As the seaside was commended so highly by medics and was also a place to be seen made the aristocracy move from the spa towns such as Bristol to the seaside towns such as Brighton and Scarborough. They became health centres for people to become fit. They also became places of conspicuous consumption, and somewhere they could show off their wealth. This made Brighton’s population increase between 1811 & 1851 by 214%.
The seaside was a relaxing, informal escape from the pressures of the daily life however for most people it was also for the promenade, the fashion, the personal display, flirtation and consumption, especially in the larger resorts. But bathing and its regulation, through the attempting separating the sexes and charging for the use of the horse-drawn wooden 'bathing-machine' with its protective 'modesty-hood', provided controversy. Sunbathing and suntans did not become fashionable until the 1890’s, by which time the seaside holiday had become a mass leisure activity.
Brighton could already count 40 000 inhabitants, most of them permanent, at the June census of 1841. Towards the end of the 1840’s came the day-tripper, these were the upper middle classes who came on trains in third class. They were people such as manufactures, factory owners, merchants and farmers. They could now afford this by using charities, saving and going on work outings. However they tended to get very drunk and rowdy. These influences fought against the internal drives towards respectability, and fear of embarrassment that were also so strong in Victorian culture. Respectability was a large fault-line in class conflicts that cut across the enjoyment and tranquillity of the Victorian seaside. Alongside bathing regulation, Sunday observance was a particular touchstone. In these respects as in many others, escape to the seaside brought with it the conflicts and uneasiness about morality and identity that were at the forefront of Victorian life.
Due to the growing prosperity and reduced hours of work between the 1840’s and 1880’s the middle classes dominated the seaside holiday. The main feature of these holidays was the family. The holiday was a very beach centred with lots of things to do and spend their money on at the beach. There were such things as Punch and Judy, clowns, bucket and spades made out of tin, and the sea was now used for swimming rather than bathing. They also started to build promenades and piers this was Britain’s way of demonstrating its wealth to the world as well as a form of entertainment. People would walk along the promenades and there would be similar entertainment to that on the beach.
Although holidays with pay didn’t become customary for manual workers before the holidays with pay act in 1938, the professional and white-collar workers, heavily concentrated in London, commonly enjoyed a fortnights paid holiday as early as the 1870’s. Which meant they could both afford and have the time to enjoy a holiday.
During the 1880’s and 1890’s was the time that the working class seaside holiday came to fruition. The Factory Act of 1833 said that everyone under 18 must have 8-½ days holiday a year in addition to Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday, and this eventually led to everyone getting the holidays because if the children weren’t working the factories could not continue.
The half-day was given by law to textile workers form 1850 and the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants persuaded rail companies in 1897 to give their workers a week’s paid holiday after 5 years of service. By the end of the 19th century free time had become a right for all, however not all of it was paid. Paid holidays did not come into force until well in to the next century.
The reforming middle classes initially encouraged workers to save for a week by the sea however by the end of the nineteenth century the resorts had been overwhelmed by the culture of the new customers. The working class were the largest class and started going to the seaside for a long weekend or a week. The main reason was because the rail fares were getting cheaper. The working classes being given recognised holiday breaks also helped, this gave them the time to go to the seaside. Joining savings clubs gave them money to spend whilst on holiday. In 1822 £18,000 was saved by the working classes in 1906 the figure rose to £200,000. Most of the working classes could afford to go to the seaside by relying on cheap excursions, trips organised by Sunday schools, employers, temperance societies and commercial promoters such as Thomas Cook. Only from the 1870s onwards did the Lancashire cotton workers take the lead in developing a genuine working-class seaside holiday system, saving through the year to convert the traditional Wakes holidays into seaside breaks, and changing the character of many northern resorts in the process.
By the end of the 19th century the resorts began to cater for the working classes, with the appearance of amusement parks and slot machines. A holiday to the seaside became a time of freedom and letting go. The aristocracy who lived in these seaside towns retreated to the few remaining seaside towns where the working classes had not yet integrated, such as Cowes but they mainly went abroad most of them going to the Riviera. More and more people started visiting the seaside and in 1835 117,000 people travelled to Brighton by stagecoach whilst in 1862 132,000 people arrived by rail on Easter Monday alone. This shows how popular the seaside had become. Bank holidays were introduced in 1871; these gave people more opportunities to get away from the busy, hot overcrowded cities.
From the 1850’s 10,000 people per day were visiting Blackpool. More and more working classes were starting to go to the seaside. However Blackpool reflected both social and class divisions. The middle classes were living in the north and south whilst the working class dominated the centre.
The activities at the seaside not only rely on the weather, and families getting on but also the problems that arose when the clashing values and expectations between the classes of what was meant by legitimate holiday fun. This often led to close and sometimes abrasive holiday closeness. The big purpose-built holiday towns with all the commercial entertainment and huge crowds of visitors who needed policing as well as pleasing, whose presence had to be supported by local government systems providing whatever private enterprises and companies could not, would not or what the Victorians thought should not provide at a profit. These included drains, gasworks, tramways, promenades and even orchestras.
Around this time Brighton was dubbed London by the sea. This is how the leisured society established both the physical look of the resorts and the fashionable taste for the sea, as London was a very fashionable place to be and having the look of London would make them popular. This made the seaside popular for both the middle classes and the masses.
Before the introduction of the railways the only way of getting to the seaside was by horse drawn stagecoaches these would have taken around 20 hours whilst on the train it would only take seven hours and be a lot cheaper. The development of the seaside excursion owed less to the building of the railway itself and had more to do with the attractive fares. The lower classes were attracted to the seaside from 1844 when the Railway Act was introduced, the introduction of this meant economically priced rail fair. The legislation also meant that every train company had to run one passenger train a day along the length of the line at a cheep rate of one penny a mile. In 1844 when the ordinary second-class return fare was 9s. 6d. the fare at the excursion rate was only 8s and you could travel third class for 5s. In the 1870’s it was possible to take a family of four to Brighton and back for nine shillings. Even poor artisans found it easy to save this amount. This made the seaside a very attractive day out. However although the excursions were improving their was always a controversial element and there was also a rowdy contribution to the seaside resort. For one critic in 1870 the day-trippers seemed to be coarse, vulgar and stupid. Although the visitors were criticised for misusing the Sabbath the rail companies avoided any objections from clergymen by making the trips on Sundays at 6am so that people could still go to church when they got to their destination.
By the last quarter of the nineteenth century a lot of the seaside resorts had to cope with the constant presence of the working classes. Most of these were young people with wages and no responsibilities and there were also older men with no family commitments or who chose to ignore their commitments.
The popular media of the time, from Punch to Ally Sloper's Half Holiday, included jokes about cultural conflict between the classes to their clerks and shop assistants pretending to be gentlemen, adding a new dimension to the comedy of social embarrassment.
The bigger resorts, and especially those that catered for the working-class holidaymaker of the late nineteenth century, such as Blackpool and Southend, also offered 'pleasure palaces', as the popular journalist G.R. Sims called them. They combined music hall, variety and dancing with other attractions such as zoos, opera houses, theatres, aquaria, lagoons with Venetian gondolas and gondoliers, pleasure gardens and exhibitions. One of these examples is Blackpool's Tower and Winter Gardens.
To conclude the seaside holiday began at the beginning of the 19th century and were mainly enjoyed by royalty and the aristocracy. Later the middle classes joined in and with the introduction of holiday days from work and low train fares towards the end of the 19th century the working classes started to enjoy the seaside holiday.
27/04/04
