Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:10:16.811Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Civic identity, municipal governance and provincial newspapers: the Lincoln of Bernard Gilbert, poet, critic and ‘booster’, 1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2014

ANDREW J.H. JACKSON
ANDREW J.H. JACKSON*
Affiliation:
Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln LN13DY, UK
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

The provincial press played a significant role in forming local attitudes and senses of civic identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Local and regional newspapers often adopted a ‘boosterist’ language, a style that enthusiastically promoted the particular qualities of places. The persistence of boosterism into the early twenty-first century makes it a concept worthy of further exploration. This study considers just one ‘booster’, Bernard Samuel Gilbert, and his illuminating series of articles on Lincoln for the Lincolnshire Echo in 1914. His correspondence illustrates the contrasting stances towards improvement typically employed within the local press – including the boosterist alongside the more critical.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 113 - 129
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for example: Curran, J., ‘Media and the making of British society, c. 1700–2000’, Media History, 8 (2002), 135–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, M. and Lee, A. (eds.), The Press in English Society from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1986)Google Scholar; Hobbs, A., ‘When the provincial press was the national press c. 1836 – c. 1900’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 13 (2009), 16–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Read, D., The English Provinces c. 1760–1960: A Study in Influence (London, 1964)Google Scholar; Walker, A., ‘The development of the provincial press in Britain c. 1780–1914’, Journalism Studies, 7 (2006), 373–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Local studies include Bromley, M. and Hayes, N., ‘Campaigner, watchdog or municipal lackey: reflections on the inter-war provincial press, local identity and civic welfarism’, Media History, 8 (2002), 197–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackson, A.J.H., ‘Provincial newspapers and the development of local communities: the creation of a seaside resort newspaper for Ilfracombe, Devon, 1860–1’, Family and Community History, 13 (2010), 101–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lester, M., ‘Local newspapers and the shaping of local identity in north-east London c. 1885–1915’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 13 (2009), 44–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Read, D., Press and People, 1790–1850: Opinion in Three English Cities (London, 1961)Google Scholar.

3 West, J., Town Records (Chichester, 1983), 224Google Scholar. See also V. Berridge, ‘Content analysis and historical research on newspapers’, in Harris and Lee (eds.), The Press in English Society, 201–18; Murphy, M., Newspapers and Local History (Chichester, 1991)Google Scholar; West, Town Records, 224–71.

4 On housing issues, for example, Briggs, A., Victorian Cities (London, 1963), 274Google Scholar; Bromley and Hayes, ‘Campaigner, watchdog or municipal lackey’; Broxholme, P., ‘Back to the future: the Tory party, paternalism, and housing policy in Nottingham 1919–1932’, Midland History, 38 (2013), 104–16Google Scholar; Hayes, N., ‘Civic perceptions: housing and local decision-making in English cities in the 1920s’, Urban History, 27 (2000), 211–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hulme, T.J., ‘Urban governance and civic responsibility: interwar council housing in Buxton’, Midland History, 35 (2010), 237–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shinner, P.J., ‘Pocket borough to county borough: power relations, elites and politics in nineteenth-century Grimsby’, Urban History, 34 (2007), 499–500CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 On the nature and continuity of ‘boosterism’, see Bloomfield, E., ‘Community, ethos and local initiative in urban economic growth: review of a theme in Canadian urban history’, Urban History Yearbook, 10 (1983), 55–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Briggs, Victorian Cities, 47–8; Morris, R.J., ‘Urban biography: Scotland, 1700–2000’, Urban History, 29 (2002), 276–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Payne, P., ‘Boosterism’, in Kammen, C. and Wilson, A.H. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Local History (New York, 2013), 57–60Google Scholar; Stobart, J., ‘Identity, competition and place promotion in the Five Towns’, Urban History, 30 (2003), 163–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stobart, J., ‘Building an urban identity. Cultural space and civic boosterism in a “new” industrial town: Burslem, 1761–1911’, Social History, 29 (2004), 485–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 J. Beckett, ‘Inventing and reinventing the modern city: the 2012 city status competition in the United Kingdom’, Urban History, forthcoming (FirstView); Garrard, J. and Goldsmith, M., ‘Municipal progress and decline in Britain since 1800’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 7 (2012), 43–5Google Scholar; Larkham, P.J. and Lilley, K.D., ‘Plans, planners and city images: place promotion and civic boosterism in British reconstruction planning’, Urban History, 30 (2003), 184–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shapely, P., ‘Civic pride and redevelopment in the post-war British city’, Urban History, 39 (2012), 310–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Briggs, Victorian Cities, 48; Payne, ‘Boosterism’; Morris, ‘Urban biography’.

8 Anon., ‘Foreword’, in Hodson, M.D. (ed.), Living Lincoln by Bernard Gilbert (Lincoln, 1983), 7Google Scholar. Hodson's Living Lincoln is a facsimile of the volume published by the Echo in 1914, without accompanying commentary.

9 Griffiths, D., The Encyclopedia of the British Press 1422–1992 (London, 1992), 441Google Scholar; Olney, R., Rural Society and County Government in Nineteenth-Century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1979), 161Google Scholar; Packer, I., ‘A curious exception? The Lincolnshire Chronicle and the “Starmer Group”’, Journalism Studies, 7 (2006), 415–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; West, Town Records, 255.

10 For example: Lincoln Central Library (LCL), UP189, Gilbert, B.S., Farmers and Tariff Reform (London, 1913)Google Scholar.

11 Gilbert, B.S., Fortunes for Farmers (London, 1912)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Gilbert, B.S., ‘Farming’, in Lincolnshire Lays (Horncastle, 1911), 10–11Google Scholar.

13 Gilbert, ‘The city streets’, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, 48.

14 Gilbert, ‘The football crowd’, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, 19.

15 Gilbert, ‘The handicap’, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, 29.

16 Gilbert, ‘Amusements’, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, 88.

17 Gilbert, ‘Within the Minster’, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, 34–6.

18 Gilbert, ‘Labour’, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, 77.

19 Gilbert, ‘Labour – continued’, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, 81.

20 Ibid., 81–2.

21 Gilbert, ‘The city streets, 52.

22 Hodson, ‘Introduction’, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, 1; Anon., ‘Obituary: Bernard Samuel Gilbert, 1882–1927’, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, 4; Jackson, A.J.H., ‘On the preconditions for council-estate building in Lincoln: some contemporary observations by Bernard Gilbert’, The Lincoln Enquirer, 22 (2012), 6–8Google Scholar; Sawyer, J.J., ‘Bernard Gilbert. Mediocrity or Genius? The Lincolnshire Poacher, 1 (1953), 7–9Google Scholar; O’Shaughnessy, P., ‘Introduction’, in O’Shaughnessy (ed.), Lincoln Fair and Other Dialect Poems (Boston, 1986), 4–5Google Scholar; Williamson, J.R., Bernard Gilbert (London, 1915)Google Scholar; LCL, UP7883, W.E.G.R., ‘Death of a Lincolnshire novelist. Mr Bernard Gilbert – a writer who depicted Lincolnshire for future generations’, typescript, from The Lincolnshire Chronicle, 14 May 1927, 2. I am grateful for the helpful comments and pointers, and encouragement, received from two anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this article.

23 Gilbert, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, respectively: 38–41, 58–63, 74–7, 78–82, 94–7, 98–103.

24 Gilbert, ‘The future’, 94.

25 Cooper, C., ‘Housing and social structure in Lincoln, 1842–2000’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 22 (2002), 1, 21Google Scholar; Hill, F., Victorian Lincoln (Cambridge, 1974), 290Google Scholar; Mills, D., ‘The revolution in workplace and home’, in Mills (ed.), Twentieth Century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1989), 23Google Scholar; West, Town Records, 320–1.

26 Gilbert, ‘The future’, 95–6.

27 Ibid., 97.

28 Rowntree's influence is remarked upon in, for example, Butt, J., ‘Working-class housing in Glasgow, 1851–1914’, in Chapman, D. (ed.), History of Working-Class Housing (Newton Abbot, 1971), 82Google Scholar; Harrison, M., ‘Housing and town planning in Manchester before 1914’, in Sutcliffe, A. (ed.), British Town Planning: The Formative Years (Leicester, 1981), 110Google Scholar, 169; Pepper, S. and Swenarton, M., ‘Home front’, in Swenarton, Building the New Jerusalem: Architecture, Housing and Politics 1900–1930 (Bracknell, 2008), 15Google Scholar.

29 Gilbert, ‘The future’, 94–6.

30 Cherry, G.E., Town Planning in Britain (Oxford, 1996), 24–65Google Scholar; M. Day, ‘The contribution of Sir Raymond Unwin (1863–1940) and R. Barry Parker (1897–1947) to the development of site planning theory and practice c. 1880–1918’, in Sutcliffe (ed.), British Town Planning, 156–68; Ravetz, A., Council Housing and Culture: The History of a Social Experiment (London, 2001), 2–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 41–55; Swenarton, ‘The education of an urbanist’, in Swenarton, Building a New Jerusalem, 95–124.

31 Gilbert, ‘Labour – continued’, 78–9.

32 N. Wright, ‘The varied fortunes of heavy and manufacturing industry 1914–1987’, in Mills (ed.), Twentieth Century Lincoln, 74–83.

33 Gilbert, ‘Labour – continued’, 79.

34 Cooper, ‘Housing and social structure’, 26–7; Nurse, P. and Gadd, T., Devils Let Loose: The Story of the Lincoln Riots, 1911 (Grantham, 2001)Google Scholar.

35 Gilbert, ‘Labour – continued’, 79.

36 Abell, E.I. and Chambers, J.D., The Story of Lincoln: An Introduction to the History of the City (Lincoln, 1949), 204–7Google Scholar; Cooper, ‘Housing and social structure’, 24–8; Hill, Victorian Lincoln, 232–40, 290–2; Local Government Board, Report of Medical Inspectors of the Local Government Board, No. 226: Dr R.J. Reece's Report to the Local Government Board of the Epidemic of Enteric Fever in the City of Lincoln, 1904–5 (London, 1906), 12Google Scholar.

37 Gilbert, ‘The future’, 96–7.

38 Hill, Victorian Lincoln, 232–40; Abell and Chambers, The Story of Lincoln, 204–11; Bray, C., Grantham, K. and Wright, A., The Enemy in Our Midst: The Story of Lincoln's Typhoid Epidemic 1905 (Lincoln, 1987)Google Scholar; City of Lincoln Urban Sanitary Authority, Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health (Lincoln, 1910–14)Google ScholarPubMed; Cooper, ‘Housing and social structure’, 23–5; Local Government Board, Reece's Report; S. Scott, ‘The early days of planning’, in Mills (ed.), Twentieth Century Lincolnshire, 185–7.

39 Gilbert, ‘The water tower’, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, 63.

40 City of Lincoln Council, Lincoln Townscape Assessment: St Giles Inherited Character Statement (Lincoln, 2008), 3Google Scholar; O. Hartley, ‘Politics 1885–1974’, in Mills (ed.), Twentieth Century Lincolnshire, 235–8; Hill, Victorian Lincoln, 238–40, 291–2; Horner, E. and Horner, N., ‘Population growth, housing reform and the St Giles Estate’, in Walker, A. (ed.), Uphill Lincoln II: The North-Eastern Suburbs (Lincoln, 2010), 64–9Google Scholar; A.J.H. Jackson, ‘Twentieth-century residential: the St Giles Estate’, in Walker (ed.), Uphill Lincoln II, 58–61; Jackson, A.J.H, ‘The Boultham housing estate’, in Walker, A. (ed.), Survey of Lincoln, vol. VIII: The South-West Suburbs (Lincoln, 2013), 44–7Google Scholar; Scott, ‘Early days’, 204–5.

41 For relevant local studies: Broxholme, ‘Back to the future’; Dresser, M., ‘Housing policy in Bristol, 1919–30’, in Daunton, M.J. (ed.) Councillors and Tenants: Local Authority Housing in English Cities (Leicester, 1984), 156–68Google Scholar; Robert Finnegan, ‘Council housing in Leeds, 1919–39: social policy and urban change’, in Daunton (ed.), Councillors and Tenants, 102–22; Jennings, J.H., ‘The geographical implications of the municipal housing programme in England and Wales 1919–39’, Urban Studies, 8 (1971), 121–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hulme, ‘Urban governance’, 240–1; Shinner, ‘Pocket borough to county borough’.

42 Hartley, ‘Politics’, 223–8.

43 Cooper, ‘Housing and social structure’, 27–8; Scott, ‘Early days’, 185–204.

44 Gilbert, ‘The soul of Lincoln’, in Hodson (ed.), Living Lincoln, 101.

45 Ibid., 102.

46 Ibid., 102.

47 Cherry, Town Planning, 24–79; Doyle, B. and McElligott, A., ‘The rise and fall of European municipal power since 1800’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 7 (2012), 10–17Google Scholar; Sutcliffe, ‘Introduction’, in Sutcliffe (ed.), British Town Planning, 4–6; Stobart, ‘Building an urban identity’, 486–7, 498.

48 Briggs, Victorian Cities, 48.

49 Bromley and Hayes, ‘Campaigner, watchdog or municipal lackey’; Daunton, ‘Introduction’, in Daunton (ed.), Councillors and Tenants, 20; Day, ‘Contribution of Sir Raymond Unwin’, 156–68; Hayes, ‘Civic perceptions’; Hulme, ‘Urban governance’, 240–4; Ravetz, Council Housing, 2–5; Swenarton, ‘Introduction’, in Swenarton, Building a New Jerusalem, 3–8.

50 Gilbert, B.S., ‘General introduction’, in Gilbert, B.S. (ed.), The Rural Scene (London, 1923), 30–1Google Scholar.

51 Gilbert, B.S., Old England: A God's Eye View of a Village (London, 1921), viiiGoogle Scholar.

52 Baker, A.R.H., Geography and History: Bridging the Divide (Cambridge, 2003), 121–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Doyle, B.M., ‘The structure of elite power in the early twentieth-century city: Norwich, 1900–35’, Urban History, 24 (1997), 179–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gunn, S., ‘Class, identity and the urban: the middle class in England, c. 1790–1950, Urban History, 31 (2004), 40–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Garrard and Goldsmith, ‘Municipal progress’, 49–50; Kirk, J., ‘Figuring the landscape: writing the topographies of community and place’, Literature and History, 15 (2006), 1–17Google Scholar; Shapely, ‘Civic pride’, 310; Williams, R., The Country and the City (London, 1973), 197–214Google Scholar.