What was the leisure time in Industrial Revolution?

During Queen Victoria’s reign big changes took place in the way people spent their leisure time. Blood sports like bear baiting and cockfighting were banned. With the growth of the railways, people began to travel more and visiting the seaside became a popular pastime. But the railways also allowed local sporting teams to travel and so sports like cricket, football and rugby began to be organised with agreed rules and national competitions, such as the FA Cup. Lawn Tennis was invented in the 1830s and a new sight on the streets of Victorian Britain was the bicycle, in its various different designs.

There were still old favourites such as going to the circus or the theatre but the invention of the moving picture during the 1890s meant that a new dimension was added to theatre-going.

Use the posters, pictures and photographs in this lesson to understand how the Victorians enjoyed their leisure time.

Tasks

Background

During the Victorian era there were many changes to how people lived, and the ways they spent their spare time. The Victorians enjoyed listening to brass bands and attending ‘spectacles’. These shows included hypnotism or even communication with the dead using mediums! Circuses and performing menageries were also popular, with Britain being visited by some of the most famous of the time including the Barnam and Bailey Circus who frequently came over from America.

The rise in photography and moving pictures meant that people started going to the theatre, not only to enjoy plays and spectacles, but also to watch recordings of sporting events as you can see from the sources here. Sporting pastimes, such as cycling, rowing and horseracing were also popular, and large crowds would often attend sailing events like the Henley Regatta and famous horse races such as the Epsom Derby.

One of the largest events of the Victorian calendar was the famous Great Exhibition, held in 1851. This huge event was organised by Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victora, and was held in Hyde Park in London. At the centre of the exhibition was the famous ‘Crystal Palace’ which was built to house the exhibitions of culture and industry from around the Empire.

Teachers' notes

In this lesson, students use a range of posters and photographs to find out about Victorian leisure activities. These include posters for a menagerie, an illustration of a cycle race, photographs of Tottenham Hotspur, the Boxer Ching Hook and Gloucestershire Cricket Club with W. G. Grace seated at centre 1880. Also included is a picture showing filmed boxing-match presented in a theatre, and posters advertising a Grand Volunteer Tournament and Military Fete, a pantomime for Robinson Crusoe and Blackpool Health & pleasure resort.

Students can work in groups or pairs on the tasks. Teachers could also discuss with students which sources suggest that:

  • Mass spectator sports had become more common?
  • Improvements in transport had changed some leisure activities?
  • Some sports were organised on a national basis?
  • Advances in technology had created new leisure activities?

As a whole class activity, students could also group printed versions of the sources into different types of leisure activity and discuss the similarities and differences with today.

The advertising posters in particular could also be used for extension work on persuasive writing in terms of discussion of their use of design and language. What do these posters reveal much about the Victorian period, beyond their tastes in leisure? You could supplement these with further from our collection of Victorian advertisements is aimed at any teacher or student engaged in a local study of the Victorian period. The sources could be used to help provide a sense of period and show pupils the type of source material they might find in their local archive, museum or record office. The collection could be used alongside our Victorian Lives collection to give further insight into the Victorian home life.

These adverts explore how the Victorians cleaned their homes, what they ate and drank, how they had fun, and how they advertised the products they sold.’

On the question of photographs with them the importance the background circumstances that produced it. This information can be gained from asking the following questions and be prepared to research further if necessary. Do not dismiss a photograph if it seems posed or if the caption has been changed or appears unlikely from your background knowledge. These elements can reveal information concerning the motives of the person or persons who changed/created it. A photograph is an ‘interpretation’ of an event or person, this does not reduce its value as evidence, but it has be examined carefully.

  • Is there an original caption or title?
  • Do you have evidence in image of the date or time period?
  • Where is the place? Can you see anything relating to the event, environment, architecture, time of day, or season?
  • What is happening in the picture?
  • If the image shows people: How are they dressed, are they be related or not?
  • What are they doing?
  • What is the photographer trying to say with this photograph?
  • Why has this picture been taken and whom is the audience?
  • Is this photograph posed, cropped or revealing a certain perspective? [close up, panoramic, long shot, medium shot, landscape or portrait]
  • What does the photograph not show from your own contextual knowledge?
  • What other sources would help to understand the photograph?

Sources

Source 1: COPY 1/108 f.220 – Cycle race Liffe & Son, Coventry 1893

Source 2 : COPY 1/89 f.104 – John Sanger and Sons Royal Hippodrome & Menagerie 1890

Source 3 : RAIL 1014/51 – Great Western Railway Collection Posters Taff Vale Railway Barnum & Bailey Circus at Cardiff 21 June 1893 Source 4 : COPY 1/95 f.294 – Cyclists 1891

Source 4: Croquet on the lawn, 1872 (COPY 1/18 f.365)

Source 5a : COPY 1/450 – Tottenham Hotspur 1901

Source 5b : COPY 1/392 Boxer Ching Hook

Source 5c : COPY 1/50 – Gloucestershire Cricket Club W G Grace seated at centre 1880

Source 5d : COPY 1/18 f.365 – Croquet on the lawn 1872 Source

6a : COPY 1.49 f.267 – Filmed boxing match presented in theatre 1899 Source

6b : COPY 1/128 f.84 – Grand Volunteer Tournament and Military Fete August 189

Source 6c : COPY 1/76 f.133 – Robinson Crusoe 1886

Source 7 : COPY 1/88 f.593 – Blackpool Health & pleasure resort 1889

Victorian leisure
https://logicmgmt.com/1876/funandgames/leigrowth.htm

Photographs from Historic England showing more Victorian leisure activities:
https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/education/images-by-theme/victorian-leisure

Connections to curriculum

Key stage 1 & 2 A study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066

Changes in an aspect of social history, such as crime and punishment from the Anglo-Saxons to the present or leisure and entertainment in the 20th Century

Key stage 3
Ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745-1901: Britain as the first industrial nation – the impact on society

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Over the generations, the ways in which our ancestors enjoyed their leisure hours slowly changed. Not only did the activities become less localized, but the activities themselves transformed over time. In earlier years, leisure activities were more community oriented but the changing landscape during the years of the industrial revolution led to activities being more often defined by class than by community.

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What was the leisure time in Industrial Revolution?

Wikipedia

Our ancestors enjoyed fairs, wakes and festivals celebrated for centuries at set times in the year. These were local events and they were enjoyed by both the gentry and the working classes alike. Amusements at these gatherings frequently included drinking to excess and blood sports such as bull-baiting and cock-throwing. But by the beginning of the eighteenth century, such blood sports had been banned, not so much because of the cruelty involved but more because the events constituted a public nuisance with the drink and violence that attended such occasions. At the same time, other entertainments, less prone to drunken abandon came into fashion.

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What was the leisure time in Industrial Revolution?

Wikipedia

As the fairs and festivals decreased in scale and popularity, new social outlets in the form of clubs took their place, usually divided by social class. The gentry formed members-only gentlemen’s clubs such as White’s and Brook’s and Boodle’s in London, and the club houses became a home away from home, somewhere that the members could relax with their peers. As time went on, increasing numbers of these clubs centred around member’s interests in politics, sport, art or travel. The Royal Society was an early organization, founded in 1660, and its members were physicians, philosophers and other men of science who met regularly to see demonstrations of the latest scientific advances.

At the same time, the other classes formed their own clubs with incredibly diverse purposes, depending on interests and occupation. One of these clubs, the Mechanic’s institute, was first established in Liverpool in 1823 to provide access to education and reading materials for the working class in the new technology of the Industrial age.

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What was the leisure time in Industrial Revolution?

Wikimedia Commons

Another association, the Independent Order of Foresters, began as a Friendly Society, providing aid to their members who were ill while at the same time, helped other members of the community with their charitable work. Agricultural associations were formed by those with an interest in the land, with members calling on Parliament for changes to taxes and duties or simply to socialize over dinner. Associations ‘for the prosecution of felons’ were formed to assist their members in meeting the expense of prosecuting felons with somewhere over 1,000 such associations through England and Wales between 1750 and 1850, their members consisting of tradesmen, distributors or retailers or any business man who was vulnerable to theft. There were even Cooperation Societies who joined together to improve their purchasing power such as the Post Office Supply Association who banded together ‘to obtain goods on retail principles but at wholesale prices. No matter what interests, occupation or social class our ancestors subscribed to, it was likely that there was a club or association that they joined for the purpose of socializing with like-minded people.

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What was the leisure time in Industrial Revolution?

Wikipedia

The coming of the railways and ever decreasing fares made travel holidays affordable for the working class and seaside holidays came into vogue during the mid-nineteenth century. In 1850, Brighton’s popularity as a holiday destination seemed assured with 73,000 passengers arriving at the Brighton railway station in one week but in 1862, just over a decade later, 132,000 visitors arrived at the resort town in just one day.

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What was the leisure time in Industrial Revolution?

The Industrial Revolution brought change, technology and innovation to our ancestors’ world and anything new or unusual would draw crowds. The public of the nineteenth century were willing to pay to view various exotic animals, animals who performed or curiousities such as Mrs. Bark, the Nottinghamshire Giantess.

Panoramas and dioramas were two of the innovations of the early nineteenth century that people flocked to see. Panoramas were made from large canvases of scenes from far off places, and large moving panoramas were frequently used in theatres as backdrops or to illustrate lectures such as Charles Dicken’s Mississippi series with the author narrated his journey as the panorama unfurled. The diorama was similar but offered different scenes printed on both the front and back of a canvas that were illuminated from either the front or the back, giving different views. Both panoramas and dioramas were often created for ‘breaking news events’ and audiences were invited to choose between the panoramas of Captain Ross’s Voyages, the burning of the Kent East Indiaman in the Bay of Biscay, the interior of the Citadel of Antwerp, the Destruction of the Houses of Parliament Fire or the Battle of Navarin.

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What was the leisure time in Industrial Revolution?
Crystal Palace Steel engraving of interior during the Great Exhibition, 1851.

Wellcome Library

But it was the opening of the Exhibition at the Crystal Palace that really fired up the public’s lust for the unusual. Attendance was estimated at more than 42,000 people each day with the highest attendance of over 109,000 recorded on 7 October 1862 during the World’s Fair as people arrived in London to attend both venues.

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What was the leisure time in Industrial Revolution?

Fireworks became a popular attraction in the early nineteenth century as did travelling circuses. The working classes of the cities and towns enjoyed social evenings and concerts held in pubs and taverns often referred to as ‘free and easies’ for the men or ‘cock and hen clubs’ that also welcomed women. Admission was free and a night’s entertainment could be had for the price of a few drinks. For those with a little more money to spend, the theatre, long regulated by license, became more wide-spread in the nineteenth century and new local theatres were opened regularly. The advent of the railway not only brought more people came to London to go to the theatre but at the same time, it also afforded touring theatre groups an easier way to get around, bringing the theatre to those who couldn’t travel to London for it.

In the eighteenth century, music could only be found at the wakes, fairs, and festivals, generally scheduled to occur during assize and race weeks. But at the turn of the century, the idea of turning a piano on its side gave rise to the upright or cottage piano, bringing music into the homes of the more prosperous of the middle class. By the second half of the century, mass production and schemes offering the opportunity to purchase pianos over time, made owning a piano at least a possibility for most respectable families and by the early twentieth century the piano at home was commonplace.

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What was the leisure time in Industrial Revolution?

As literacy and incomes rose, and at the same time mail service became reliable and affordable, newspapers and magazines began springing up everywhere. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were twelve London newspapers and by the early nineteenth century there were 52 newspapers in London but when stamp duty was abolished in 1855 at around the same time as the penny post was established, the newspaper industry grew even more rapidly. Magazines made their debut. The Penny Magazine (1832-1845), the first low priced, mass-circulation magazine led the way for other similar publications. In about 1790, Edmund Burke estimated there were about 80,000 readers however in 1832, 200,000 people purchased the Penny Magazine and it could be reasonably assumed that the total number of readers was around 1 million. Books in the eighteenth century were expensive and lucky was the family that could afford to buy one or two second hand but in the nineteenth century, local clubs like the Mechanic’s Institute began to develop libraries for the benefit of their members and subscription libraries became common in the larger towns.

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What was the leisure time in Industrial Revolution?

Until the advent of mass production, children’s toys were very expensive to buy and even the wealthiest would only own a few. Few were the children whose parents provided them with elaborate toys. Dolls with wax or china faces would be the envy of any little girl while boys might covet a set of metal toy soldiers but most children had to make do with their imaginations. Children most often played games that did not require toys such as touch or tag, hide and seek or follow my leader while the more fortunate might have had a set of clay marbles or an India-rubber ball to play with. Buttons were sometimes a substitute for marbles, and more than one boy was probably in a great deal of trouble for cutting a button from his clothes, being told that he was ‘not worth a button’ by his mother.

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What was the leisure time in Industrial Revolution?

Other toys might include wooden tops, with those made out of hardwood being the most expensive or a kite fashioned out of wood and paper. Boomerangs were brought back from Australia and quickly became a desirable toy for boys in England as was any other type of weapon such as the bow and arrow, the pea shooter and the slingshot. Little girls would have longed for a doll of any type but those with wax or china heads and eyes that opened and closed would have been seen as the ultimate joy, their cloth bodies stuffed with sawdust. Doll houses with miniature furniture, rugs and tiny accessories would have become cherished possessions.

Poor children would make do with dolls made out of rags or wadded pieces of cloth used as a ball if they had time to play at all. In fact, so foreign was the idea of play to the poor children of London that during the last decade of the nineteenth century, social reformers initiated play groups they called ‘Children’s Happy Evenings’ in London schools. Said one of the organisers:

Carry Coals to Newcastle (idiomatic) To do something that is unneeded or redundant.