Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T20:25:34.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Living in a leisure town: residential reactions to the growth of popular tourism in Southend, 1870–1890

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2013

DAVID CHURCHILL
DAVID CHURCHILL*
Affiliation:
Department of History, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

While historical interest in the seaside has grown appreciably in recent times, much of the literature remains preoccupied with issues specific to resort towns. This article examines the social dynamics of the seaside town more broadly, through a study of Southend residents in the 1870s and 1880s. It analyses their discussions of working-class tourists and the industries which catered for them, before examining attempts to regulate the use of public space in the town. This is a study of rapid urbanization in a small town, and how social perceptions and relations were reconfigured in this context.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 42 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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 This literature is vast: for a helpful overview, see Morris, R.J., ‘Structure, culture and society in British towns’, in Daunton, M. (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. III (Cambridge, 2000), 395–426Google Scholar.

2 Walton, J.K., ‘Introduction’, in Walton, J.K. (ed.), Histories of Tourism: Representation, Identity and Conflict (Clevedon, 2005), 7–8Google Scholar. See also Walton's further studies, especially: The English Seaside Resort: A Social History 1750–1914 (Leicester, 1983); The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century (Manchester, 2000); ‘Respectability takes a holiday: disreputable behaviour at the Victorian seaside’, in Hewitt, M. (ed.), Unrespectable Recreations (Leeds, 2001), 176–93Google Scholar; ‘Policing the seaside holiday: Blackpool and San Sebastián from the 1870s to the 1930s’, in Godfrey, B., Emsley, C. and Dunstall, G. (eds.), Comparative Histories of Crime (Cullompton, 2003), 145–58Google Scholar.

3 There are numerous local studies of this type: a representative example is Travis, J.F., The Rise of the Devon Seaside Resorts 1750–1900 (Exeter, 1993)Google Scholar.

4 See Gunn, S., ‘The spatial turn: changing histories of space and place’, in Gunn, S. and Morris, R.J. (eds.), Identities in Space: Contested Terrains in the Western City since 1850 (Aldershot, 2001), 5–9Google Scholar.

5 Southend's best history is Everritt, S., Southend Seaside Holiday (Chichester, 1980)Google Scholar, which is cited extensively in Walton's English Seaside.

6 See further below, pp. 19–20.

7 See Walton, J.K., ‘The demand for working-class seaside holidays in Victorian England’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 34 (1981), 249–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Royle, S.A., ‘The development of small towns in Britain’, in Daunton, (ed.), Cambridge Urban History, 166Google Scholar.

8 Walton, English Seaside, 197–8.

9 Ibid., 195; Everritt, Southend, 17.

10 In addition to what follows, see Walton, English Seaside, 195.

11 Southend Standard (hereafter SS), 11 Sep. 1874.

12 SS, 2 Jul. 1875.

13 SS, 1 Jun. 1877.

14 See SS, 1 Jun. 1877, 8 Jun. 1877.

15 SS, 8 Jun. 1877, emphasis added.

16 SS, 19 Aug. 1881.

17 SS, 28 Jul. 1882.

18 SS, 11 Aug. 1882.

19 SS, 13 Jul. 1883.

20 SS, 11 Aug. 1882.

21 SS, 25 Jul. 1884.

22 SS, 30 Aug. 1888.

23 SS, 4 Aug. 1887.

24 Walton, ‘Demand’, n. 5.

25 SS, 8 Aug. 1879.

26 SS, 5 Aug. 1881.

27 Everritt, Southend, 26.

28 See below, Table 2.

29 See for example SS, 6 Jun. 1879.

30 SS, 9 Jul. 1875.

31 Walton, ‘Demand’, 250–1; Walton, English Seaside, 205; Cunningham, H., Leisure in the Industrial Revolution c. 1780 – c. 1880 (London, 1980), 162–4Google Scholar; Chase, L., ‘Modern images and social tone in Clacton and Frinton in the interwar years’, International Journal of Maritime History, 9 (1997), 155–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 SS, 6 Jun. 1873. Further on this theme, see Hassan, J., The Seaside, Health and the Environment in England and Wales since 1800 (Aldershot, 2003)Google Scholar.

33 See SS, 13 Jun. 1879, 29 Aug. 1879, 2 Jun. 1882, 21 Jun. 1888.

34 SS, 11 Aug. 1882.

35 See Daunton, M., ‘Introduction’, in Daunton, (ed.), Cambridge Urban History, 3–7Google Scholar; Jones, G. Stedman, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society, new edn (London, 1984), ch. 6, 303–10Google Scholar; Harris, J., ‘Between civic virtue and Social Darwinism: the concept of the residuum’, in Englander, D. and O'Day, R. (eds.), Retrieved Riches: Social Investigation in Britain 1840–1914 (Aldershot, 1995), 67–87Google Scholar.

36 SS, 20 Jul. 1883, 25 Jul. 1884.

37 SS, 6 Aug. 1875, 29 Aug. 1879.

38 See above, p. 3.

39 SS, 25 Jul. 1884.

40 SS, 4 Aug. 1887.

41 See above, p. 3.

42 SS, 1 Jun. 1877.

43 See Thompson, F.M.L., The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830–1900 (London, 1988), 295Google Scholar.

44 See Stedman Jones, G., ‘The “Cockney” and the nation, 1780–1988’, in Feldman, D. and Stedman Jones, G. (eds.), Metropolis London: Histories and Representations since 1800 (London, 1989), 89–90Google Scholar.

45 SS, 30 Jul. 1880.

46 SS, 12 Sep. 1889, emphasis added.

47 Harris, J., Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain 1870–1914 (London, 1994), 9–10Google Scholar; Reid, D.A., ‘Playing and praying’, in Daunton, (ed.), Cambridge Urban History, 771–2Google Scholar.

48 Billinge, M., ‘A time and place for everything: an essay on recreation, re-creation and the Victorians’, Journal of Historical Geography, 22 (1996), 455–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Walton, ‘Demand’, 250; Walton, English Seaside, 94, 147–9, 173–6; Benson, J., The Penny Capitalists: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Working-Class Entrepreneurs (Dublin, 1983), 68Google Scholar.

50 Essex Record Office (hereafter ERO): TS 130 (beach trade licences).

51 ERO: D/HS 2 (Local Board of Health minutes, vol. 2), 4 Aug. 1874; SS, 17 Jun. 1886.

52 Walton, English Seaside, 106; Walton, J.K., Blackpool (Edinburgh, 1998), 51Google Scholar.

53 SS, 6 Jun. 1873; ERO: D/HS 2, 5 Aug. 1873, 2 Sep. 1873.

54 Daunton, ‘Introduction’, 5–12; Billinge, ‘Recreation’, 449–50.

55 See Ritvo, H., The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA, 1987)Google Scholar, ch. 3; Thompson, Respectable Society, 278–80.

56 SS, 12 Sep. 1879, emphasis added.

57 See for example Walton, Blackpool, 60–2.

58 Everritt, Southend, 16.

59 Burrows, J.W., Southend-on-Sea and District: Historical Notes, new edn (Wakefield, 1970), 218Google Scholar; Lindley, P. (ed.), New Holidays in Essex (London, 1884), 62–3Google Scholar; Heywood, A., A Guide to Southend (Manchester, 1887), 4, 7Google Scholar; Longley, F.E., Southend-on-Sea (London, 1883), 4–5Google Scholar.

60 For an alternative method of assessing social composition through domestic service, see Walton, J.K., ‘Residential amenity, respectable morality and the rise of the entertainment industry: the case of Blackpool 1860–1914’, Literature and History, 1 (1975), 66Google Scholar.

61 SS, 16 Jul. 1880.

62 SS, 23 Jul. 1880.

63 SS, 9 Sep. 1881.

64 SS, 14 Sep. 1877.

65 SS, 27 Jul. 1877.

66 SS, 26 Jul. 1878, 13 Jul. 1877, 20 Jun. 1879, 10 Jun. 1881.

67 SS, 13 Jul. 1877.

68 SS, 27 Jun. 1884. On the regulation of Punch and Judy shows, see Crone, R., ‘Mr and Mrs Punch in nineteenth-century England’, Historical Journal, 49 (2006), 1068–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Thompson, Respectable Society, 271–2; Bailey, P., Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885, 2nd edn (London, 1987), 75–80Google Scholar; Reid, ‘Playing and praying’, 781–3.

70 Perkin, H.J., ‘The “social tone” of Victorian seaside resorts in the north west’, Northern History, 11 (1975), 180–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huggins, M., ‘Social tone and resort development in north east England’, Northern History, 20 (1984), 187–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chase, ‘Modern images and social tone’, 149–69. See also Walton, English Seaside, ch. 5, 131–2, 198–207.

71 SS, 29 Jul. 1881, emphasis added.

72 SS, 2 Jul. 1880, original emphasis.

73 SS, 9 Jul. 1880.

74 SS, 16 Jul. 1880.

75 SS, 2 Jul. 1880.

76 Ibid.

77 SS, 30 Jul. 1886.

78 SS, 25 Aug. 1887.

79 SS, 23 Jul. 1880.

80 SS, 4 Sep. 1890.

81 Ibid.

82 Ibid.

83 SS, 11 Sep. 1890. For parallels elsewhere, see Conley, C.A., The Unwritten Law: Criminal Justice in Victorian Kent (New York, 1991), 24–5Google Scholar.

84 SS, 11 Sep. 1890.

85 SS, 4 Sep. 1890.

86 See Perkin, ‘Social tone’, 190–1; Walton, English Seaside, 205–9.

87 Walton's interesting recent essay devotes more space to tourist self-regulation than to actual police forces: Walton, ‘Policing the seaside’, 145–58. See also Walton, J.K., Blinkhorn, M., Pooley, C., Tidswell, D. and Winstanley, M.J., ‘Crime, migration and social change in north-west England and the Basque country, c. 1870–1930’, British Journal of Criminology, 39 (1999), 90–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Burrows, Historical Notes, 226.

89 ERO: Q/APp 9 (correspondence concerning police reform in Southend), 4 Jun. 1872. See also Scollan, M., Sworn to Serve: Police in Essex 1840–1990 (Chichester, 1993), 32Google Scholar.

90 ERO: J/P 1/1–5 (Essex Constabulary annual returns, vols. 1–5).

91 Walton et al., ‘Crime, migration and social change’, 101.

92 SS, 6 Aug. 1880.

93 SS, 4 Aug. 1887.

94 ERO: TS 136/1 (local bye-laws, 1867).

95 SS, 9 Jul. 1875.

96 SS, 29 Jun. 1883.

97 See Walton, English Seaside, 191, 196, 200–4.

98 SS, 8 Sep. 1882.

99 See for example ERO: D/HS 5, 6 Jul. 1886.

100 ERO: D/HS 2, 7 Aug. 1877.

101 ERO: D/HS 2, 2 Sep. 1873; D/HS 3, 15 Jul. 1879, 2 Jul. 1880, 3 May 1881; D/HS 5, 2 Jun. 1885, 7 Sep. 1886, 19 Jul. 1887; D/HS 6, 16 Jul. 1889.

102 ERO: D/HS 3, 5 Jul. 1881, emphasis added.

103 SS, 19 Aug. 1881.

104 See also Walton, ‘Policing the seaside’, 151.

105 ERO: D/HS 3, 2 Aug. 1881. On provincial police duties, see Steedman, C., Policing the Victorian Community: The Formation of English Provincial Police Forces, 1856–80 (London, 1984), 54–5Google Scholar.

106 SS, 4 Aug. 1876.

107 SS, 27 Aug. 1880.

108 ERO: D/HS 3, 1 Jul. 1879; SS, 4 Jul. 1879; ERO: D/HS 3, 15 Jul. 1879; SS, 18 Jul. 1879.

109 SS, 19 Aug. 1881.

110 See Storch, R.D., ‘The policeman as domestic missionary: urban discipline and popular culture in northern England, 1850–1880’, Journal of Social History, 9 (1976), 481–509CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 See for example SS, 5 Aug. 1881.

112 SS, 4 Aug. 1887.

113 ERO: D/HS 67 (Local Board of Health letter to Thomas Sharp, 1867).

114 SS, 10 Aug. 1877.

115 SS, 4 Jul. 1879, 18 Jul. 1879.

116 ERO: D/HS 3, 18 Mar. 1879, 6 Jul. 1880.

117 SS, 18 Aug. 1882.

118 SS, 15 Jun. 1883.

119 See Walton, ‘Policing the seaside’, 151–2; Walton et al., ‘Crime, migration and social change’, 102.

120 Ritchie, J.E., Days and Nights in London (London, 1880), 186–7Google Scholar.

121 Totterdell, G.H., Country Copper: The Autobiography of Superintendent G.H. Totterdell of the Essex County Police (London, 1956), 42–3Google Scholar.

122 Stanford, T., ‘Who are you? We have ways of finding out! Tracing the police development of offender identification techniques in the late nineteenth century’, Crimes and Misdemeanours, 3 (2009), 54–81Google Scholar.

123 SS, 21 Aug. 1890.

124 Inwood, S., ‘Policing London's morals: the Metropolitan Police and popular culture, 1829–50’, London Journal, 15 (1990), 130–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Petrow, S., Policing Morals: The Metropolitan Police and the Home Office 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 Billinge, ‘Recreation’. See also Shields, R., Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity (London, 1991)Google Scholar; Walton, British Seaside, 3–5, 18–19.

126 Walton, ‘Respectability takes a holiday’, 177; Walton, ‘Policing the seaside’, 152.

127 SS, 24 Jul. 1874, 4 Sep. 1874, 11 Sep. 1874, 9 Jul. 1886.

128 See Bailey, P., ‘Leisure, culture and the historian: reviewing the first generation of leisure historiography in Britain’, Leisure Studies, 8 (1989), 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

129 Walton, English Seaside, 53, 65.

130 See Kitson Clark, G., The Making of Victorian England (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Price, R., British Society, 1680–1880: Dynamism, Containment and Change (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

131 Both visited in the 1830s: Yearsley, I., A History of Southend (Chichester, 2001), 29–30Google Scholar.

132 Though Southend was hardly a commuter town before the Edwardian period: see Walton, English Seaside, 67.

133 See Stedman Jones, Outcast London, ch. 16.

134 Heywood, Guide to Southend, 3.

135 Huggins, ‘Resort development’, 205–6.