Substantial country town. Continuity and change in skill sets and street profiles.

Introduction

Victorian Bournemouth (54) shows how population levels in mid-Victorian Bournemouth increased during the period 1851-1871, perhaps quadrupling. Deeper analysis of the resort’s demography suggests changes in the population’s nature as well as quantity occurred.

Victorian Bournemouth (54): population estimates

What was ‘Bournemouth’?

At this time the term ‘Bournemouth’ appears more as a geographical expression than a settlement having agreed borders. The Greater Westover rural hamlets appear now to have counted within Bournemouth’s hinterland. Enumerators included them in the same sections as parts of the new town. Contemporaries distinguished between the region under the Improvement Commission’s authority and that belonging to ecclesiastical Bournemouth. The former covered a semi-circle, whose radius measured a mile inland from the Belle Vue hotel. The latter appeared to have extended further. Furthermore, the town’s population varied throughout the year because of the tourism business. One of Bournemouth’s commercial benefits lay in its having two recognised visitor seasons: winter and summer. A note in the 1871 census explained that the population contained 1408 ‘persons temporarily staying in the place’. At a public meeting held in the early 1870s, a speaker estimated the annual visitor volume at 30,000.

Best estimates

The 1871 census gave the population under the Improvement Commission’s authority as 5,896. The ecclesiastical district of Bournemouth, however, came to 7,141. By addition of the enumeration districts covering the settlement, the population reached 8,367. A report carried by the Christchurch Times (3.1.1874) gave Bournemouth’s population as 10,204, although it did not define the area. As a rule of thumb, therefore, Bournemouth’s population by 1871 perhaps numbered between 8,000 and 10,000. This marked a significant advance on the estimated figure of 2,500 for 1851. At 10,000, Bournemouth exceeded the population of, for example, most Dorset settlements, including Wimborne (3,488), Blandford (4,052), Dorchester (7,132) and Cranborne (2,562). Bournemouth and Poole seem to have had similar populations, while the other neighbour, Christchurch, had less. This figure, however, included the rural hamlets. For the actual town, therefore, the best estimate perhaps comes to 6,000-7,000 people, leaving aside visitor numbers.

Victorian Bournemouth (54): continuity and change – occupations

Butlers and footmen

Bournemouth’s original appeal lay with affluent people, unhealthy and healthy. During its early period debates had arisen concerning the extent to which the resort should welcome visitors having different social origins. Some agreed, some disagreed. In 1861, according to the increased number of lodging-house keepers present in Westover Villas compared to 1851, some changes had occurred. Some visitors preferred to use local service rather than travelling in large household retinues (if they had them). Nevertheless, the 1871 census recorded the highest number of butlers and footmen present in Bournemouth thus far. Thus, the resort had continued to attract the older type of visitor in addition to newer sorts. The butlers and footmen, however, no longer inhabited Westover Villas, having spread to new streets further up the valley either side of the Bourne. Plotting their location indicates how the social texture of streets had changed as Bournemouth matured.

Terrace Road

In the first period, dwellings grew along Terrace Road to form an area populated by labouring people. An earlier study has suggested that most of the adult male inhabitants consisted of labourers or artisans occupied in the construction business. In 1871, the street’s population had not increased much over 1851. The street still housed painter-glaziers, stone masons, and plumbers but fewer labourers. Now men working in other fields had come to live on the street. A stroll down Terrace Road would have passed a butcher, a baker, and a grocer. Eliza Robbins kept a lodging-house, while three tailors and a tinman also lived here. Terrace Road, present from the early days, therefore acts as a comparative index to gauge occupational change in the resort. The road’s commercial nature had become more varied, indicating changes in its social texture. Middling people had displaced some of the old unskilled labouring types.

Victorian Bournemouth (54): continuity and change – geographic origins

Urban and rural emigrants

Although Bournemouth’s proportion of immigrants born outside either Hampshire or Dorset grew to around 40%, Dorset people also increased their presence. Previous studies have examined the people who came from the hinterland separating Wimborne from Cranborne. Immigrants in growing numbers continued arriving from here. People came from Witchampton, Woodlands, and Horton in addition to the same places as before. The number from Cranborne showed a large increase. Now, however, Bournemouth attracted people born in the county’s towns. People from Dorchester, Sherborne, Weymouth, Blandford, and Wareham immigrated in number as well as the many from Poole and Wimborne. These urban dwellers played a different economic role to the rural labourers and artisans. The newer immigrants worked as shoemakers, bakers, tailors, and teachers. Now, therefore, Bournemouth’s population and society combined former town and country people. Hence, new horizons and expectations as well as cultural and religious concepts would have enriched its society.

Residential clumping

Previous work suggested that kinship and friendship connections may have influenced Bournemouth’s immigration. In some cases, people arriving from the same area occupied the same neighbourhood. Hence, the town’s ‘social-scapes’ might echo the immigrants’ departure points. For example, Blandford people, without apparent kinship, congregated along Commercial Road. People from Wimborne clustered in Madeira Vale, Oxford Street, and Holdenhurst – all built around the same time. Dorchester people settled in the same area, Springbourne’s roads, Victoria and Windham. Deeper analysis would reveal the extent to which people from the same place but having different surnames did have kinship rather than acquaintance connections. Linkage seems plausible, however. Word-of-mouth, agents, or employers may have guided immigrants to residential areas consisting of others having a similar origin. Although individuals will have arrived on their own initiative, much of Bournemouth’s immigration appears to have consisted of groups sharing some form of pre-existing connection.

Victorian Bournemouth (54): takeaway

Thus, by 1871, Bournemouth’s increased population placed it among the larger settlements in eastern Dorset and western Hampshire. Some street social profiles had changed their nature. Urban immigrants joined their rural counterparts, widening the collective skill-set available in the town. In some cases, residential clumping created small versions of their original societies, recast in Bournemouth’s new context.

References

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