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Introduction
Victorian Bournemouth (208) provides a summary of the recent subjects and themes covered in the last quarter’s articles. The articles sketched different aspects of Bournemouth’s burgeoning society and social structure. During the 1880s, Bournemouth evolved from one social format to another. It left behind the extended convalescent village in preparation for its future transition into a municipal borough.
Victorian Bournemouth (208): society
Higher
Wealthy and privileged people had taken a formative role from the resort’s beginning. Some visited, others stayed long enough to leave their mark. Mining auctioneers’ advertisements provides treasure in details about the lifestyles of Bournemouth’s rich and privileged residents. One house contained Turkish and Persian rugs, Brussels tapestries, several pieces of medieval furniture and Chesterfield couches. Residents could play on either of two pianos or compete at backgammon on a Chippendale ‘table de jeu’. Another property featured elevators and speaking tubes, a washing-machine and wringer with reproduction art in a third. Genealogical exploration of the residents enhanced the picture. This process also enriched the background of participants in a glamorous wedding reported in the local press. It showed how a wealthy local family, of humble origin, improved its position through marriage. Scandal, bling, and a continental honeymoon illustrated how the nouveau riche could burnish their social position.
Lower
As Bournemouth grew, it attracted waves of working people, most occupying the suburbs, zones reserved for them. At first, this group consisted of labourers and artisans attracted by the town’s continuous construction schemes. Immigration continued and times changed, opening other employment opportunities. One consisted of cab-driving, but over-recruitment caused touting, and uncontrolled prices, attracting the Improvement Commission’s attention. Continuous feuding rumbled between both parties. The cabbies sought defence in combination. At first, they formed a self-help society, but unionisation soon followed, providing balance for fair negotiations to occur. Self-help, however, lay beyond the poorer sections of Bournemouth’s working population. Often unemployed, victims of economic depression, they fell prey to harsh winters, shivering and starving. Temporary soup kitchens would open, staffed by respectable middling people and gentry. Yet, the simple task set the charitable well-to-do against each other, media acclaim as great a priority as providing soup and coal.
Victorian Bournemouth (208): societies
Cultural
Self-improvement and self-actualisation became more possible as increase occurred amongst the respectable and those funded by indirect incomes. Cultural collectivisation offered an outlook for these needs. Thus, there arose groups interested in the progression of knowledge and the widening of artistic expression. Amateur dramatics and music had satisfied such appetites earlier. During the 1880s, however, two further strains emerged: fine arts, natural sciences. The former centred on Bournemouth’s Fine Arts Exhibitions, soon a regular feature on the town’s cultural calendar. This fostered local artists, also drawing participation from painters active on the national circuit. It also had commercial side-effects by providing opportunities for oil and colourmen. The Natural Science Society became a social hub for those stimulated by Darwin’s earlier investigations. It tapped an academic aquifer, attracting a committee and many prepared to deliver papers or exhibit items from their scientific collections. Both societies enriched Bournemouth’s cultural life.
Community
The arrival of Oddfellows had attracted criticism from respectable people, always on the alert for combination amongst working people and encouragement of intemperate behaviour. By the 1880s, however, this friendly society not only had cemented its place within the community by establishing more than one lodge but had also engaged in financial behaviour well-approved by the respectable and the privilege. They practised the art of self-help through insurance schemes to support working people. Furthermore, their investment of surplus funds in the mortgage market demonstrated capitalist behaviour acceptable to gentility. Genealogical analysis shows a gentle oligarchy present on the committees of several new sports clubs. This may have represented a contemporary rear-guard movement conducted by reactionary, conservative residents fearful of further empowerment amongst working people. The cricket club practised a form of social apartheid, but analysis suggests that some committee members did support other, less divisive community activities.
Victorian Bournemouth (208): social networks
Future politics
Attaining a borough charter absorbed much of the town’s political energy during the 1880s. Hindsight may have shown the inevitability of this transition, but its process encountered much opposition. Most of this lay amongst those inhabiting colonies of settled gentry, keen to preserve the resort’s early identity and format. They worried that constant movements towards a city based on local commercial success would threaten both their parochial vision and the value of their property. Early on, they had turned the head and loyalty of Joseph Cutler, successful builder and expected partner of similar types governing the town. ‘Joe Weathercock’ during the 1880s spun around, turned by the political headwinds. By the decade’s end, incorporation appeared inevitable even to him, causing him to change once again. A public dinner, held by his network to honour him, a year before the elections signalled his candidacy, the mayor’s regalia his ultimate dream.
Nomadic cohesion
At first, Bournemouth’s remote location had enabled it to grow and achieve momentum having little connection to the rest of the country. Over time, however, its desire to improve its public reputation encouraged the local governance to favour greater national involvement. Thus, Bournemouth achieved greater connection through both human and technological linkage. The telegraph, telephone, and the railway bound it into country’s burgeoning technological network. The spread of Methodism within Bournemouth, represented by growing numbers of places for practising under-cover worship, provided an example of greater human networking. This form of Dissent had adopted a well-organised and disciplined career structure for its ministers. Thus, those who served in Bournemouth would arrive knowing that their departure would occur within a few years. A minister’s career, therefore, would connect him with several places and many people. Thus, Bournemouth’s image and reputation had great possibilities for transmission amongst this well-established network.
Takeaway
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.
References
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