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Mckendrick Brewer Plumb

The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England
Mc Kendrick?, Brewer, and Plumb
1982

Intro stuff

• Mc Kendrick? had been working on Wedgwood in 60s
• Plumb in 70s on commercialization of leisure
• Brewer about politics and consumer culture
• 18th c consumer revolution in Egland
  • “Objects which for centuries had been the privileged possession of the rich came, within the space of a few generations, to be within the reach of a larger part of society than ever before and, for the first time, to be within the legitimate aspirations of almost all of it.” 1
  • rather than not having them or getting them through inheritance
  • need replaced by fashion
  • instead of (periodic, infrequent)markets, fairs, and peddlers you could access objects pretty much daily
  • luxury became “decent;” “decent” became “necessary”
  • fashionableness replaces durability
    • provinces can follow London fashions too
  • chance and rumor replaced by fashion newsprint, fashion magazines
• rising real family incomes
• there’d always been a desire to consume or to be fashionable, but NOW you have the ability to do so 2
  • and before acquisitiveness always a political or hierarchical function, cf sumptuary laws
• the attitude is that you can always improve goods, and you want to stay up to date
• “encompassed major political, intellectual, and social adjustments as well as the more obbious economic realignments” 2
  • the birth of a new lifestyle

Commercialization of Leisure: J H Plumb

• “both economic historians and social historians have scarcely paid attention to the early history of commercialized leisure” 265
  • but…what differentiates the consumer revolution from other changes in economies everywhere has been increase in consumer expenditure
  • he sees commercialization of leisure in England as one of the major signs of rising prosperity
• begins in 1690s; by 1750-60 an established industry
• Leisure often used for self-improvement, esp b/c of printing press and alphabet
  • only in the West coudl you have someone outside a scholarly elite readings, writing, etc, for self-education
  • via self-improvement “Leisure could be turned to profit” 267
  • and via print “cultural seepage” happens among diff classes
  • b/c of simple alphabet, and b/c of improved printing and publishing “lower classes were in a position to purchase cheap books”
• First Aspect of Commercialized Leisure: Printed Materials
  • why reading? b/c you must purchase books and have time to read them in
  • 1690s, freedom of the press also helps this out, and political turbulence creates pamphleteering vogue
  • before, you had to wander around to get the news and gossip: taverns, court, exchange, etc
    • books are expensive, and seen as tools, confined to upper class (no circulating libraries, public libraries, book clubs etc, no magazines, children’s books)
    • most stuff circulates as manuscript beyond upper class
  • When print becomes more accessible, then it “constantly stimulating the market in leisure” 268
    • books published in diff parts so they’re cheaper (at least singly)
    • music publishers are born, esp by last half of 18th c; as well as theatrical publication
    • more educational primers are published, dictionaries, math geometry texts etc and children’s lit
    • 1690s more newspapers
    • The Spectator, daily magazine, very popular: middle-class audience who want vicarious participation in upper echelons
    • 1760s the newspaper netwrok is developed all over the country; coffee houses and taverns keep them; 1700 newsrooms you can read them there
    • 1720 circulating libraries established, esp by 1750s (had 80 percent non-fiction; but by and large fiction is what’s checked out)
      • trashy fictions “stimulating appetite for the fashionable”
• This is kind of neat, I hafta admit, b/c it shows how leisure was always embedded in representation
• “indeed middle-class children themselves became leisure objects in eighteenth-century England.” (education, social accomplishments, health, clothing, toys mass-produced, children’s books)
  • that you spend money on your kids shows you’ve got more expendable cash
• Most importantly newspapers give you the information so you can exploit leisure
  • by 1720s cricket matches, horse races, balls, pleasure gardens advertise
  • by midcentury each leisure activity has its own set of advertisements (but not fox-hunting or yacht-racing) 273
  • “Every aspect of leisure..is aided in its development and commercial organization by print, whether it is the circus or landscape gardening [ie books on it], horse-racing, or concert-going”
• Middle class esp merchant in the city has gardening/planting mania, not just the country gent
• “what is perhaps the most seductive of all leisure activities—casual shopping, for which the eighteenth-century tradesman devised the bow-window and the display cabinet.” 273
• interest in prints, w/very profitable “print shops” leads to “organized viewing of country house collections of old and new masters” 274
• Sports: fishing, yacht-racing, prize-fighting: becomes systematized, rules become exact, more participation, and gains paying audience
• Pet industry: dog-breeding, bird-breeding (incl. of racing pigeons)
• Main topics: theatre, music, horse-racing, “festivals of leisure” in county towns
• Theatre
  • 1673, only two theatres, and very bad indeed
  • but expansion begins in last decade of 17th c and onward
  • audience attendance doubles between 1670 and 1770
    • to accommodate lower classes, later shows after the main ones are played for lower rate
    • some theatres will only open late, for these folks, and will end earlier, so they can go to bed
  • over 18th century number of plays produced per year doubles
• Other types of theatre
  • 1720s: pantomime, ballet, puppet
  • 1770: first circus (turning the wandering isolated performers into professionals) (276)
  • Provincial theatres opening up, visited by London companies
  • Instead of profit-sharing, we have salary system beginning in theatre, so more attractive for investors who can get more profit now
  • Variety halls here and there, forerunners of Victorian music hall
• Music
  • 17th century, mixture of wandering amateurs and professionals, music during theatre interludes, royal music (if you can get in), or local ballads at taverns, or gatherings of music lovers in private homes
    • no concert halls, opera, ballet, or music festivals
  • 18th c: they’re three! plus lots of music publications incl learning how to play
    • tons of interest in amateur and professional music; tons of demand; Italian, German, English, pop music, festivals, public concert halls
    • inns establish concert rooms
    • growth of local music clubs, associations
• Gambling
• Lower class getting more affluent: “football pools, bingo halls, betting shops”
• Upper middle class and gentry: horse-racing
  • Primitive in 1700 (for example, the person who owns it rides it)
  • 1725: Jockey Club estb, makes rules
  • 1750s: races all advertised in newspapers; introduction of foreign stocks makes for fiercer competition, devoted race-courses built
  • 1770s: organized betting
  • the sport exports to France and America
  • the first organized national sport
• Middle classes, now w/leisure, want theatre, music, dancing and sport; but they’re not rich enough to buy own horses or have private concerts, so public rooms are developed, by public subscription
  • Assembly Rooms: some are by subscription, some built by local gentry, some are at inns
    • A mixture of private and public entertainment, hybrid, transitional form 283
• Vauxhall and Ranelah Gardens: “dine, listen to music, look at excellent pictures…dance…sauntering to ogle the girls”
• “A similar transitional stage can be seen in the growth of towns dedicated entirely to leisure or retirement” brand new and significant
  • “liked to have a sound moral excuse for their enjoyment” 283
    • “first holiday centres grew up at Spas-Bath and Tunbridge Wells, quickly followed by Scarborough, Bristol Hot Springs, Cheltenham, Harrogate, Matlock, and the rest. Brighton, where one took the sea water internally as well as externally, got off to a slow start, but roared ahead under the patronage of the Prince Regent towards the end of the century, when the spas themselves began slowly to decline and men and women began to accept frankly the idea of a holiday for holiday’s sake.”
  • and often the sickness is from eating or drinking too much anyway
  • What do you do at spas? “amusement—dancing, theatre, msuci and reading, and, of course, flirting and making love, just as it was a little lower down the social scale at Islington or Sadlers Wells” (near London, so attractive to city residents)
    • Islington: tooks off when princesses went there
• Not yet a mass audience, but a middle class audience
  • but “so large…that its commercial exploitation was becoming an important industry, involving considerable capital”
  • So it’s the middle class getting more affluent that starts it off
    • early 18th c, leisure not just elite and private, but becoming public; more about social emulation
    • emulation means more expenditure, which makes capitalists happier and more energetic, and cycle continues
• Literature, threatre, opera helps the “seepage of ideas which is the distinguishing mark of leisure in western society
• Crazy Thesis Makin’
  • “the situation which gives rise to the early beginnings of the industrial revolution arose from an affluent society wanting more goods than the labour force, as then organized, could produce.” So he’s saying that leisure played a big part in the growth of industrialism…
• PRACTICALLY USELESS, but then again he’s such an early comer