Daunton M. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume 3: 1840-1950
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
Harrisons of Leicester, who had previously lived in a cramped terrace house: ‘A
bathroom and indoor lavatory, a front door that no longer opened directly onto
the street, a garden with a lawn and flower beds – these were things which trans-
formed the quality of family life.’
70
The Harrisons’ existence was more securely
middle class than before, even if it still lacked the servant-keeping which con-
tinued to assist many middle-middle- and most upper-middle-class urban house-
holds down to .
71
The Harrisons continued to live in Leicester, but by the
outbreak of war a significantly increased percentage of the urban middle class
resided outside city boundaries. Upwardly mobile business families such as the
Vaughans abandoned a middle-class quarter of Brixton for New Malden to the
south-west, just as (less often but still frequently) their northern counterparts did
for places such as the Wirral.
72
Yet living even farther afield – in villages and the
countryside – was still a minority persuasion, even for Londoners and
Lancastrians.
73
Thus, as substantial numbers of middle-class people (especially
from the middle and lower strata) still lived in or adjacent to towns and cities in
the s and s, the middle-class ‘withdrawal’from urbanity – though it had
important consequences, notably by reducing the fiscal resources for solving
social problems within towns and cities – also had distinct limits.
74
The more general life style of the urban middle class paralleled its housing pat-
terns in following a pattern of diversity within an increasingly common pattern.
Certainly there were major contrasts. The upper middle class, in both London
and the provinces, indulged in formal visiting cards and frequently promoted
‘high culture’ in their town or city. While some of these families hunted, more
typical were the millowning Cloughs of Keighley, who abstained from such pur-
suits but employed a large household staff, had formal visiting days, attended
concerts in Leeds and Bradford, enjoyed a month’s holiday and took their pater-
nalistic responsibilities toward the millworkers seriously.
75
Middle-middle-class
Richard Trainor
70
Harrison, Scholarship Boy, pp. , .
71
On servants, see McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, p. ; Burnett, Housing, p. ; Cobb, Still Life,
pp. , .
72
P. Vaughan, Something in Linoleum:A Thirties Education (London, ); Priestley, English Journey,
p. . For the north–south contrast, see McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, p. ; for the participa-
tion in early twentieth-century suburbanisation of the provinces even in the North and Scotland
see: Jackson, Middle Classes, pp. , ; Swenarton and Taylor, ‘Owner-occupation’, ; A.
O’Carroll, ‘Tenements to bungalows: class and the growth of home ownership before “World
War II”’, UH, (), –.
73
Priestley, English Journey, pp. , , ; Thompson, ed., Cambridge Social History, , pp. –.
74
See, for example, Priestley, English Journey, pp. , , which concentrates on the outflow of
members of the upper middle class but notes that ‘professional’and ‘clerking’ groups remained (p.
). Cf. B. M. Doyle, ‘The structure of elite power in the early twentieth-century city: Norwich,
–’, UH, (), –. For an example of fiscal difficulties, see D. J. Rowe, ‘The
North-East’, in Thompson, ed., Cambridge Social History, , p. .
75
QD/FLWE/. Cf. Davidoff, ‘The family in Britain’, p. ; R. J. Morris, ‘Middle-class
culture, –’, in Fraser, ed., A History of Modern Leeds (Manchester, ), pp. –;
Trainor, ‘Gentrification’. For studies demonstrating the internal social integration of the upper
middle class, see Howe, Cotton Masters, and Koditschek, Class Formation.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
families like the ironmongering Thornleys of Bolton were more focused, as were
counterparts in London, on their immediate locality. There was culture aplenty
but mainly in the form of shelves lined with books. The paterfamilias had limited
leisure and short holidays; his wife had only limited domestic help. Socialising
was less formal than in the Clough household.
76
More confined still – to partic-
ular neighbourhoods – was the life style of the lower middle class. For example,
the publican father (–) of Robert Ferguson, having worked very long
hours through the week, devoted his Sundays to a nap and a walk, though he
was an active Freemason.
77
Yet many aspects of differing life style – notably those entailed by the dis-
tinctions between suburb and town, seaside and inland location and London
and the provinces – cut across these contrasts among social strata. An especially
important source of division, especially in the Victorian decades, was the drink
question. Yet there was much peaceful coexistence, on this issue as on related
partisan and sectarian differences. While marriages tended to take place within
denominations, there was much social mixing across religious lines, notably by
the Kenricks of West Bromwich. Such rapprochement drew on the increasing
availability of ‘neutral’ leisure institutions such as art galleries, the Volunteers
and golf clubs.
78
More fundamentally, most middle-class urban dwellers shared
an emphasis on family-centred relaxation at home. Thus John Clough’s mill-
owner father served wine at home but avoided pubs and clubs; Michael Hope’s
mother never dined out except with relatives; Bernard Thornley’s parents
entertained friends at home for meals; and the Balcombe family (gramophone
manufacturers of Stoke Newington and Brighton) held tea parties at their
house every Sunday night.
79
Therefore, while some people in middle-class
occupations – notably in the dealing and craft trades – were ‘drawn...through
work and residence, towards a working-class way of life’, there was increasing
participation, even by the petite bourgeoisie, in a more general middle-class life
style.
80
Central to life style, yet with ramifications well beyond, was the role of
women. Again there were important contrasts among the various strata. Upper-
middle-class women such as Mrs Hope of Edgbaston had the leisure for an elab-
orate social round; wives such as Mrs Thornley sometimes had tasks in the shop
as well as more intensive chores at home; mothers such as Mrs Harrison spent a
The middle class
76
QD/FLWE/. Cf. McLeod, Class and Religion, p. .
77
QD/FLWE/.
78
Thompson, Rise of Respectable Society, pp. , ; B. Harrison, Drink and the Victorians (London,
); Trainor, Black Country Elites, p. ; P. Joyce, Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the
Factory in Later Victorian England (Brighton, ), pp. , .
79
On general patterns, McLeod, Class and Religion, pp. –. Examples drawn from Essex Archive
(see references above and, for Balcombe, QD/FLWE/MUC ).
80
Thompson, Edwardians, p. ; G. Crossick, ‘The petite bourgeoisie in nineteenth-century
Britain: the urban and liberal case’, in G. Crossick and H.-G. Haupt, eds., Shopkeepers and Master
Artisans in Nineteenth Century Europe (London, ), pp. , –. For the reflection in lifestyle
of increasingly strong middle-class identity, see Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
great deal of their time on housework.
81
Yet important aspects of women’s lives
were characteristic of virtually the entire urban middle class. In particular, the
concept of ‘separate spheres’ had wide implications, although it was imperfectly
realised (especially in the lower middle class) and came under increasing attack
at the end of the nineteenth century. While at first restricting the public activ-
ities of middle-class women to auxiliary roles, this pattern gave females special
responsibility for home and family – not only for supervising servants and the
care of children (significant tasks given the large size of households) but also for
the family’s social activities and reputation.
82
In these ways women had an impor-
tant impact not only on individual families but on the urban middle class more
generally.
Nevertheless, the roles played by urban middle-class women were more
diverse even before, and especially after, the First World War. Many middle-class
households were headed by women, notably the widow of a London architect
who had to give up ‘all the frills’ but maintained a highly respectable life style
and sent her daughter to a prestigious school.
83
By the early years of the twen-
tieth century the public roles available to women were beginning to widen, and
routine white-collar jobs (and, in restricted sectors and numbers, professional
posts) were becoming available. Also, women could resort to respectable tea
rooms in cities such as Birmingham or, if they were well off, to women’s lunch
societies such as the Three Counties Club.
84
The interwar period saw an exten-
sion of these trends without dramatic change. By the s ‘respectable’ women
could visit wine bars with male escorts. More conventionally, but reflecting a
diversification of the middle-class wife’s pivotal social role (and, perhaps, falling
middle-class fertility), the spouse of an important businessman in the West
Riding, while doing much of the housework, would ‘probably keep herself
smart and pretty and reasonably well-informed and be ready to join her husband
at cards or golf or whatever pastime he favours’.
85
The integration of life style across the middle class, to which women contrib-
uted significantly, progressed during the interwar years, assisted in particular by
the decreasing formality of socialising. Social life in the middle class remained
Richard Trainor
81
Cf. P. Branca, Silent Sisterhood (London, ), and, on the masculine dimension, J. Tosh, A Man’s
Place (New Haven, ), and articles on ‘Masculinity and the lower middle class’, in Journal of
British Studies, (), by P. Bailey, A. J. Hammerton, C. P. Hosgood and F. Mort.
82
QD/FLWE/MUC/ C//–; QD/FLWE/; L. Davidoff and C. Hall, ‘The architec-
ture of public and private life: English middle-class society in a provincial town –’, in
Fraser and Sutcliffe, eds., Pursuit, pp. , , ; L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes
(London, ), passim; L. Davidoff et al., The Family Story (London, ), pp. –, –.
83
QD/FLWE/MUC/ C//–, ; Nenadic, ‘Victorian middle classes’, pp. –.
84
P. Hollis, Ladies Elect (Oxford, ); Michael Hope, QD/FLWE/MUC/ C//–.
85
Priestley, English Journey, pp. , . On the complex question of fertility see above, pp. –,
and M. Anderson, ‘The social implications of demographic change’, in Thompson, ed.,
Cambridge Social History, , pp. , , . For the restricted social lives of many interwar middle-
class suburban women see Davidoff et al., Family Story, p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
much more based on formal associations than in the skilled working class, as the
emphasis on church and tennis clubs in J. F. C. Harrison’s boyhood indicates. Yet
Michael Hope’s mother neither made nor returned ‘calls’ after ; it became
increasingly acceptable to entertain visitors in family rooms; and for suburbanites
such as the Vaughans regular outings to the local cinema, grill room and theatre
overshadowed special excursions to the West End. Also, car ownership extended.
Still, for most white-collar workers improvements in public transport were more
important; with exceptions mainly in the religious sphere (see below, p. ), it
remained true that ‘the upper and lower middle classes would never meet in
leisure’.
86
To what extent did they meet at school and university? In England the edu-
cational paths taken by the upper middle class diverged greatly from other parts
of the group. By the late nineteenth century the urban upper middle class fre-
quently sent their sons, though less often their daughters, away to prep school
and public school. From this group were drawn many of the relatively few pre-
middle-class graduates of English universities, as in John Clough’s path
from Tonbridge to Cambridge. Also, even without university, public school ties
conferred privileged access not only to employment in the City but also to man-
agerial posts in the increasing number of public companies. Meanwhile, the chil-
dren of the lower middle class overwhelmingly attended day schools. This basic
duality persisted into the interwar period, with a marked social gap persisting
even between high-flying urban grammar schools and minor public schools.
87
Yet the disintegrative effects of these patterns are easily exaggerated. In
Scotland, public schools were much less important than in England, and there
was broad middle-class access to prestigious day schools (and universities).
88
Also, in some English cities, notably Birmingham, the proportion of boys going
to public school was low. There many well-off children attended highly rated
day schools, supplementing the middle-middle-class as well as lower-middle-
class youngsters who mixed in such institutions throughout England.
The middle class
86
Cunningham, ‘Leisure and culture’, p. . Cf. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, p. ; Vaughan,
Linoleum, pp. –; QD/FLWE/MUC/ C–/–; S. O’Connell, ‘Taste, status and
middle class motoring in interwar Britain’, in D. Thoms et al., eds., The Motor Car and Popular
Culture in the Twentieth Century (Aldershot, ), p. , modified by Harrison, Scholarship Boy,
pp. , , and Burnett, Housing, pp. –, .
87
Davidoff, ‘The family in Britain’, pp. , ; G. Sutherland, ‘Education’, in Thompson, ed.,
Cambridge Social History, , pp. –; McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, pp. –; Vaughan,
Linoleum, p. ; S. Fletcher, Feminists and Bureaucrats (Cambridge, ); J. M. Quail, ‘From per-
sonal patronage to public school privilege: social closure in the recruitment of managers in the
United Kingdom from the late nineteenth century to ’, in Kidd and Nicholls, eds., Making,
pp. –; and P. Thompson, ‘Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory: the last post of the old
City financial elite, –’, in ibid., pp. –.
88
R. D. Anderson, Education and Opportunity in Victorian Scotland: Schools and Universities (Oxford,
; repr., Edinburgh, ), and R. D. Anderson, ‘Secondary schools and Scottish society in
the nineteenth century’, P&P, ().
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
University, in turn, was of relatively small career importance for the urban
middle class, at least until after . Most fundamentally, before access to
secondary schooling of any kind – which in turn was crucial for much desir-
able middle-class employment – was highly skewed in favour of children from
middle-class homes. By the interwar years, even if day schools like those
attended by Paul Vaughan and J. F. C. Harrison could not match the aura of
the public schools, increasingly they compensated through marked success in
getting students into university, including Oxbridge which ‘admitted [them] to
the ranks of the privileged’.
89
As many aspects of the social environment indicate, there were important
differences not only of status but also of life chances within the urban middle
class. Michael Hope felt the superiority of the Kenrick side of his family to his
father’s relatives, who were middling manufacturers; Robert Ferguson saw his
father as only on the fringe of ‘business people’, who lived in ‘posh house[s] on
the outskirts’.
90
But there were important elements of common feeling within
the middle class. In a largely middle-class environment such as Tunbridge Wells
there was ‘emphatic and utterly confident speech – a communication between
equals’.
91
Even in Bolton, ‘people [who] were doing the same sort of thing’ –
that is, those in the same ‘financial circumstances’ – ‘tended to clique together
to some extent’.
92
Also, there remained a clear sense of difference, even for some
of the wealthiest members of the middle class, from the true upper class. As John
Clough put it, his family ‘talked another language’ from the gentry.
93
More
importantly, for all but the lowest fringe, by the interwar years there was a
growing unity around middle-class occupations, in part stimulated by the organ-
ised working class, in part encouraged by the increase of the white-collar
element at the expense of the petite bourgeoisie. Thus the Bolton mill welfare
manager Nellie Trainor, the daughter of an overlooker, both in her childhood
and as an adult felt clear superiority even to skilled manual workers.
94
By the
s this increasingly strong and broad urban middle-class identity was reflected
in widespread support for the established churches and, in particular, for the
Conservatives (see below, p. ). Even a relatively humble member of the
middle class such as Ferguson could comment sympathetically that ‘If you’ve got
Richard Trainor
89
Harrison, Scholarship Boy, pp. , (quote); Vaughan, Linoleum, p. and passim; Sutherland,
‘Education’, p. ; H. Berghoff, ‘Public schools and the decline of the British economy
–’, P&P, (), , ; Berghoff, ‘Regional variations’, ; P. Searby, ‘The
schooling of Kipps: the education of lower middle class boys in England, –’, in P. Searby,
ed., Educating the Victorian Middle Class (Leicester, ), p. ; Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp.
–.
90
QD/FLWE/, , .
91
Cobb, Still Life, p. .
92
QD/FLWE/, .
93
QD/FLWE/, . For a generally sceptical view of urban middle-class cultural independence
see Thompson, ed., Cambridge Social History, , pp. , .
94
McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, pp. , ff, –; QD/FLWE/, –. A similar case of
clear middle-class identity following marginal social origins was that of Mr Adams, a pottery
manager (QD/FLWE/ in North Staffordshire).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
your own premises you don’t vote Labour’; ‘it’s a matter of the working man
against the capitalist’.
95
(iv) -
Public involvements by the urban middle class had significant consequences both
for the middle class itself and for urban society more generally. Resources, life
style and identity gave the middle class as a whole significant advantages in urban
public life. The latter, in turn, also reflected the distinctive roles of the various
social strata within the middle class.
Middle-class interventions in public affairs varied not only over time (see
below, pp. –, ‒) but also among different types of urban settlement.
Neighbouring landed elites were particularly influential in market towns such as
Victorian Peterborough,
96
while in London the wealthiest individuals usually
concerned themselves more with institutions in the City than with the public
life of the localities where they resided. Similarly, while industrialists played par-
ticularly significant roles in the public affairs of small- and medium-sized indus-
trial towns, the top leaders of provincial capitals such as Glasgow, Manchester
and Bristol inevitably had more diverse occupations. Equally, the leaders of the
larger cities were, at least in the mid-nineteenth century, of higher average social
standing than the elites of medium or small towns. Likewise, patterns of leader-
ship differed among, and within, major social arenas such as local government
and voluntary societies (see below, pp. –).
97
Yet, the general pattern of
middle-class involvement, especially before – and even more so prior to
about – was one of social, partisan and religious diversity balanced by par-
ticularly important roles for the well-to-do.
From the perspective of the turn of the twenty-first century the most surpris-
ing aspect of this pattern is that so many prosperous individuals were willing to
serve in prominent public positions. A crucial factor was the prominence of the
urban arena in a society where, before the s, communication was primarily
local. The urban scene, meanwhile, featured the huge range of institutions – and
positions of leadership – which British towns and cities had spawned from the
s: municipal corporations, boards of poor law guardians, health commis-
sioners, school boards and panels of borough JPs; Mechanics Institutes, reform
societies and voluntary hospitals; churches, chapels, synagogues and their
The middle class
95
QD/FLWE/, , . These comments were made well after but evidently refer to views
Ferguson frequently encountered throughout his adult life. For similar attitudes in the interwar
period see Vaughan, Linoleum, p. .
96
P. Jones, ‘Perspective, sources and methodology in a comparative study of the middle class in
nineteenth-century Leicester and Peterborough’, UHY (), –.
97
As recent analysts of ‘civil society’ have emphasised, attention should not be confined to statutory
institutions (see ‘Special issue: civil society in Britain’, UH, ()).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
affiliated social and cultural organisations; associations and clubs attached to
political parties; Chambers of Commerce and trade.
98
Partly in consequence,
especially at the start of the period local institutions had considerable discretion,
which was only partially lost to Whitehall and other London-based bodies before
.
99
Thus service in these institutions often brought prominence and prestige
both within the local middle class and, to a lesser but significant extent, through-
out local populations. Indeed, it was difficult to win renown in towns and cities
before the First World War without at least a modicum of conspicuous public
involvement in one of the many types of activity available – or, at a minimum,
a reputation for large-scale generosity to public causes.
100
Such participation also
provided leaders with the opportunity to enhance their influence on issues such
as: the level of municipal rates; the programmes of literary and philosophical
societies; the admission policies of voluntary hospitals; the theological tone and
social outreach of churches and chapels; the vigour and content of local and par-
liamentary election campaigns; and the strategies of employers’ organisations. As
these decisions had implications for local prosperity, social stability, public
welfare, cultural dynamism and spiritual vitality as well as for the fortunes of
individuals and firms, public affairs appealed to the altruistic as well as to the
selfish impulses of the middle class.
101
Victorian and Edwardian urban public life, therefore, mobilised a significant
minority of middle-class men
102
and, increasingly, women into its leadership
roles. In a self-consciously idealistic society lofty motives appealed across middle-
class strata and occupations. Meanwhile, more practical considerations
103
–
including possession of enough property to meet formal qualifications and the
availability of spare time and money – determined the extent and nature of the
role played by particular groups. Upper-middle-class businessmen sought
confirmation of their respected place in the community. Sometimes (like their
colleagues in the upper class who ventured into towns) they preferred honorary
roles, especially in the voluntary sector, to positions which entailed direct man-
agerial responsibility. Yet, particularly when their own economic interests were
local,
104
the wealthy often wished to be directly involved in major practical
Richard Trainor
198
See, for example, Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –; Trainor, ‘Glasgow’s elite’, pp. –.
199
See above, pp. – for the evolution of such controls in local government.
100
See, for instance, the obscurity suffered by Bennett’s ‘Osmond Orgreave’ because of his aloof-
ness from such activities – These Twain (Harmondsworth, ), p. .
101
On the question of motives, see Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –.
102
In Black Country towns between per cent and per cent served during a given subperiod
(Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –).
103
Many of these factors gave the middle class in general an advantage over the working class in
terms of access to elite posts.
104
Absence of local interests could lead to aloofness from many aspects of public life, as Cardiff and
(in a much more complex way) London demonstrate. See M. J. Daunton, Coal Metropolis
(Leicester, ), pp. , ; Reeder, ‘Perspectives on London administrative history’, in D.
Owen, The Government of Victorian London, – (Cambridge, Mass., and London, ),
p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
decisions. For less well-off members of the urban middle class, elite service could
bring prominence and respect. Thus in Bolton the people who mattered were
‘civic leaders, the clergy, doctors, leading industrialists, employers’.
105
For the
main leadership posts such factors operated most effectively, notably in London,
on the middle middle class – especially professionals – who could more realisti-
cally aspire to fame than all but the most energetic and charismatic members of
the lower middle class. The latter, also, had to cope with the consensus, partic-
ularly strong in the mid-nineteenth century, that wealth and social standing were
required for public service.
106
Yet urban elites were more diverse from the start of the period than this
pattern suggests – and they became more so, particularly from the late nineteenth
century. From the outset there was much greater social variety in auxiliary roles
such as Sunday school teacher, election volunteer and charity fund-raising com-
mittee member. Mainstream elite posts increasingly shared this variety. Due
partly to agitation from below, partly to more flexible recruitment mechanisms,
partly to a broadening concept of the prerequisites for leadership, the lower
middle class – and, to a limited extent, representatives of manual workers –
gained significant shares of elite posts from the last third of the nineteenth
century.
107
This increasing diversity reinforced the legitimacy of the elites, espe-
cially in the eyes of middle-class populations (increasingly composed of the lower
middle class) which still had most effective access to these positions. Yet, the bulk
of principal leadership posts usually remained in the hands of the upper-middle
and middle-middle strata. The effectiveness of leadership from this ‘solid’ middle
class was reinforced by considerable ‘overlapping’ of leaders from different
spheres, especially by those higher in the social hierarchy, many of whom also
had family or business links to each other.
108
Admittedly, as the glamour of the
new institutions diminished, as public affairs became less deferential and as some
wealthy citizens turned their attention to the suburbs and the countryside, active
participation by the upper middle class (and especially by the wealthiest)
declined. However, this was a gradual and limited trend, so that down to the
s and, to a lesser extent, down to the elites of most medium and large
towns retained a number of wealthy individuals. Likewise, in Birmingham,
The middle class
105
Bernard Thornley, QD/FLWE/, .
106
McLeod, Class and Religion, p. ; E. P. Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons (London, ), p. ;
Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –; J. A. Garrard, ‘The history of local political power: some
suggestions for analysis’, Political Studies, (), –. For the importance of the role played
by humble activists see Garrard, Leadership and Power.
107
For mid-century aspects of sharing with groups outside the solid middle class, see Koditschek,
Class Formation, ‘Epilogue’; and Morris, Class, Sect and Party, p. .
108
Trainor, ‘Urban elites’, p. ; Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –, ; D. Fraser, Power and
Authority in the Victorian City (Oxford, ), p. ; R. Q. Gray, The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian
Edinburgh (Oxford, ), pp. –; P. Hills, ‘Division and cohesion in the nineteenth-century
middle class: the case of Ipswich –’, UHY (), –; Hollis, Ladies Elect, p. ;
H. E. Meller, Leisure and the Changing City, – (London, ), p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Bristol and Manchester a high proportion of well-off businessmen remained
involved in local public life.
109
A few examples of energetic, wide-ranging civic involvement by late Victorian
and Edwardian businessmen illustrate the persisting contribution of the well-to-
do to urban public life. Reuben Farley, a West Bromwich ironfounder, was a
leading figure in local civic life from the s until his death in . Farley was
vice-chairman of the guardians, chairman of the commissioners, a member of the
school board and five times mayor. In voluntary activities he played important
roles in the building society, Mechanics Institute, hospital (where he was on the
board for thirty years, seventeen as vice-chairman) and Institute, and lesser parts
in the choral society, football team, horticultural society, temperance movement,
Volunteers and YMCA. Moreover, Farley helped knit together local government
and philanthropy by obtaining and supplying benefactions for the town, and by
supporting the municipalisation of the Institute. Accumulating £, during
his lifetime, Farley continued to live in West Bromwich, where he served as the
leading civic collaborator of the town’s absentee aristocrats, the earls of
Dartmouth. Throughout his public life, Farley promoted a progressive paternal-
ism, stressing the need for property to fulfil its duties as well as to enjoy its rights,
especially in the increasingly tense social atmosphere of the late nineteenth
century. A similar example from a large city is Glasgow’s Sir James Bell, baronet
(who left £, in ), a steamship owner with major railway and banking
interests, who served as lord provost in the s (giving , of the poor dinner
to mark the marriage of the duke of York) and Glasgow’s first lord lieutenant,
while also finding time to look after his yacht and his country estate. A parallel
case from the same city was the progressively minded baronet Sir William Bilsland,
a well-off Glasgow baker, whose service as lord provost in the early years of the
twentieth century capped many years of hard work on the Council where he vig-
orously promoted art galleries and sanitation improvements.
110
Still, social diversity meant that urban elites could benefit from a variety of
leadership styles. Increasingly, there was an efficient division of labour between
the generous and ceremonial roles of the wealthiest businessmen, on the one
hand, and the more detailed, energetic involvement of lesser but still substantial
middle-class citizens, on the other.
111
Especially in middle-sized towns like those
in the Black Country, urban elites also avoided the extremes both of unhealthy
Richard Trainor
109
Trainor, ‘Urban elites’, ; Trainor, ‘Glasgow’s elite’, pp. –; Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp.
–; E. S. Griffiths, The Modern Development of City Government in the United Kingdom and the
United States (London, ), vol. , pp. –; Meller, Leisure and the Changing City, p. ; D.
Cannadine, ‘The transformation of civic ritual in modern Britain: the Colchester oyster feast’,
P&P, (), ; R. A. Church, Economic and Social Change in a Midland Town (London, ),
pp. –; Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons, p. ; A. J. Kidd, ‘Charity organisation and the
unemployed in Manchester c. –’, Soc. Hist., (), ; S. Yeo, Religion and Voluntary
Organisations in Crisis, – (London, ), pp. –, ; Berghoff, ‘Regional variations’,
, –.
110
Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. , –; Trainor, ‘Glasgow’s elite’, p. .
111
Trainor, ‘Glasgow’s elite’, p. ; Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –, .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
dependence on a small number of individuals and of leadership so diffused that
elites were depersonalised and robbed of glamour.
112
A trend toward diversity also applied to the partisan and religious affiliations
of the leaders of civic institutions. In early nineteenth-century towns near or
actual monopolies, often of Tory Anglicans, frequently prevailed. Subsequent
reforms often merely substituted a Liberal nonconformist predominance. Yet by
the later Victorian years there was a tendency for both major political factions,
and both major religious blocs, to win significant proportions of elite posts. Such
diversity did much to reinforce the legitimacy of the elites as in most towns each
faction claimed a significant share of the middle-class population, the source of
the vast majority of elite members.
113
By the end of the nineteenth century even
previously shunned factions such as the Primitive Methodists and Catholics
gained minor shares of representation, thereby boosting the popularity of local
leaders with the population more generally.
114
Diversity had its price. Quite apart from the battles with working-class repre-
sentatives that increasingly preoccupied town councils and voluntary hospitals
from the closing years of the nineteenth century, variety among middle-class
leaders at first contributed to squabbling within elite institutions, notably on
issues related to rates, drink, religion in schools and the selection of presiding
officers. Yet, while there were periodic revivals of acrimony, in general it faded
from public affairs in places as varied as Bristol, Colchester, Exeter, Ipswich and
textile Lancashire. The attainment of significant shares of posts in itself took some
of the force out of factionalism, as did the shared experience of running volun-
tary and statutory institutions. Harmony was furthered, and symbolised, by ever
more inclusive civic rituals – notably when the foundations of new buildings were
laid, as in Glasgow in – which attracted representatives from all the main
institutions as well as large, socially mixed crowds. Local middle-class leaders
seized these opportunities to emphasise the civic contribution of the various
religions and political parties; to a lesser extent they also recognised the claims of
various occupational and social groups, thereby helping to ease the more intract-
able social tensions which underlay public life in towns and cities.
115
The middle class
112
Trainor, ‘Urban elites’, ; Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –. For the contrasting situation
in cities see: Meller, Leisure and the Changing City, pp. –; G. Stedman Jones, Outcast London
(Oxford, ), pp. , –; N. Evans, ‘The first charity in Wales’, Welsh History Review,
(), –.
113
Berghoff, ‘Businessmen’; Berghoff, ‘Regional variations’, pp. –; Howe, Cotton Masters, p. ;
Rubinstein, Men of Property, ch. ; Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –, –, .
114
On this paragraph generally see Trainor, ‘Urban elites’, p. ; Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp.
–; Fraser, Urban Politics.
115
Trainor, ‘Urban elites’, –; Trainor, ‘Glasgow’s elite’, pp. –, –; Trainor, Black Country
Elites, pp. –, –, –, ; Meller, Leisure and the Changing City, pp. –, , ;
Cannadine, ‘Transformation’, ; R. Newton, Victorian Exeter, – (Leicester, ), pp.
–, –, –; Hills, ‘Division and cohesion’, –; Garrard, Leadership and Power, p. .
Cf. S. Gunn, ‘Ritual and civic culture in the English industrial city, c. ‒’, in R. J. Morris
and R. H. Trainor, eds., Urban Governance (Aldershot, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008