3. Leisure and Consumption
For wealthy Brithishers, there had
long been an annual ‘London Season’.
Several cultural events, such as the
opera, the theatre and classical music
performances were organized for an
elite group of 300-400 families in the
late eighteenth century. Meanwhile,
working classes met in pubs to have a
drink, exchange news and sometimes
also to organize for political action
4. THE WORKING POOR CREATED
SPACES OF ENTERTAINMENT
WHEREVER THEY LIVED
5. Many new types of large-scale
entertainment for the common people
came into being, some made possible with
money from the state. Libraries, art
galleries and museums were established
in the nineteenth century to provide
people with a sense of history and pride
in the achievements of the British. At
first, visitors to the British museum in
London numbered just about 15,000
every year, but when entry was made
free in 1810, visitors swamped the
museum: their number jumped to
127,643 in 1824-25, shooting up to 825,
901 by 1846.
6. Music halls were popular among the
lower classes, and, by the early
twentieth century, cinema became
the great mass entertainment for
mixed audiences.
7. British industrial workers were
increasingly encouraged to spend
their holidays by the sea, so as to
derive the benefits of the sun and
bracing winds. Over 1 million British
people went to the seaside at the
Blackpool in1883; by 1939 their
numbers had gone to 7 million.
8. Politics in the City
In the severe winter of 1886, when
outdoor work came to a standstill, the
London poor exploded in a riot,
demanding relief from the terrible
conditions of poverty. Alarmed
shopkeepers closed down their
establishments, fearing the 10,000-
strong crowd that was marching from
Deptford to London. The marchers had
to be dispersed by the police. A similar
riot occurred in late 1887; this time, it
was brutally suppressed by the police in
what come to be known as the Bloody
Sunday of November 1887.
10. Two years later, thousands of
London’s dockworkers went on strike
and marched through the city.
According to one writer, ’thousands of
the strikers had marched through the
city without a pocket being picked or a
window being broken…’ The 12-day
strike was called to gain recognition
for the dockworkers’ union.
11. From these examples you can see
that large masses of people could be
drawn into political causes in the city.
A large city population was thus both a
threat and an opportunity. State
authorities went to great lengths to
reduce the possibility of rebellion and
enhance urban aesthetics, as the
example of Paris shows.
