law and neighbour used a shotgun to control the mob until the police arrived.

Victorian Bournemouth (130): staff and product advertising

Key details

Analysis of the advertising pages published within The Western Gazette during the 1870s offered several insights into Bournemouth’s society and commerce. Advertisements for female domestics appeared often at this time. Employers had a regular and growing appetite to secure women working within the kitchen and elsewhere in their houses. Women willing and able to cook, to serve at table, or clean the houses could find growing opportunities within Bournemouth during the 1870s. Wages of £20 a year in addition to board, lodging, and some perks compared well with incomes earned by men. The newspaper’s growing circulation during this period indicates its appeal for readers at different social levels as well as advertisers. In addition to classified advertising, the paper sold display space to manufacturers of brands that still today retain a significant presence in packaged-goods marketing. The paper became an important feature of Bournemouth’s economy during this period.

Implications and meaning

The articles suggested that qualities required by employers of female domestic staff reflected keystones within middling people’s wall of respectability. Some advertisements, however, also contained preferences for ‘country girls’ or ‘farmer’s daughters’. Others discounted potential employees having previous experience of lodging houses. For the most part, ambitious middling people had prospered within urban commerce, often retailing. Their values would have reflected that environment, the urban world of improvement and progress. Their preference for ‘country girls’, however, appears to contrast with that world. In effect, Johnny Town-mouse wanted to employ Timmy Willie. Employers may have seen rural working women as personifications of such middling values as steadiness, activity. For middling people to pay respect to their inferiors, however, goes against the laws of deference. Instead, employers may have wanted to avoid domestics who had developed an urban sharpness or wider experience that could have rendered them hard to control.

Victorian Bournemouth (130): other areas

Church offerings

The local press reported each week the donations received from worshippers attending Bournemouth’s three main Anglican churches. Each church practised a different type of worship, a range from High Anglican to Evangelism. The entries also listed the applications for the money collected. Articles written about this illustrated how use of the money collected varied by types of worship. The donations, therefore, showed how Bournemouth had developed from its early, monotheism provided by the Reverend A. M. Bennett, seen by some as close to Catholic ritual. Now, pluralism had emerged, represented by the ability to fund additional churches, having different practices, but also to support them through regular attendance. The new congregations had surplus funds sufficient to make regular donations, albeit at lower levels than the High Anglican St Peter’s. This analysis, therefore, offers additional support for the idea that, by the 1870s, Bournemouth’s society had become more varied than before.

Tourism and hotels

A similar point emerges from the articles about visitors’ arrivals and the development of the hotel sector. At first, the resort had two hotels, while overflow tourist volume found venues within the growing number of people prepared to take guests or to manage holiday apartments. Continued increases in the numbers of visitors, in part caused by railway connections at either end of the town, drove the development of far more new hotels than the original pair. As part of this change, variations appeared to occur within the behaviour of visitors, in particular length of visits. Bournemouth’s climate had always drawn visitors in winter as well as summer, but now their numbers had increased to a level which encouraged people to build hotels. Discounts available for long-term winter stays could cover overheads, while full capacity in the summer sold at top rates would deliver profits for the year.

Takeaway

Victorian Bournemouth (130) has drawn wider conclusions from the articles published during the second quarter. From the different standpoints of mob violence, church donations, employment advertising, and the tourist trade, a common conclusion emerged. Bournemouth’s society had evolved from a simple, Arcadian world. Forty years later, serious crime, religious pluralism, and ambitious middling people had arrived. A range of hotels catered for a broader type of visitor. Bournemouth had acquired a more complex, urban society.

References

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