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“The Halls of Temptation”: Gender, Politics, and the Construction of the Department Store in Late Victorian London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Extract

On Guy Fawkes Day in 1876 an angry mob of retailers staged a charivari in the fashionable shopping promenade of Westbourne Grove in Bayswater. Their demonstration targeted William Whiteley, a linen-draper rapidly expanding his shop into London's first department store. With his recent addition of a meat and green grocery department, Mr. Whiteley “had made himself exceedingly distasteful” to the “provision dealers in the district.” This distaste turned into a raucous procession through the neighborhood's streets. Around noon, “a grotesque and noisy cortège entered the thoroughfare [Westbourne Grove]. At its head was a vehicle, in which a gigantic Guy was propped up … vested in the conventional frock coat of a draper … conspicuous on the figure was a label with the words ‘Live and Let Live’ … in one hand of the figure a piece of beef bore the label ‘5 1/2 d.’ and in the other was a handkerchief, with the ticket ‘2 1/2 d. all-linen.’” Dressed in their traditional blue frocks and making “hideous” noises by banging cleavers against marrow bones, Bayswater's butchers finally disposed of Whiteley's effigy in a bonfire in nearby Portobello Road.

The English charivari, “rough music,” was a communal protest that censured both public and private behaviors. Female scolds, wife beaters, or couples united in apparently mismatched unions might all be chastised in this way. These noisy protests were also directed at any individual who, as E. P. Thompson described it, rode “rough-shod over local custom.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1996

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References

1 Lambert, Richard S., The Universal Provider: A Study of William Whiteley and the Rise of the London Department Store (London: George Harrap & Co., 1938)Google Scholar. For a detailed analysis of the development of Bayswater's commercial district, also see Rappaport, Erika, “The West End and Women's Pleasure: Gender and Commercial Culture in London's West End” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1993), chap. 1Google Scholar. For a general history of shopping, see Adburgham, Alison, Shops and Shopping: 1800–1914; Where and in What Manner the Well-Dressed Englishwoman Bought Her Clothes, 2d ed. (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1981)Google Scholar; Davis, Dorothy, Fairs, Shops and Supermarkets: A History of English Shopping (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

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17 During the late 1830s and 1840s, worker's houses were built along Bishop's Road and Westbourne Grove. See Lambert (n. 1 above), p. 59. Bayswater Road in the 1840s was known for its “plebeian tea-gardens.” See Bayswater Fresco,” Punch 5 (1843): 137Google Scholar.

18 Lambert, pp. 59–61.

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22 On the general pattern of retail development in the West End of London, see Shaw, Gareth and Wild, M. T., “Retail Patterns in the Victorian City,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 4 (1979): 278–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Lambert, p. 60.

24 Builder 21 (1863): 766–67Google ScholarPubMed, quoted in Olsen, p. 168.

25 Building News 6 (1860): 593Google ScholarPubMed, quoted in Olsen, p. 168.

26 Lambert, pp. 60–61.

27 Westbourne Grove,” in London Post Office Directory (London: Frederick Kelly, 1870), p. 605Google Scholar.

28 Lambert (n. 1 above), pp. 60–61; Adburgham, , Shops and Shopping (n.l above), pp. 149–59Google Scholar.

29 Lambert, pp. 18–21.

30 For a discussion of the images of these shops as exhibitions in the 1850s and 1860s, see Rappaport, , “The West End and Women's Pleasure” (n. 1 above), pp. 214–28Google Scholar.

31 Bennett, Tony, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” New Formations 4 (Spring 1988): 73102, 85Google Scholar. For an account of the array of early and mid-Victorian amusements, see Altick, Richard, The Shows of London (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, Belknap Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

32 Friedberg, Anne, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), p. 15Google Scholar.

33 Richards (n. 12 above), p. 21. Among the vast literature on commodities as cultural signifiers, see Douglas, Mary and Isherwood, Baron, The World of Goods (New York: Basic, 1979)Google Scholar; Appadurai, Arjun, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Debord, Guy, Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Bland & Red, 1983)Google Scholar; Baudrillard, Jean, Selected Writings, ed. Poster, Mark (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. For overviews of these theories, see Miller, Daniel, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (London: Basil Blackwell, 1987)Google Scholar; McCracken, Grant, The Meaning of Things: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

34 Briggs, Asa, Victorian Things (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988), pp. 52102Google Scholar; Williams, Rosalind, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 6466Google Scholar; Bowlby (n. 12 above): Miller, Michael, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Benson, Susan Porter, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890–1940 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Leach, William R., “Transformations in a Culture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890–1920,” Journal of American History 71 (September 1984): 319–24Google Scholar, and his recent book, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1993)Google Scholar.

35 Walkowitz, Judith R., City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Rappaport, , “The West End and Women's Pleasure,” pp. 282345Google Scholar.

37 In 1867 Whiteley's included the following departments: Silks, Dresses, Linens, Drapery, Mantles, Millinery, Ladies' outfitting, Haberdashery, Trimming, Gloves, Hosiery, Ribbons, Fancy Goods, Jewellery, Lace, Umbrellas, Furs, and Artificial Flowers. Gross profits were estimated to be around £4,500 for that year. Soon Whiteley also added a dressmaking service, men's outfitting, and furnishing drapery. See Lambert, pp. 67–72.

38 Walker, Henry, “Whitely's Liquor License,” Bayswater Chronicle (March 23, 1872)Google Scholar.

39 This question was a prominent theme in nearly all texts that depicted shopping in this period. See The Drapier and Clothier, vol. 1 (July 1859)Google Scholar; Mayhew, Henry, ed., Shops and Companies of London and the Trades and Manufactories of Great Britain 1 (March–September 1865): 5, 86Google Scholar; Shopping Without Money,” Leisure Hour (1865): 110–12Google Scholar; Going a Shopping,” Leisure Hour (1866): 198200Google Scholar; The Philosophy of Shopping,” Saturday Review (October 16, 1875): 488–89Google Scholar; Ladies Shopping,” Warehouseman and Draper's Trade Journal (July 12, 1873): 374Google Scholar, (January 26, 1878): 46.

40 Paddington Licensing Meeting,” Bayswater Chronicle (March 23, 1872)Google Scholar.

41 Thorne, Robert, “Places of Refreshment in the Nineteenth-Century City,” in Buildings and Society: Essays on the Social Development of the Built Environment, ed. King, Anthony D. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 235Google Scholar. Descriptions of West End nightlife nearly always characterize the women who drink, dance, and dine in public as prostitutes. See, e.g., Ritchie, J. Ewing, The Night Side of London (London: William Tweedle, 1857)Google Scholar; Fiske, Stephen, English Photographs (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1869)Google Scholar; Shaw, Donald, London in the Sixties (London: Everett & Co., 1908)Google Scholar; Bloch, Ivan, Sexual Life in England Past and Present, trans. Forstern, William (London: Francis Aldor, 1938)Google Scholar, and Mayhew, Henry; London Labour and the London Poor, ed. Quennell, Peter (1862; reprint, London: Bracken Books, 1983), pp. 121–27Google Scholar.

42 Davis, Tracy C., Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 139–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walkowitz, pp. 50–52. In his detailed description of West End prostitution, Henry Mayhew portrayed its streets and shops as both commercial and sexual marketplaces. Among other trades, he identified milliners, dressmakers, servants, those who serve at bazaars, and “frequenters of fairs” as especially prone to entering the illicit trade. See Mayhew, p. 38.

43 Disorderly Houses in Bayswater,” Paddington Times (March 30, 1872)Google Scholar.

44 On the social and political battles over prostitution during this period, see Walkowitz, Judith R., Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

45 Anderson, Amanda, Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture (Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 2Google Scholar. Also see Nead, Lynda, Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988)Google Scholar.

46 This strategy of conflating marketplaces with sites of prostitution to limit trade competition was by no means new. As Gary Dyer has noted, this was precisely the charge that shopkeepers leveled at bazaars in 1816. West End shopkeepers complained to Parliament that, among “the numerous evils” associated with bazaar's, was the way they increased “places of public promenade [and] intrigue.” Despite this argument bazaars became popular places of upper- and middle-class shopping and leisure until late in the century. Like those who opposed the department stores, however, the complaining traders helped construct the middle-class perception that all women in public were prostitutes. See Dyer, Gary R., “‘The Vanity Fair’ of Nineteenth Century England: Commerce, Women, and the East in the Ladies' Bazaar,” Nineteenth Century Literature 46 (September 1991): 196222, quote at 205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 In Anglo-American and French culture, the prostitute has a long history of symbolizing the commodified self. See Wilson, Elizabeth, The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder and Women (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 5557Google Scholar; Peiss, Kathy, “Making Up, Making Over: Cosmetics, Consumer Culture, and Women's Identity” (paper presented at the Rutgers Center of Historical Analysis, New Brunswick, N.J., January 1992)Google Scholar; Valverde, Mariana, “The Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth Century Social Discourse,” Victorian Studies 32 (Winter 1989): 169–88Google Scholar; Cohen, Daniel A., “The Murder of Maria Bickford: Fashion, Passion and the Birth of Consumer Culture,” American Studies 31, no. 2 (Fall 1990): 530Google Scholar. The connection between consumer passions and prostitution lasted throughout the nineteenth century. See, e.g., the Bayswater Chronicle's editorial on crime and the love of dress among male and female shop assistants (February 10, 1872); Sherwell, Arthur, Life in West London: A Study in Contrast (London: Metheun, 1897), pp. 145–48Google Scholar.

48 The Girl of the Period,” Saturday Review (March 14, 1868): 339–40Google ScholarPubMed.

49 On the reception of this piece and the other articles Linton wrote in the Saturday Review, see Anderson, Nancy Fix, Woman against Women in Victorian England: A Life of Eliza Lynn Linton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 117–36Google Scholar.

50 Whiteley's was thus one of the largest shops in London. There were other suburban draper's that compared, however. Messrs. Spencer, Turner and Boldero in Lisson Grove had approximately 1,000 employees. See Warehouseman and Draper's Trade Journal (December 21, 1872): 643Google Scholar.

51 Bayswater Chronicle (March 23, 1872).

52 Ibid.

53 Paddington Times (March 9, 1872).

54 The Middlesex County Session Records for the Licensing Committee for 1872 no longer exist, but the Greater London Record Office does hold the records for the later 1870s. The applications from restaurant owners, confectioners, and hoteliers were often opposed by the licensed victuallers. See, e.g., the petition submitted by the “licensed victuallers carrying on business in Bond Street and the vicinity,” in opposition to the liquor license of Sir Coutts Lindsay for the Grosvenor Gallery's restaurant in 1878. (Greater London Record Office, class number M/A/CL/1878/71).

55 Bayswater Chronicle (March 23, 1872).

56 On the Victorian temperance movement, see Harrison, Brian, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England 1815–1872 (London: Faber & Faber, 1971)Google Scholar.

57 Warehouseman and Draper's Trade Journal (April 15, 1872): 4Google Scholar.

58 Ibid., p. 17.

59 Ibid.

60 Globe (December 11, 1876). The original criticism of the Army and Navy Cooperative Society appeared in the Globe on December 9, 1876. For clippings on the incident, see House of Fraser Archives (HF/6, 15/1, Archives and Business Records Centre, Glasgow).

61 What will he do with It? Wine and Drapery,” Grocery News and Oil Journal (March 22, 1872), p. 121Google Scholar.

62 Lunch with the Linendrapers,” Graphic (August 3, 1872), p. 98Google ScholarPubMed.

63 Ibid.

64 Abelson, Elaine S., “When Ladies Go A-Thieving”: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

65 Graphic (August 3, 1872), p. 98Google ScholarPubMed.

66 Rappaport, , “The West End and Women's Pleasure” (n. 1 above), pp. 149210Google Scholar.

67 Denny, Colleen, “Sir Coutts Lindsay and the Grosvenor Gallery: Exhibition Reform in Victorian England” (paper presented at the nineteenth annual meeting of the Western Conference on British Studies, Boulder, Colo., October 1992)Google Scholar.

68 The Philosophy of Shopping,” Saturday Review (October 16, 1875), p. 488Google ScholarPubMed.

69 Warehouseman and Draper's Trade Journal (March 1, 1873): 111Google Scholar.

70 Justice, , “Wholesale Butchery,” Bayswater Chronicle (November 18, 1876)Google Scholar.

71 For specific details of the many conflicts between Whiteley and these bodies see, Lambert (n. 1 above), esp. pp. 80–115. On shopkeepers and local government, see Hennock, E. P., “The Social Composition of Borough Councils in Two Large Cities,” in Dyos, , ed. (n. 16 above), pp. 318–35Google Scholar. Chris Hosgood suggests that a distinctive shopkeeping subculture oriented around particular trades developed in this period. There is some evidence to suggest that attitudes toward Whiteley depended on trade, not the size of the shop. It appears that grocers, butchers, and other provision dealers particularly opposed Whiteley, while even small drapers do not seem to have felt threatened. See Hosgood (n. 8 above), pp. 285–90.

72 Whiteley's dealings with the vestry can be traced in the pages of the local papers such as the Bayswater Chronicle and the Paddington Times and the Paddington vestry minutes. The minutes are not particularly detailed, however, and the reports in the local newspaper give a fuller picture of the transactions of these meetings. Volumes E, F, and G cover the years from 1874 to 1882 and indicate an ongoing, almost monthly battle between Whiteley's supporters and his enemies on the vestry (Paddington vestry Minutes, Westminster Local Archives, Marylebone branch, London).

73 Extract from the New York Daily Graphic (May 12, 1876), quoted in William Whiteley's Diary: Almanac and Handbook of Useful Information for 1877 (London: William Whiteley's, 1877)Google Scholar. The diary was published annually from 1877 to 1915.

74 See, e.g., the extremely positive accounts of Whiteley's emporium in the Paddington Times (November 4, 1876); Sala, G. A., “Young London,” Daily Telegraph (June 2, 1879)Google Scholar; Modern London: The World's Metropolis, An Epitome of Results (London: Historical Publishing, 1890), pp. 194–95Google Scholar.

75 More Whiteleyana! Cheap Meat!!Bayswater Chronicle (March 10, 1877)Google Scholar.

76 Another U.P. in the Field,” Bayswater Chronicle (May 26, 1877)Google Scholar.

77 Mr. Whiteley's New Promises,” Bayswater Chronicle (March 26, 1881)Google Scholar.

78 Local Gossip,” Bayswater Chronicle (March 26, 1881)Google Scholar.

79 Newman (n. 20 above), p. 103.

80 Stirling, A. M. W., Victorian Sidelights (London: Ernest Benn, 1954), p. 247Google Scholar.

81 See Nord's analysis of this form of commercial reaction (n. 8 above), in pp. 82–99.

82 Zola, Emile, Ladies' Delight, trans. Fitzylon, April (London: Paul Elek, 1960)Google Scholar.

83 See, e.g., Bayswater Chronicle (June 22, 1878; February 22, 1879; April 26, 1879; May 3, 1879; June 14, 1879; June 21, 1879; July 5, 1879; and July 19, 1879).

84 ‘The Bazaar,’ Westbourne Grove,” Bayswater Chronicle (May 3, 1879)Google Scholar.

85 Bayswater Chronicle (November 1, 1879).

86 Shop Windows,” Bayswater Chronicle (April 26, 1879)Google Scholar; Christmastide in Westbourne Grove,” Bayswater Chronicle (December 15, 1877)Google Scholar.

87 Westbourne Grove as a Shopping Promenade,” Bayswater Chronicle (October 30, 1880)Google Scholar.

88 Our Local Promenade,” Bayswater Chronicle (October 28, 1882)Google Scholar.

89 Whiteley abandoned his green grocery business later in 1877. The same year his annual net profit fell to £60,000 from the £66,000 reached in 1876 and continued to fall to £50,000 in 1880. During this period, he hardly expanded his premises at all. See Lambert (n. 1 above), p. 94.

90 On middle-class cooperatives, see Hood, J. and Yamey, B. S., “Middle-Class Cooperative Retailing Societies in London, 1864–1900,” Economics of Retailing, ed. Tucker, K. A. and Yamey, B. S. (London: Penguin, 1973), pp. 131–45Google Scholar; Jefferys (n. 7 above), pp. 16–17; Wainwright, E. D., Army and Navy Stores Limited, Centenary Year (London: Army and Navy Stores, 1971)Google Scholar; Adburgham, Alison, Yesterday's Shopping: The Army and Navy Stores Catalogue, 1907 (Devon: David & Charles Reprints, 1969)Google Scholar. Middle-class cooperatives, not department stores, often became the primary focus of small shopkeeper's anxiety. See, e.g., The Times (February 1–6, 1872); Saturday Review (August 1, 1874; November 25, 1876; January 25, 1879; April 10, 1880).

91 Hobsbawm, E. J., Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987)Google Scholar; Fraser (n. 7 above); Richards (n. 12 above); Turner, E. S., The Shocking History of Advertising! (New York: Dutton, 1953)Google Scholar; Nevett, T. R., Advertising in Britain: A History (London: Heinemann, published on behalf of the History of Advertising Trust, 1982)Google Scholar. For an example of the “science” of advertising in this period, see Smith, Thomas, Successful Advertising: Its Secrets Explained, 7th ed. (London: Mutual Advertising Agency, 1885)Google Scholar.

92 Abelson (n. 65 above). On the question of women's safety, see the numerous letters and articles on the dangers shoppers faced from thieves, beggars, male pests, and others published in the Bayswater Chronicle (e.g., October 19, 1879; February 10, 1878; April 2, 1881; July 11, 1885).

93 Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight (n. 35 above).

94 Rappaport, Erika, “‘'A New Era of Shopping”: The Promotion of Women's Pleasure in London's West End, 1909–1914,” in Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, ed. Charney, Leo and Schwartz, Vanessa R. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

95 This was not the only relationship between women and the city in this period. Indeed, shoppers frequently rejected the new stores and the meanings associated with them. Osbert Lancaster recalled that his “Aunt Jenny” was deeply attached to Whiteley's, but she hated his innovations and viewed Whiteley's as part of her domestic domain. Lancaster, Osbert, All Done from Memory (London: John Murray, 1953), p. 38Google Scholar. See also Molly Hughes's criticism of Whiteley's, in A London Home in the 1890s (1946; reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 146–47Google Scholar.

96 I am indebted to Peter Bailey's conceptualization of commercialized leisure in Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978)Google Scholar, and in his recent article, “Parasexuality and Glamour: The Victorian Barmaid as Cultural Prototype” (n. 12 above). Also see Cunningham, Hugh, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, c. 1780–1880 (New York: St. Martin's, 1980)Google Scholar; Clarke, John and Critcher, Chas, The Devil Makes Work: Leisure in Capitalist Britain (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Walton, John K. and Walvin, James, eds., Leisure in Britain, 1780–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.