The experience of Progress

1860 per capita income £ 32

taller middle classes

growing service sector

money for luxuries like travel

“Cook’s tours”

Consuming VictoriansIs an entire chapter focused on shopping trite?

consumption: economic ‘measure’ of national

well-beingmeasure of individual wellnessre-negotiating social placeevidence of cultural identity

A nation of shop-keepers

Britain the richest country in the world

London the consumption capital of the world

1. revolution in quality/price of merchandise

2. manner of shopping changed

3. broad-based market appeal

Shopping locale

brand

association

Shops, bazaars, department stores

Lord and May

Charity ‘bazaar’

department store

Outdoor shoppingalways there, meanings variable

Posh

or not

Burlington Arcade,

est. 1819

Amenities: department stores become destinations

themselves

Selfridges, Oxford Street

Shopping and class

Cording and Company (1839)•real India rubber•‘boot last’ individual for each customer•worn by Duke of Wellington

C&J Clarke’s (1825)•non-Conformist family•bailed out by fellow Quakers after 1863 crash•style, but primarily quality•mass-produced

Contentious Urban Design:Britain Triumphant for the 19C

• only country to emerge relatively unscathed

• Nelson monument• centre of Trafalgar Square

• surrounded by Heroes of Empire: George IV, Napier and Havelock

• in London, surrounded by what defines GB: art

Churchfinancelearningcoloniesfinancepeople =

modernity

National GalleryNational Portrait Gallery

St Martin’s in the Fields

the Crypt

Bank of England

King’s College London

celebrating colonies

the people’s place2001

2011

Regent Street: the meaning of

space Crown landpart of much broader, significant redevelopment in the 1820s

Belgravia

gentlemen’s clubs and homes

When is too commercial?

Competing visions

a. Shopkeepers

b. Architects “provincial Englishness at the very centre of the capital city”

c. Commissioners of the Office of Woods and Forests

and the Crown itself

Arts and Crafts movement come to be England

Industrial + rural nostalgia

Shopping and gender

Female shoppers: thrifty

silly

Allowed women public space:didn’t have to be volunteeringarguably, respectable (?)

so do something more ‘useful’

like collecting

Shoppingcoded as feminine

but, men shopped too

subject to influences

and contributed to its economic impact

Trivialized, but not trivial

1. If you were a Victorian shopper, how would you have done the following in 1780: bought food, got clothing, cut your hair, got linens, acquired ‘nicknacks’?

How would you have done the same in 1880?

1. You have heard there is a new department store being planned for Regent Street. Given the material in the chapter and according to your ‘station’ in life, how will you react?

► It has now been built and is soon to open. How does this concern you, especially with respect to the women in your life?

 2. You are a manufacturer of a lovely new sauce for eating with roast meat. Design a newspaper advertisement to sell it, keeping in mind some of the arguments in the text. See if I am convinced to buy your wares.

mustard donated for the Shackleton Expedition to the

Antarctic, 1907 (est. 1819)