The Victorian Era

Victorian Entertainment and Leisure

Article · Cities & Entertainment · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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Victorian entertainment and leisure was the system of popular entertainments and leisure activities that grew up in the British cities of the nineteenth century. The period saw a revolution in the leisure time of the British people, made possible by the new transport systems, the new factory and education legislation, and the new working hours; and the new leisure time was filled by the music hall, the public house, the seaside resort, the public park, the public library, the popular press, and the new sports. The principal forms of urban transport of the period are described in Urban Transport in the Victorian Era, and the wider context is set out in Victorian Cities, Transport, and Entertainment.

The Music Halls

The music hall was the principal popular entertainment of the working class. The What were Victorian music halls? describes the great London halls of the period — the Canterbury in Lambeth (1852), the Oxford in Oxford Street (1861), the Alhambra in Leicester Square (1854), the Empire in Leicester Square (1884), and the Palace in Cambridge Circus (1891) — and the singers and comedians who made the music hall a national institution. By the 1890s every provincial city of any size had its own music halls, and the new American import of the variety show had joined the older English form.

The Public House

The public house was the principal social institution of working-class life. The What was a Victorian pub like? describes the gin palaces of the 1830s and 1840s, the tied-house system of the breweries, and the great social role of the pub as meeting place, pay office, club, and concert room. The public house was the principal target of the temperance movement, and the public health of the working class was closely bound up with the question of drink. Related topics are examined in What was the temperance movement?.

The Seaside Resort

The seaside resort was the principal popular holiday of the period. The How did the seaside become popular? describes the rise of Brighton, Blackpool, Scarborough, Bournemouth, and the rest, and the role of the railway, the medical advice, and the new bank holidays in making the annual visit to the sea a fixture of working-class life. The piers of the period — the Southend Pier (1889, at 1.34 miles the longest pleasure pier in the world), the Brighton Palace Pier (1899), the Blackpool North Pier (1863), the Blackpool Central Pier (1868), and the West Pier (1866) — and the great hotels, promenades, and pavilions of the resorts were built to receive the new crowds.

The Public Parks and the Public Libraries

The Victorian period saw a great expansion of public open space and public cultural provision. The principal new parks of central London were Victoria Park (opened 1845 in Bethnal Green, the first of the great East End parks), Finsbury Park (1869), and Battersea Park (opened 1858 on the marshy south bank of the Thames). The provincial cities opened Alexandra Park in Manchester (1869), People’s Park in Halifax (1857), and many others. The Victorian parks had their cricket pitches, their bowling greens, their bandstands, and their refreshment rooms, and they served the new working class as the squares of the West End had served the eighteenth-century gentry.

The public library movement, established by the Museums Act of 1845 and the Public Libraries Act of 1850 (amended in 1855 to permit local referendums on the library rate), created a network of lending libraries across the country. Manchester opened one of the first rate-supported libraries in 1852, Birmingham in 1861, Liverpool in 1852, and the great new central libraries of Manchester (Vincent Harris, 1934, just after the period) and other cities were built to house the new service.

The penny press, established by the Daily Telegraph (1855) and developed in the last quarter of the century by the Daily Mail (1896) and the Daily Express (1900), brought the newspaper within reach of the working-class reader; the popular illustrated papers — the Illustrated London News (1842), the Graphic (1869), and the Daily Graphic (1890) — brought the picture; and the comics — Punch (1841), Fun (1861), and Ally Sloper (1883) — brought the comic strip. The reader at home now had access to a daily paper, a weekly paper, and a monthly magazine, and the new mass readership was the audience for Dickens, Thackeray, and the sensation novelists.

The new organised sports were another feature of the period. The Football Association, founded in 1863, established the rules of association football; the Rugby Football Union, founded in 1871, did the same for rugby; county cricket was reorganised in the 1880s with the county championship; the All England Croquet Club became the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in 1877, and the first Wimbledon Championships were held in the same year; the National Cyclists’ Union was founded in 1878; and the Amateur Athletic Association in 1880. The FA Cup (1871) and the County Cricket Championship (1890) established the great competitions of the new games, and the Saturday afternoon football match became a fixture of the new working-class week.