One thing after another
Introduction
Victorian Bournemouth (219) finds how the Council’s administration experienced continual opposition and restrictions from many quarters. Individuals had the power to affect Councillors’ decision-making as did several corporate entities. As a result, the Council often found its freedom to manoeuvre restricted.
Victorian Bournemouth (219): individuals
Baroness Hugel
During 1898, the Council found itself at loggerheads with Baroness Hugel. The exchange centred on the siting of a bus stand near her house on Richmond Hill. The daughter of Lord Herbert, former Secretary of State for War, and wife of well-known academic Frederick von Hugel, her status made her difficult for the Council to ignore. A farcical process followed. The bus stand appeared and disappeared, prompted by her letters. This small example illustrates how, for the Council, just one person could become a hurdle. Over a longer period, successive Councils became ensnared in a corrosive war with Dan Godfrey, their Director of Music, based at the Winter Gardens. Godfrey had artistic and personal ambitions that clashed often with the Council’s steep investment of political capital in the Winter Gardens. On occasion, other civic officers forced the Council into a corner, remuneration and job boundaries the battleground.
Proprietors
The land where Bournemouth grew belonged to a handful of proprietors, gentry, or, at least, leisured people. During Bournemouth’s early period, they capitalised on land unsuitable for agriculture by granting leases for building. The relationship between the proprietors and the town’s civic leaders underwent a transition as time passed. As the largest proprietor, the Meyricks had an ex-officio place on the Improvement Commission. This appears not to have survived the settlement’s incorporation and establishment of the Council. Early civic leaders adopted a deferential attitude to the proprietors, suitable to their rank, but their successors became more confrontational in the 1890s. Their Council debates reveal an assumption that a proprietor’s role consisted of ceding land for further development without objection. Mr Cooper Dean and the incumbent Meyrick, however, did, on occasion, delay projects or even object. The latter’s dilatory behaviour frustrated and obstructed the development of the Undercliff Drive.
Victorian Bournemouth (219): groups
Local Government Board
After 1871, Bournemouth’s Improvement Commission came under the control of a new government executive agency: the Local Government Board. This entity combined duties hived off from the Home Office, the Privy Council, and the Poor Law Board. The Board became both the immediate contact point and, often, the decision-maker on matters where civic leaders felt they required supervision or even permission. By the 1890s, the Board could check Council activities through its role as financial gatekeeper. Almost every project the Council wanted to pursue required loan finance, for which the Board issued permission (or not). It also influenced the grand strategic project whereby Bournemouth sought to absorb several satellite settlements and suburbs. Public enquiries chaired by a Board nominee resulted in delays, so that, for a while, the areas achieved self-rule through UDCs. This contrasted much with the earlier absorption of Springbourne which the Board encouraged despite local opposition.
Post Office and Hampshire County Council
During the 1890s, the Postmaster General reminded Bournemouth Council that they did not rule everywhere in their kingdom. The Councillors discovered that he had the right to tamper with the physical design of post offices located in the town. At times, evasive and dilatory, the Postmaster General might also override concerns they expressed even at the level of the building’s door locations. A more extended turf war simmered between Hampshire County Council and Bournemouth. This related to the division of expenditure for maintaining large roads, at this time responsibility split between the two bodies. The process became an annual ritual where each side attempted to negotiate to its advantage. The County Council also participated in the process of absorbing the satellite areas, combining or contrasting with decisions made by the Local Government Board. An additional complexity lay in the presence of several Bournemouth worthies as members of the Country Council.
Corporations
The Improvement Commission had come into being to bring ordered control to the town’s future built environment. This mandate appears to have created the illusion that they had total control. Although several of the Commissioners had extensive experience of construction, the advent of a new technology, gas power, perhaps lay beyond their capabilities. Thus, responsibility for and control of its installation in Bournemouth fell to an outside company. The abrasive relationship may have created an institutional unwillingness for subsequent administrations to tolerate similar situations as arose with the introduction of, first, electricity and, second, tramways. To some extent, the Council’s attitude may have lay in the opportunity for some members to benefit from investing in parochial versions of these companies. The onset of a tramway to connect Christchurch, Poole, and Bournemouth appeared also to threaten the Council’s local autonomy. In the event, Bournemouth did bring the tramways into local control.
Victorian Bournemouth (219): assessment
Because the resort depended on a narrow economic base of tourism, civic leaders had always seen tight control as strategic protection of this fundamental asset. That most of the early Councillors had built extensive commercial as well as personal stake-holdings in the town perhaps hardened that self-imposed mandate. Nevertheless, press coverage of the Council’s early administrations suggests that members found considerable obstacles hindering its achievement. Baroness Hugel had the power to waste substantial amounts of the Council’s time over a personal matter. The proprietors’ later hindrance on occasion caused the Council to consider legal assistance. Nobody wanted such an apocalyptic option, however. On the other hand, such obstacles may have suited the apparent conservatism of some members. When Merton-Cotes, as ‘pitchforked’ mayor, attempted unilateral initiatives, several Councillors closed ranks against him. Indeed, at least one mayor, at his election, sought only to administer matters rather than to take initiatives.
Takeaway
Victorian Bournemouth (219) has considered how obstacles of various nature interrupted the Council’s administration during its first decade. As the resort had hatched from its early seclusion, its commercial success attracted the attention of numerous regional and national agencies. These agencies often acted as impediments, sometimes causing complete halts rather than mere delays. Furthermore, within the resort, individuals had significant opportunities to obstruct and influence the Council’s decision-making process.
References
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