2 Mass Tourism and the Rise and Fall of the Seaside

MASS TOURISM AND THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SEASIDE RESORT 17 aspectsof such industrialisation which were especiallyimportant attention will be paid to the growth of seasideresorts, whose development was by no means inevitable. They stemmed from particular features of 2 nineteenth-century industrialisation and the. growth of new modes by which pleasurewas organisedand structured in a society based on large- MASS TOURISM AND THE RISE AND scale industrial classes. FALL OF THE SEASIDE RESORT The growth of the’British seaside resort Throughout Europe a number of spa towns had developed in the eight- Introduction eenth century. Their original purpose was medicinal: they provided mineral water which was used for bathing in and drinking. It is by no The development of the first example of masstourism, which occurred meansclear exactly how and why people came to believe in its medicinal amongstthe industrial working classin Britain was an exceptionally novel properties. The first spa in England appearsto have been in Scarborough form of social activity. The mass tourist gaze was initiated in the and dates from 1626 when a Mrs Farrow noticed a spring on the beach backstreets of the industrial towns and cities in the north of England. (seeHern, 1967: 2-3; and, more generally, Howell, 1974). Within a few Why did this industrial working classcome to think that going away for decadesthe medical profession began to advocate the desirableeffects of short periods to quite other places was an appropriate form of social taking the waters, or taking the ‘Cure’. Various other spasdeveloped, in activity? Why did the tourist gaze develop amongstthe industrial working Bath, Buxton, Harrogate, Tunbridge Wells and so on. An amazing range class in the north of England? What revolution in experience, thinking of disorderswere supposedlyimproved both by swallowingthe waters and and perception led to such novel modes of social practice? by bathing in them. Scarborough, though, was distinctive since it was not The growth of such tourism representsa democratisationof travel. We only a major spa but was also by the sea. A Dr Wittie began to advocate have seen that travel had always been socially selective. It was available both drinking the sea water and bathing in it. During the eighteenth for a relatively limited elite and was a marker of social status. But in the century there was a considerableincrease in seabathing as the developing secondhalf of the nineteenth century there was an extensive development merchant and professionalclasses began to believe in its medicinal proper- of masstravel by train. Status distinctions then came to be drawn between ties as a general pick-me-up. At that stageit was advocated for adults and different classesof traveller, but lessbetween those who could and those there was little associationthen between the seasideand children. Indeed could not travel. We will consider later how in the twentieth century the since the point of bathing in the sea was to do one good, this was often car and the aeroplane have even further democratisedgeographical move- done in winter and basically involved ‘immersion’ and not what is now ment (seeStauth and Turner, 1988: 521ff.). As travel became democrat- understood as swimming (seeHern, 1967: 21). These dips in the seaLverc ised so extensive distinctions of taste came to be establishedbetween structured and ritualised and were prescribed only to treat serious medical different plczces: where one travelled to became of considerablesocial conditions. Bathing was only to be undertaken ‘after due preparation and significance. The tourist gaze came to have a different importance in one advice’ as the historian Gibbon put it (see Shields, 1990), and was also place rather than another. A resort ‘hierarchy’ developed and certain normally carried out naked. The beach was a place of ‘medicine’ rather placeswere viewed as embodimentsof masstourism, to be despisedand than ‘pleasure’. ridiculed. Major differences of ‘social tone’ were establishedbetween Spa towns could remain relatively socially restrictive. Access was only otherwise similar places. And somesuch places, the working-classresorts, possiblefor those who could own or rent accommodationin the particular quickly developed as symbols of ‘mass tourism’, as places of inferiority town. Younger neatly summarisesthis: which stood for everything that dominant social groups held to be life in the seventeenth and eighteenth-century watering-places resembled in tasteless,common and vulgar. Y many ways life on a cruise or in a small winter sports hotel, where the company Explanations of the tourist gaze, of the discourseswhich established is small and self-contained, rather than the modern seaside resort, where the and sustainedmass tourism for the industrial working class in the nine- z individual is submerged in the crowd. (1973: 14-15) teenth century, have tended to be over-general. Such developmentshave ; However, as sea bathing becamerelatively more favoured it was harder normally been explained in terms of ‘nineteenth-century industrialisation’ 1” for dominant social groups to restrict access.Difficulties were causedin ; Scarborough becauseof its dual function as both a spa and as a resort (see Myerscough, 1974, for example). In identifying more precisely those / MASS TOURISM AND THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SEASIDE RESORT 18 THE TOURIST GAZE 1 ‘t by the seaside.In 1824 the spa property was fenced off and a toll gate certain parts of theseemerging industrial towns and cities. The Econonris; opened to exclude the ‘improper classes’ (Hern, 1967: 16). Pimlott in 1857 summarisedthe typical pattern of urban development: summarisesthe effects of the widespread development of specialised Societyis tendingmore and moreto spreadinto classes- and not merelyclasses seasideresorts where this kind of social restriction was not possible: but localised classes, class colonies . It is the disposition to associate \\ith equals- in somemeasure with thosewho havesimilar practical interests, in sti!i The capacityof the seasideresorts, on the other hand, wasunbounded. While greater measure with those who have similar tastes and culture, most of all with social life at the spas was necessarily focussed on the pump-room and the baths, those with whom we judge ourselves on a moral equality, whatever out real and there was no satisfactory alternative to living in public, the sea coast was standard may be. (20 June 1857: 669; also see Johnson and Pooley, 1952) large enough to absorb all comers and social homogeneity mattered less. (1947: 55) One effect therefore of the economic, demographic and spatial transfor- One precondition then for the rapid growth of seasideresorts in the later mation of the nineteenth-century town was to produce self-regulatin:? eighteenth and especially in the nineteenth centuries was space. Britain working-class communities, communities which were relatively auto- possessedan extensive coastline which had few other usesapart from as nomous of either the old or new institutions of the wider society. Suci! the location of fishing ports, and which could not be privately controlled communitieswere important in developing forms of working-classleisure since ownership of the shoreline and beach between high and low tide which were relatively segregated, specialisedand institutionalised (set were invested in the Crown (see Thompson, 1981: 14). Clarke and Critcher, 1985). The development of such resortswas spectacular. In the first half of the The growth of a more organisedand routinised pattern of work led ICI nineteenth century coastal resorts showed a faster rate of population attempts to develop a corresponding rationalisation of leisure: ‘To a large increasethan manufacturing towns: 2.56 per cent per annum compared extent this regularisation of the days of leisure came about becauseof ;: with 2.38 per cent (Lickorish and Kershaw, 1975: 12). The population of change in the daily hours of work and in the nature of work’ (C‘unn- Brighton increased from 7,000 to 65,000 in half a century, particularly ingham, 1980: 147). becausethe Prince Regenthad made it fashionable: ‘a portion of the West Particularly in the newly emerging industrial workplaces and cities, End maritimized’ (see Shields, 1990). The population of the 48 leading work came to be organised as a relatively time-bound and space-hound seaside towns increasedby nearly 100,000 between 1861 and 1871; their activity, separatedoff from play, religion and festivity. Over the course population had more than doubled by the end of the century. By 1911it of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries work was increasingly valued was calculated that 55 per cent of people in England and Wales took at for its own sake and not merely as a remedy for idleness.Some attempts least one trip to the seasideand 20 per cent stayed for a longer period were made to move from an orientation to task towards an orientation to each year (Myerscough, 1974: 143). time (seeThompson, 1967). Industrialists attempted to imposea rigorous A complex of conditions produced the rapid growth of this new form discipline on their newly constructed workforce (Pollard, 1965). Tough of mass leisure activity and hence of these relatively specialisedand and quite unfamiliar rules of attendance and punctuality were introduced, unique concentrations of servicesin particular urban centres, concentra- with various fines and punishments. Campaigns were mounted against tions designedto provide novel, and what were at the time utterly amaz- drinking,

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