Queen and country

Introduction

Victorian Bournemouth (197) considers the cultural impact delivered in England by Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show during 1887. The show attracted organised groups to travel by railway from Bournemouth’s area to witness it in London. Buffalo Bill mania also penetrated Bournemouth’s local culture.

Victorian Bournemouth (197): the people and the event

Event

The ‘American Exhibition’, held in London, 1887, followed the previous year’s successful ‘Colonial and Indian’ show. Both occurred on over twenty acres near Earl’s Court. The American show included pavilions depicting the country’s technological expertise and culture. The main attraction, however, consisted of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. This took the form of a story expressed in several episodes. It depicted the exploration and exploitation of the American West. A large company participated in the action drama. Audiences observed a variety of frontier skills, including riding, roping, shooting, and fighting. Thousands of people, from royalty to respectable and perhaps beyond, flocked to the show. After a busy summer spent in London, the show moved north to attract those unable or unwilling to travel south by train. Newspaper clippings indicate that Buffalo Bill and his show achieved substantial cultural impact as well as perhaps good business results.

People

William Frederick Cody, ‘Buffalo Bill’, had lived by providing various services across the developing western area of the United States. This included supplying the US Army with buffalo meat, as well as acting as a scout during a range of wars conducted with native Americans. In his early twenties, however, he attracted the attention of dime-novel publishers, whose efforts made him a media entity. He understood the opportunity to transform uncivilised life on the frontier into entertainment for civilised audiences in the east and even Europe. This became his Wild West show, an encyclopaedic collection of prominent individuals, both white and native American. They re-enacted dangerous episodes from their real lives within the relative safety of blank cartridges and the circus tent. Thus, men and women, known from everyday activities in frontier life, became media stars. Cody brought Bronco Billy, Annie Oakley, Red Shirt and others with him to London.

Victorian Bournemouth (197): promotion, promotion, promotion

Launch

Although part of the process, the newspapers illustrate a professional and focussed promotional activity which Cody used as the show’s launch approached. He appears to have well understood how to use his human assets to good effect. Dressed in his frontiersman’s clothing, accompanied by several native Americans adorned with feathers and paint, he would stroll around London’s West End. This would have ignited word-of-mouth as a free medium to announce his show’s onset while wrapping it in excitement. Cody encouraged politicians and other powerbrokers to visit the set. Red Shirt proved a strong draw. Top achievements for this form of promotion consisted of interviews granted by Red Shirt to Gladstone and the Prince and Princess of Wales. The price of the latter, a private viewing of the show, no doubt struck Cody as a bargain. Ultimate endorsement arrived when the Queen attended the show: a public-relations’ triumph.

Packaged tours

News of Buffalo Bill and the Wild West extended beyond London, reaching the seclusion of Bournemouth and its hinterland. Organised travel to Bournemouth, train or steamboat, had featured in leisure marketing for some time. Train operators understood the potential, offering good prices as inducements. Advertisements appeared in the press published within Bournemouth’s area. At the end of August, Poole’s Liberal Club arranged for a fast, special train to take parties up for the show. Robert Elcock, a contractor and auctioneer at Wimborne, advertised a similar offer. These offers appeared towards the end of the show’s run in London. They may, therefore, represent efforts by its promoters to squeeze maximum business from the south of England before moving north. Nevertheless, the advertisements provide clues to the cultural impact which Buffalo Bill and his industry had wrought outside London. Nearly a hundred visitors from Ringwood travelled by train to see him.

Victorian Bournemouth (197): Buffalo Bill mania

Everyone everywhere

The promotion of Cody’s circus appears to have generated attention at levels described as mania. This flushed through society at different levels. For example, suggestions appeared in the press that Gilbert & Sullivan had considered using the show as a basis for an operetta. Boys played games, taking turns as buffaloes. A society column, reporting a range of dresses adorning smart women, suggested that ‘Buffalo Bill only was missing’. A football club in Poole adopted the name ‘Cowboys’. The commentator speculated on the impact of ‘Buffalo Bill mania’. At the Jubilee celebrations held in Christchurch that summer the parade included ‘several grotesque figures representing “Buffalo Bill’s Brigade”.’ They ’caused endless amusement’ amongst onlookers. The event illustrates how the circus had achieved sufficient momentum for the Christchurch audience to decode their antics. In its ladies’ column, the Bournemouth Guardian reported that for children’s hats, ‘Buffalo Bill has supplied the leading idea’.

Virtual Royal Warrant

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show illustrates how a successful media property could spread within late Victorian society at speed. Cody will have absorbed the process from the efforts of Ned Buntline’s dime-novel promotion. When he arrived in England, Cody had the benefit of several years’ honing and applying this skill. He had a good understanding of how to generate rapid word-of-mouth within English society. Thus, he recruited both Gladstone as well as the Queen and her immediate family to act as apparent unwitting mechanisms of promotion. In effect, he secured a Royal Warrant for his show. Walking around London in costume, accompanied by native Americans, enhanced his word-of-mouth and buzz. The evidence about organised tours using the railway illustrates how this technology had shrunk earlier lengthy distances. Before, trips could take days. Now, people could get to London, see the show, and return to Bournemouth’s area in one day.

Takeaway

Victorian Bournemouth (197) has explored the presence and promotion of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show during its opening spell in London. It has found that the intense pressure of its refined and targeted promotion succeeded. Thus, people from the area around Bournemouth would combine, spend money, and travel to London for the show’s experience. Like one of his show’s untamed horses, Buffalo Bill galloped unrestrained through English culture during the summer of 1887.

References

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