Trade and Temperance

Introduction

Victorian Bournemouth (152) surveys the area known as The Triangle, an offshoot of Commercial Road, which emerged during the 1870s. The article considers its commercial and social characteristics as well as charting residential continuity as the century approached its end.

Victorian Bournemouth (152): Background

Location

The term ‘Triangle’ started to appear in the local press during the later 1870s. It referred to the arrival point of several roads, main and side. Located towards the top of Commercial Road’s steep hill, it consisted of an open space bordered on three sides by buildings. Its name, therefore, described the area’s physical aspect. No evidence about its design has emerged, but it has the appearance of a shared terminus for projects undertaken by difference developers and builders. The area, at first, combined both commercial and social use. On the one hand, it contained shops (and accompanying residences), while on the other it served as a focal point for Temperance activists, attempting to save the large working population nearby. Its wide, open area resembled that reserved for market stalls in medieval townships. As an assembly point, however, it attracted not market traders, but parades (Coronation Day) or young thugs (November 5th).

Early social profile

Attitudes of the Improvement Commissioners imply that the Triangle did not yet have a firm identity. They postponed asphalting the area until they controlled it, thereby giving it an official recognition. In the census of 1881, most of its properties, numbering just over thirty, contained single rather than multiple households.  Thus, the area perhaps had a middling social element. Vigorous advertising placed by some of the businesses shows an active intent for commercial success and its accompanying social improvement. Well-meaning and well-to-do social activists, however, saw it as a Temperance oasis for working people. A pawnbroker’s presence perhaps also shows that the area had potential for such types, many of whom struggled with low incomes. George Nesbitt, the photographer, had his studio in the Triangle. Here, he also hosted early meetings of the local amateur dramatic society. Perhaps, therefore, the Triangle had an ambiguous, almost Bohemian air about it.

Victorian Bournemouth (152): commercial usage

Smart shops

According to the 1881 census, the Triangle had a mixed economy. Businesses clustered into the following main areas: household, food, catering, and textiles.  According to the weight of advertising, the Triangle’s ‘anchor’ businesses included a bicycle dealer, photographer, auctioneer, and a china dealer. These businesses would have aimed their attention at upward middling people, if not privileged groups. Few ordinary people had use for personal portraits or cartes de visite. The china shop aimed at customers who rented furnished property, while the auctioneer operated in a related category. Frank Morgan ran a cycle club, but at five shillings a week, this would have an upper-level social appeal. Thus, the early businesses established in the Triangle aimed more at Bournemouth’s traditional visitors, privileged people, than residents. Frank Morgan rented machines to working people, but, in one case, had to use the court to reclaim it after his customer sold it. 

Temperance centre

In contrast to the direction of the most vigorous businesses, Temperance activists attempted to make the Triangle a working person’s haven against alcohol. The local great and good cooperated in another of many ’causes’ when they subscribed funds to establish a working-men’s club. Not content with that, the activists managed to establish two other sites there which sold coffee rather than alcohol. The 1881 census listed a wine merchant, but this disappeared later. The working-men’s club held annual general meetings where they reviewed its financial progress and discussed entertainment programmes. From the beginning, though, the intended benefactors of this generosity did not match the zeal of its providers. Charges of threepence to attend classes perhaps dampened enthusiasm. Directories show that from around 1885 the building housing the Working-Men’s Club in the Triangle now hosted the Liberal Club. Billiards had replaced bagatelle as radicalism inclined to political rather than social expression.

Victorian Bournemouth (152): trends

Commercial changes

The Triangle perhaps came closer to a commercial or geographic expression than a social community. It served as an extension to the trading area taken westwards up the hill by Commercial Road. As such, its population reflected economic conditions existing within the town and how well business owners catered to demand. Over the next two decades, the profile of businesses changed. Food, household, and textile suppliers declined while catering, energy, medicine, and media (printing and photography) grew. Less than half the heads of household listed in the Triangle for 1881 remained in Bournemouth a decade later. Of these most had moved away from the Triangle. Early death had accounted for some, for example, Frank Morgan, the energetic owner of a bicycling business. Most of those remaining in Bournemouth continued with the same trade, but perhaps had found other locations more fruitful for their business. The rest departed, sometimes vanishing.

Commercial continuity

The businesses which remained combined the Triangle’s original double focus of business and Temperance activism. A Berlin wool dealer, a china shop, an ironmongery, and a trunk manufacturer perhaps formed the stable core of businesses which remained at the Triangle until the end of the century. If the Working-Men’s Club and its Temperance mission had perhaps not lasted, Joseph Vaughan stayed the distance, a man of the same belief. Once a shoemaker in Christchurch, in 1861 he had decamped to Lytchett Matravers as a Temperance Missionary. In the Triangle, he ran a catering business for many years, sometimes taking the form of a refreshment house, sometimes a hotel, but always eschewing alcohol. The people who ran these businesses appear to have remained in place because they understood their market and supplied its needs. Some of nomadic people perhaps had not – nor would ever – find a business with which they could succeed.

Takeaway

Victorian Bournemouth (152) has surveyed the area known as the Triangle. It has reviewed both its commercial and social aspects. A combination of shops aimed at middling to privileged customers contrasted with sites catering for working people. This may have created elements of social tension and perhaps prevented the Triangle from establishing a distinct presence amongst the town’s sectors.

References

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