Claiming the Streets

Paul O'Leary

Description

Street processions were a defining feature of life in the Victorian town, and this book examines how those events created new civic identities in the growing towns of nineteenth-century south Wales.
Introduction Chapter 1 Street Processions and Ritual in the Victorian Town Chapter 2 Town and Region: the Urban Context Chapter 3 Processions, Protest and Stability Chapter 4 Ordering the Streets: Friendly Society Processions Chapter 5 Sobering the Streets: Temperance and Teetotal Processions Chapter 6 Sacralizing the Streets: Religion and Urban Space Chapter 7 Diversity on the Streets: Corpus Christi and the Salvation Army in the 1870s Conclusion

Sujets

• Histoire
• South Wales
• Great Britain
• History
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780708325421
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Claiming the Streets
Processions and Urban Culture in
South Wales, c.1830–1880
Paul O’Leary
University of Wales Press
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Processions and Urban Culture in
South Wales, c.1830–1880
Pa Ul O’l eary
Cardiff
Univer Si ty Of Wale S Pre SS
2012
Claiming the Streets 11/13.indd 3 06/09/2012 14:11© Paul O’Leary, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material
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and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this
publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner.
Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any
part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10
Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library CIP Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-7083-2172-0
e-ISBN 978-0-7083-2542-1
The right of Paul O’Leary to be identifed as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
Typeset by Mark Heslington Ltd, Scarborough, North Yorkshire
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire
Claiming the Streets 11/13.indd 4 06/09/2012 14:11Contents
List of Illustrations and Tables vi
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 Street Processions and Ritual in the Victorian Town 9
2 Town and Region: the Urban Context 26
3 Protest, Processions and Stability 51
4 Ordering the Streets: Friendly Society Processions 79
5 Sobering the Streets: Temperance and Teetotal Processions 101
6 Sacralising the Streets: Religion and Urban Space 123
7 Diversity on the Streets: Corpus Christi and the Salvation Army
in the 1870s 144
Conclusion 163
Notes 177
Bibliography 217
Index 237
Claiming the Streets 11/13.indd 5 06/09/2012 14:11List of Illustrations and Tables
Fig. 1: The coming of age procession of the third marquis of Bute at
Cardiff. Illustrated London News, 26 September 1868. By permission of
the National Library of Wales.
Fig. 2: Sunday School processionists, Cardiff. Illustrated London News,
26 September 1868. By permission of the National Library of Wales.
Fig. 3: A funeral procession at Bedwellty, Monmouthshire. Illustrated
London News, 1 July 1865. By permission of the National Library of
Wales.
Fig. 4: Victoria Hall and Assembly Rooms, Newport. Illustrated London
News, 1 February 1868. By permission of the National Library of Wales.
Table 2.1: Population of the Main Coastal Towns in South Wales, 1831–81
Table 2.2: of the Main Industrial Settlements in South Wales,
1831–81
Table 4.1: Registered Friendly Societies in 1840 and 1876 in Glamorgan
and Monmouthshire
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he origins of this book lie in an interest in how some Irish migrants
celebrated St Patrick’s Day by holding ‘respectable’ processions t through the streets of towns in nineteenth-century south Wales. The
results of that research were published in my earlier book, Immigration
and Integration: the Irish in Wales, 1798–1922 (2000). It seemed to me
then that a study of processions had the potential to unlock some of the
processes by which individuals and groups come to feel at home in strange
places and how new identities were inscribed in public spaces. At root, it
seemed, this was about a process of integration in urban life and about
exploring ways in which such involvement could be displayed to the wider
populace. My interest in the annual Corpus Christi procession at Cardiff,
which is discussed below, also grew out of a concern with examining the
history of the Irish and how they entrenched a minority religion –
Catholicism – in public life. At the same time as developing this interest in how
Irish migrants and their descendants used public space, it became clear to
me that the theme was one which went beyond this particular group.
Developing this idea further and turning it into a coherent research
project in its own right took place in collaboration with Neil Evans, one
of the most experienced urban historians of Wales. Together we submitted
a bid to the (now defunct) Board of Celtic Studies of the University of
Wales to employ a researcher for a year to collate primary material on
processions in south Wales during the period c.1830–1914. Following the
success of that bid we were able to employ Dr Mike Benbough-Jackson,
whose unerring eye for relevant material allowed us to compile a database
that laid the basis for additional research once the funding had come to an
end. His researches raised additional questions to those we had
anticipated, and I should like to record my thanks to him here for his stimulating
contribution to the project. This book is the frst major outcome of that
project, and the intention is to follow it with a co-authored volume on
how the processional culture of south Wales changed in the period
c.1875–1914.
In writing this book I have been particularly indebted to Neil Evans for
his collaboration on the broader project of which this work is a part, and
for extremely fruitful discussions of the key themes discussed here. I have
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also drawn on position papers written for the joint project that sought to
clarify the general questions we would be addressing. His extensive
knowledge of the wider urban historiography has been invaluable, and
this book would have been poorer without his ready advice and counsel.
Our projected co-authored book on the period between 1875 and 1914
will open up the theme of how processional culture developed in south
Wales at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth
centuries. It is anticipated that that book will also point towards
developments in the use of public space in the region between the two World
Wars.
Other people have been generous in sharing sources with me. Emeritus
Professor Ieuan Gwynedd Jones provided me with a copy of the third
edition of Samuel Lewis’s two-volume A Topographical Dictionary of
Wales (1848). This is one of the many kindnesses of his that I have
benefted from over the years and it is a pleasure to record my thanks to him
once again. I am grateful to Bill Jones, Keith Snell and Steven Thompson
for providing me with valuable references. I am also indebted to Richard
Ireland for alerting me to some important legal cases relating to Salvation
Army processions and for leading an historian with no legal expertise to
the sources for them. The anonymous publisher’s reader made many
valuable suggestions, not all of which I have been able to act on. I am also
grateful to Matthew Cragoe and Chris Williams for agreeing to let me
re-publish some material on the Volunteer movement that appeared in the
book they edited, Wales at War: Society, Politics and Religion in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cardiff: University of Wales Press,
2007). Similarly, I am also grateful to Aled Jones and Huw Pryce, editors
of the Welsh History Review, for permission to include some material on
Corpus Christi processions at Cardiff from an article that appeared in
that journal in 2008.
This book was fnished during a period of study leave from the
Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University, and I
should like to thank my colleagues for making possible this leave of
absence. I should also like to express my gratitude to Aberystwyth
University for providing a subvention in aid of publication from the
Hughes Parry Fund. Sarah Lewis and her colleagues at the University of
Wales Press have been unfailingly helpful in smoothing the process of
getting this book to press and I am grateful to them for their assistance.
Jasmine Donahaye’s careful copy-editing improved the clarity of the text
and I am grateful to her for her labours. Jennifer Lane has been more
important to the production of this book than she realises and I wish to
record my thanks for her consistent support over many years.
viii
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owns and cities are places where people live, work and consume
goods and services. They are also arenas in which people move t around, socialise and display themselves to others. Communal
spaces provide a context for spectacles, demonstrations and for acting out
the dramas of social relations. It is no accident that phrases commonly
used to describe life in towns are the urban scene or stage. Phrases of this
kind are more than useful metaphors, succeeding in capturing an essential
part of life in towns and how urbanites express themselves on the streets.
According to the infuential writer on urbanism, Lewis Mumford, one
defning feature of the city is that it is ‘a theatre of social action’. It is in
this sphere of activity, he says, that the ‘more purposive activities’ of
1human beings take place. How people perform and act out their social
identities in the streets determines how they relate to their environment
and how they create new ideas about themselves.
If the streets of towns and cities are theatres of social action, they can be
seen also as providing a delimited space for understanding the balance
between confict and cohesion that characterises all societies to a greater
or lesser extent. The tension between the popular aspiration for freedom
of action on the streets, and the attempt by elites to control the behaviour
of urban dwellers, is one of the abiding features of town and city life.
During the nineteenth century this tension took a new form and direction
with