Identity. Visitors. Persistence

Introduction

Victorian Bournemouth (78) provides a summary of this year’s second quarter articles. The main themes to emerge include identity, visitor profiles, and persistence.

Victorian Bournemouth (78): identity

On the map

In a few decades a town had emerged from a scatter of ‘poor fishermen’s huts’, achieving an established presence  During its second period, also, moves occurred whereby the town’s identity became enhanced not only throughout the country, but also in the international community. Two articles showed how the Pier and the Sanatorium made important contributions to this. The former enabled the town to compete with established watering places elsewhere on the south coast. This pre-eminence took another form when Bournemouth beat other spas to become the Sanatorium’s home. The ‘national Sanatorium’, thus tagged, located the resort in the minds of politicians, physicians, and convalescents. Genealogical exploration into the students registered at Reverend Wanklyn’s academy shows that they belonged to a connected community stretching from South America to Asia. Wealthy parents, living thousands of miles away, understood Bournemouth’s identity and benefits well enough to despatch their children there.

Escape from the past

A series of articles explored how Bournemouth secured its own battalion of rifle volunteers. A key aspect of this concerned the relationship between the resort and the neighbouring old town of Christchurch. Lord Malmesbury, charged with establishing the local volunteers, attempted to treat Bournemouth as a Christchurch suburb.Furthermore, he exacerbated matters by taking a seigneurial approach, snubbing those who did not share his social background. Press accounts show that leading people at Bournemouth – builders and retailers – did not regard this well. They lobbied Malmesbury at his Christchurch meeting. They faced him down when he attended his Bournemouth meeting. Malmesbury put up little fight against the new middling people who ran matters at Bournemouth. He left them to it, perhaps attempting to call their bluff. They lost little time in establishing their corps. The account suggests that a motivating factor consisted of establishing an identity independent of Christchurch.

Victorian Bournemouth (78): visitor profiles

Traditional and modern

An article analysed the social profiles of probable visitors to the resort captured by the 1861 census. It showed a combination of landed aristocracy and commercial moguls, similar to the people who had visited during the early period. In the later 1860s, however, other types of people came to visit. One article suggested that the town had become a pilgrimage site for religious tourists. Clergymen wanted to observe Rev. A. M. Bennett’s shrine to ritualism. Another article explored the possibility that attendance increased by ambitious people belonging to lower social levels. Their appetite drove them to experience first-hand a fashionable tourist site associated with privileged people. Perhaps in common with the clergymen, they came to observe, collecting social capital that they could bring back to impress friends and acquaintances at home. Unlike earlier visitors, they would have had more in common with the middling people who ran the town.

Kin visitors

People having kinship connections with the heads of household formed the basis of an article. More often female than male, these visitors had reached different ages and life-stages. Widowed mothers and spinster sisters or sisters-in-law appeared amongst these visitors. Genealogical analysis shows that the visitors belonged to different social groups. Furthermore, their apparent roles seemed to vary according to their place in society. Retailers of different types represented middling people, whereas labourers belonged to their working counterparts. Visitors to the middling people appear to have contributed by helping the head of household in the business. For example, they might have worked in the shop. On other occasions, they kept house if the head had no wife. Visiting kin staying in households of working people, however, contributed in a different way. They may have provided financial support by having a job unrelated to the head of household’s work.

Victorian Bournemouth (78): persistence

Collective effort

Both the Pier and the Sanatorium required significant effort and support. The Pier’s lengthy development process showed a strength of will amongst its supporters. They had to win arguments conducted in meetings or the media as well as securing sufficient funds. Even after the sea destroyed early versions, they persevered. A similar strength helped to raise money for the Sanatorium, in particular after it began operations. Several management meetings enabled the town to keep this keystone of its reputation through financial discipline and direction. Events surrounding Bournemouth’s Volunteer Corps suggest that an equal determination enabled the town to win its own battalion. Early media coverage portrayed Bournemouth as a holiday play-ground for wealthy and privileged people. They came, they went, others replaced them. In parallel, however, a group of middling people assembled who wish to establish their own settlement. Their concerted efforts delivered success to the community.

Individual effort

One of the articles concerning the Rifle Corps portrayed the life of Corporal Candy, an energetic member of that body. This man’s life provided an example of success, followed by disaster, but ending in apparent success. A rural man of humble origin, by the time his daughter married he had become a gentleman. His father had attended more than one settlement examination, but Charles Candy became a man of property. Thus, at Bournemouth, he managed one of the public houses, from which he often catered for Volunteer group dinners at which gentlemen mingled with working people. Hence, Bournemouth’s society at this time had an elasticity which enabled Candy to push his way on an upward path. It also appeared forgiving, since, after his bankruptcy and exile, he regained acceptance to the town later in life. Many of Bournemouth’s leading citizens, of similar origins to Candy, achieved success through personal effort.

Takeaway

Victorian Bournemouth (78) has identified three key points emerging from the second quarter’s articles of this year: identity, visitors, persistence. Middling people, having achieved upward mobility, began to infiltrate the ranks of wealth and privileged visitors. Town managers and supporters developed a collective will to take action that benefited the residential community. Individual persistence also might win rewards, since the town’s society enabled men of humble origin to succeed at the middling level.

References

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