Image. Identity. Challenge

Introduction

Victorian Bournemouth (65) provides a summary of this year’s first quarter articles. The main themes to emerge include image, identity, and challenge.

Victorian Bournemouth (65): image

Press coverage

During its first half-century, Bournemouth achieved increasing coverage from the press and longer entries in trade directories. The extent of the press articles perhaps suggests a measure of focussed management rather than accident. The settlement’s image shifted through at least three phases: barren heath but beautiful and healthy surroundings; fledgling resort running along the edge between fad and fashion; an established town soon to achieve acclaim as ‘Queen of the Watering Places’. At first, the trade directory entries presented a creation myth, whereby a settlement grew on a beach inhabited before by a ‘few, poor fishermen’. Soon, however, attention fell on the quality visitors and the growing built environment to accommodate them. The town’s image included social and religious balance. A National School indicated the presence of working, perhaps middling residents. A choice of three worship sites by 1859 showed religious toleration. Hence, improvement provided the main theme.

Reputation

If image conveys overall perception and its components, reputation adds the issue of quality or worth. Bournemouth’s competitive selection to house a Sanatorium did much for the town’s reputation. An institution having the renown of the Brompton Hospital, the Queen its patron, underwrote Bournemouth’s medical qualities. Its description as the ‘National Sanatorium’ polished the town’s image with cultural worth. No longer just an aristocrats’ playground, the town had attracted mainstream medical endorsement. Entry restriction to people having little ability to afford the treatment also provided a social counterweight to its affluent image. This breadth reappeared in the town’s cultural life. At first, classical musicians came to entertain the affluent visitors. Appearances by the Christy Minstrels, however, indicated audiences having different appetites. Efforts to establish a Hunt faltered, but cricket, then having very broad social appeal, gained a foothold. Thus, Bournemouth grew a reputation of medical worth and social breadth.

Victorian Bournemouth (65): identity

Place

Many places spread their footprint as population grew during the nineteenth century. As a greenfield site, Bournemouth’s success could only do this. The settlement existed as a ‘geographical expression‘, without a fixed civic identity. Early medical opinion encouraged an urban village, buildings in loose association, sited to take advantage of the elements. Streets existed by exception, established only for site access. This lack of central coordination resulted in severe drainage problems, unnerving the medical community. The Improvement Commission, established by Parliamentary Act, imposed order and direction on future development. Rates and streets provided commercial means and an organisational skeleton. The urban village began to disappear. Zoning reflected the town’s social balance. Mansions and villas kept affluent visitors in the town’s centre. By 1871, a vast development to the east, near the station, became a residential estate for working people. Thus, the town’s spreading footprint had a place for all.

People

Much of Bournemouth’s population consisted of mobile people: affluent visitors; transient workers. A greenfield site, Bournemouth at first had to grow its resident population by retaining immigrants. In time, natives would appear, if the town’s commercial viability provided income to raise children. During this period, the native proportion increased at a rising rate, indicating commercial health. Life-tracking, however, suggests that many natives born in the town’s first half-century retained an association with the town if not presence. Thus, natives identified with their birthplace. This emotional tie suggests that the town had a sense of identity with which people wanted to associate. The increase in places for worship and other cultural initiatives provided reasons for people to remain. Thus, to balance its ‘hard’ identity provided by streets and buildings, Bournemouth also generated a ‘soft’ identity consisting of natives keen to maintain a connection over their lives.

Victorian Bournemouth (65): challenge

Bankruptcies

At the end of this period, the number of bankruptcies increased at a significant rate. This event supports several inferences about Bournemouth’s economy. First, they seem related to an economy separate to the tourist trade. Thus, the town had evolved a multi-faceted economy. Second, the town thrived after this period. Population rose. Hence, the economy had enough substance for it to suffer and to survive a boom-bust phase. The town, therefore, had evolved an economic identity. Third, the bankruptcies caused some affected to leave town after the settlement of their cases. Others, however, remained. Two of the town’s main builders fell into this category. They had sufficient resilience, consisting of capital or access to it, that bankruptcy proved a temporary obstacle. They could see less opportunities elsewhere than those at Bournemouth. Thus, the bankruptcies illustrated Bournemouth’s economic strength. Visitors no longer drove the economy alone; it had internal dynamism.

Drain wars

In the mid 1860s, Bournemouth’s management encountered a public crisis concerning its drainage system. As with the bankruptcies, several articles have explored this. Careful steps had occurred at Bournemouth to avoid its affluent visitors from shaping the local social structure. Donations and charity events supported a balanced society: National Schools; the Sanatorium; a culture that included working and middling people. The drain wars threatened to cut a swathe through this social fabric. Trained physicians led the attack. They enjoyed affluent backgrounds, wielded powerful social networks. The Improvement Commissioners defended. Most of them had artisan backgrounds, any networks based on kin or local friendships. Letters written and statements made at public meetings by the affluent medics have survived. Annoyed at a denial of deference expected from Commissioners on the other side of the social gap, the attackers used an arrogant and condescending tone. Thus, the drain wars became class strife.

Takeaway

Victorian Bournemouth (65) has identified three key themes emerging from the first quarter’s articles of this year: image, identity, challenge. Beneath the published image, a town having hard and soft points of identity, tempered by challenge, began to achieve coherent and organized shape while heading for critical mass.

References

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