During my degree I spent a year studying 19th Century history, and part of this involved assessing the change in British politics and society. During this period my own ideas of history evolved, moving away from a “top-down” political approach to a more social “from-below” approach. Perhaps this is the only way that I can explain as to the reason why I spent a significant amount of time researching and writing about Victorian leisure. On starting the degree this was not a particular area that I would have wanted to delve into, but in many ways this is precisely why study at degree level is so rewarding: it presents new challenges, new debates, and new ways of working. Since this time I have spent time researching into one aspect of Victorian leisure: the pub. In many ways, this essay helped push me to take bolder steps into other historical debates away from the standard political narratives. So, in an odd way, I also hold some affection for it, despite it ultimately being an essay about ‘leisure’.

Charles Dickens opens his novel, Bleak House, within the ‘implacable November weather’ of mid-century London. His description on the first page is an image thoroughly endorsed by the Hammonds and other pessimists of the age:

‘Smoke lowering down from chimney pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes – gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun’.1

For a long time the industrial age has been characterised by the likes of Dickens, and other similar passages. The belief has been that it was a horrific period for many who lived through it, especially those with little means to protect their welfare. Faith in a golden march of progress appears to be long outdated, with the pessimist view (one endorsed by the Hammonds and Hobsbawm) now in the ascendancy.

However, I argue that although the period in question, 1815-1865, saw monumental change, friction and misery, it ultimately saw significant improvements in the provision of leisure. It was the period in which leisure became something apart from the workplace, a period in which sports and other pastimes could be said to have boomed. Such a view is one proposed by the likes of Bailey, and to more extremity, by Cunningham – their conclusions in contrast to those of Walvin, Lowerson and Myerscough, and others before them. Yet all are agreed that the nineteenth century experienced, using Lowerson and Myerscough’s words, a ‘leisure revolution’.2

Each and every historian who has tackled the history of leisure has asked the question: What is leisure? The definition is one not wholly agreed upon. Cunningham comments upon this problem, believing it ‘cannot be pinned down to a neat one-sentence definition’.3 He continues, commenting on how people don’t speak of “leisure”, but rather more ‘concrete’ activities, like going to the movies or to the pub. A sociological interpretation looks at two broad views: the first of which uses the 24 hour clock, subtracting periods of activity that are not spare time (such as work and sleep), leaving a remainder which is the leisure time of a person; while the second interpretation does not look at a period of time but rather by what Parker calls ‘a quality of activity’.4 However, this itself does not deal with a watertight definition. Perhaps Bailey’s simple comment is most precise, talking of it ‘as man’s general pursuit of enjoyment’.5 Most are in agreement in stating that it is a personal choice – a personal freedom – what Cunningham describes as ‘free non-obligated time’.6 Pandering to such comments may appear pedantic, however, I believe it is within a meaning of leisure in which debate is given life.

If leisure is a free choice in our free time, then this is an activity not conclusively found in the pre-industrial period. Bailey cites Robert Malcolmson’s research of eighteenth century leisure, in which it revolved around the ‘inward-looking world of the village’, its leisure-like activities strongly connected with work and the agricultural year and community.7 The picture painted by him and other historians is one of restrictions. Flanders writes on how community activities were ‘performed by set groups of people at set times of year’, applied to village football and the annual fair.8 People, states Cunningham, ‘if they were lucky’, had their pastimes ‘organised, communal and hence more or less obligatory’.9 Other writers substitute different words: Lowers and Myers use the word ‘interwinned’10, Parker uses ‘embedded’11 – yet the message remains the same.

Admittedly, although there was a lack of free choice, the pre-industrial calendar was one ‘generously studded with festivals and holidays’.12 Bailey writes of the opportunity for fun at such carnivals – a time ‘when all social restraints on the human appetite were lifted and eating, drinking, fighting and love-making were celebrated in orgiastic fashion’.13 However, I am wary about buying into any idea of a “Merry Old England”, of free-born Englishmen rolling around on green fields toasting to their health with generous amounts of cider. Times were hard before the industrial revolution, just as they would be during it and after it – and free time for leisure was still a luxury.

The historian’s traditional view is seeing the industrial revolution as upsetting the balance of the eighteenth century norm. The increase of industry, urbanisation and the mood this generated (such as Perkin’s belief in a “moral revolution”) destroyed old patterns. Lowerson & Myerscough point to the ‘elimination’ of holidays.14 The figures available for comparison are staggering. In 1761 the Bank of England closed for 47 weekdays.15 By 1834 the amount of closings was just 4 in the year .16 Flanders points of the decline of fairs: Between 1750-1850 a whooping 60 fairs, all within a fifteen mile radius of Charing Cross, were ‘suppressed’.17

In the opening chapter of his book on leisure, Walvin cites various observations of the country in the 1830/1840s. A German visitor remarked on the urban centres how ‘the working people… have generally no means of excitement or amusement at command during the week’.18 Cunningham, too, cites similarly depressing views. In 1817, an observer is reputed to have said: ‘the spirit of sport has evaporated, and that of industry has supplied its place’.19 The new hunger for manpower restricted the amount of free time available. This ‘time famine’ can be examined in a brief glance at basic statistics.20 The textile factories of the North saw a 72 hour week in the 1820s and 1830s21 – in what was ‘unprecedented regularity and intensity’ of working hours.22 Hobsbawm spoke of the ‘tyranny of the clock’, which spread to all sections of the labouring population.23

The rapid pace of urbanisation matched industry in its attempts to destroy leisure. The new towns ‘were built for a race that was allow no leisure… recreation was waste’.24 The rise of the towns makes for breath-taking reading. Between 1801 and 1851 Manchester and Salford’s population climbed from 90,000 to 400,000; while in the same time little Bradford boomed from 13,000 to 104,000 – eight times its original size.25 The Hammonds cite the case of William Feilden, MP for Blackburn in 1833, who was asked by a Committee of Public Walks if there were any place ‘to which the children of the humbler classes may resort for any game or exercise, any of those games they had been used to on holidays?’. The answer: ‘None whatsoever’.26 Bailey notes reports from around the country complaining of lack of space to enjoy traditional leisure, such as football and cricket, sent from Coventry, Bolton and London.27 This lack of space, believes Walvin, ‘did as much as anything to deprive the poor of their old recrreations’.28

Another repressive element of the period to consider is that of the so-called “rational leisure”, pressured into position by the growing dominance of the middle-class. Many historians regard the middle-classes as the watchdogs of leisure, those who, using Bailey’s words, attempted ‘to forge more effective behavioural constraints’.29   Watchdog is one word – though a more cynical historian might term it as social control. A growing, dangerous (as shown in the Chartist agitation) working class was one to be kept in check. Urban pastimes were stifled, including fairs and festivals, boxing and other blood sports. Animal hunts were campaigned against, most notably in the form of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (founded 1824). Although Bailey notes the movement was met with ‘ridicule and disdain’ when brought up in parliamentary sessions, he concedes that those behind the movement had as much energy to be out-petitioned only by the abolition movement to West Indian slavery.30 Lowerson and Myerscough count eleven Bills presented to Parliament between 1800-1838.31 Such campaigning was successful, with animal sports on the decline by the 1860s, while other more gruesome activities, such as public executions (1868), were outlawed.

Bailey believes the ‘concern to police the amusements of the poor’ stretched back to before the industrial age.32 Football, for example, had a long history of suppression. In a study on the game in Derby the dates of 1731, 1746 and 1797 are mentioned in which players were prosecuted and fined – all before our period in question.33 Though Bailey concedes that into the nineteenth century this ‘concern’ took on ‘a new severity’.34 In 1817 St Bartholomew’s fair was attacked by four regiments of horse,35 while Robert D. Storch, in his research on policemen in the north of England, charts the exploits of Superintendent Tom Heaton of Huddersfield who:

 ‘ransacked the statutes for obsolete, disused laws to enforce, attempting for example to obtain the conviction of three men for watching a cricket game on a Sunday and not attending church when bidden…’36

The above paints a bleak picture the Hammonds would have taken pride in. However, it neglects the many technological advances of the age, the defence of tradition, and the changes that improved the lot of the every-day working man. Rail was one such advance. Walvin devotes a whole chapter to the rail-age, raving enthusiastically about it being ‘a force for democracy’.37 This new transport cut travel time and costs while connecting all parts of the country. In The Story of Cornwall, Hamilton Jenkin calls pre-rail travel in the county ‘slow, tedious, and, at times, a dangerous undertaking’, adding how: ‘when a Cornishman in olden times was forced to go to London on business, he would make his will before starting and bid good-bye to his friends as if he never expected to see him again’.38

The numbers say it all. In 1835, 117,000 people travelled for 6 hours along the road from London to Brighton. In 1850, 73,000 rail passengers arrived in one weekend. On Easter Monday, 1862, 132,000 travelled into the town on one single day. Travel time had been reduced to two hours, the cost lowered by one-third.39 Due to these amazing benefits, rail became strongly linked to leisure. It aided the rise of seaside resorts and revolutionised sports. Horse-racing, states Walvin, ‘depended’ on railways for ‘cheap and efficient transport of men and horses’. Furthermore, spectators could now come by ‘great numbers’, and this high income of admission money ‘made possible higher prize money which, in turn, completed the circle by generating further interest in racing’.40 For example, the amount of race-horses in the sport doubled between 1837-1869;41 with 62 new events added during the 1850s, and 99 events during the 1860s.42 It was a pattern followed by other sports, namely cricket and football.

Furthermore to technological advances, Cunningham fervently argues the case that the period 1780-1840 was one of growth. There was no ‘vacuum’ – sports and customs survived longer ‘than one might suppose, sometimes after their demise had been celebrated’.43 He gives the example of duck-hunting and dog-fighting, which thrived to a greater extent than ever before.44 Wrestling and boxing, too, enjoyed booms – with the locally famous wrestling bout between the Cornish and Devonshire champions taking place in Devonport in the 1820s enticing over 20,000 spectators.45 Interestingly, Sally Alexander’s research on the St Giles Fair shows a contradiction to the belief that fairs were stomped out in this period. She believes this particular fair was a product of the Victorian era, that it was the ‘offspring’ of social and economic change and not a ‘victim’.46

Far from being pushed over, as Walvin believes, the worker is shown as remaining strong, an innovator in spite of crippling change. Rather than being repressed by the moral forces at work, Cunningham and Bailey believe the popular masses were able to use the avenues of rational leisure to suit their own purposes and needs. Cunningham suggests that the working class, ‘for lack of any alternative’, accepted ‘for as long as necessary, the fact of middle-class sponsorship, but not its ideology’.47 They shook off the yoke when they achieved greater freedom, as given by the example of Bailey and the Working Men’s Club’s, and football in the 1880s.

On the matter of free time, Bailey writes on how the working class ‘stretched’ the small amounts of leisure time available. He and others note large exceptions to the rule of the clock. For instance, Bailey reports how in the 1840s factory inspectors commented on the widespread acceptance of St. Monday, which continued into the twentieth century.48 The 72 hour working week appears stifling at first, however, most writers of the period take care to comment that the actual hours worked ‘were often less than this’49 – due to fluctuations in trade, weather and the changing seasons of the year. Lowerson and Myerscough believe the ‘long hours of unremitting work’ were ‘basically confined to a few of the industrialised trades and to a relatively short period of time’.50 This statement may be too blasé when considering the condition of the workers of the time – with various testimonies agreeing with the Hammonds view of the “bleak age”. However, during the period hours were being reduced. From the 72 hour working week in textile factories of the North in the 1820s and 1830s, a 60 hour working week was established after 1850, further being cut to 56 hours by 1874.51

The Great Exhibition is used as an example by virtually every historian writing on the period who wishes to show the improvements in practice. To Bailey, it is one of the ‘symbolic pivots’ (alongside the Ten Hours Act of 1847) of change for the better.52 It marked, says Cunningham, the end of the ‘crisis years’ of the industrial revolution, when calm set in and the age of equipoise entered the fray.53 The Great Exhibition symbolised new wealth and harmony: 6 million visitors flocked to the Crystal Palace in 1851 alone. Bailey writes on how ‘provincial workingmen and their families poured into London by train’.54 This was the result of the rise in living standards in England ‘for the great majority of the population’, something which Perkin believes ‘there can be no doubt’.55

This ‘new phase in the history of leisure’ also included various acts for the provision of public facilities for leisure such as the Museums Act of 1845 and Libraries Act of 1850; as well as new public parks).56 The importance of the subject was highlighted and debated in parliament, and became what Cunningham calls ‘a favoured object of charity’ (Sir Titus Salt being connected to Bradford park, Sir Francis Crossely to the “People’s Park” in Halifax).57 Admittedly, it took time for these provisions to appear from the time their various acts and agreements were passed (for example, Cunningham writes of the meagre 24 libraries built between 1851-1867, the period in question, compared with the 17 a year built between 1887-1900).58 However, as shown, things were improving for the better. Moreover, the cities themselves cannot be sold short. Yes, they were places of disease and misery, but that is too simplistic a view. It was within the cities that these new leisure attractions first opened, where people met one another, where ‘undoubted opportunities’ lay in wait.59 Royle testifies to this, stating: ‘The city had a magnetic quality, and London had long drawn people from all parts of the country’.60

Yet despite my insistence of improvement, it would be misguided to say the advances made in this period set society on a road to a leisure-like Utopia. Such a paradise remains today a far distance for many people. The same rules apply in our age, as it did in the Victorian era: certain means are needed for leisure. As stated, these include time, space and money. Between 1815-1865 these means were not universal. Certain classes were more able than others.

The upper classes and the lower reaches of the working class (or perhaps a more apt title: the poor) seem the least affected by the changes in the period. Those with more money to spend carried on enjoying the same pursuits ‘in their rural retreats’, states Walvin, continuing:

‘surrounded by acres of land, there existed a never-ending cycle of pleasure seeking and enjoyment which consumed a substantial proportion of their income’.61

Although new technology posed a threat to this lifestyle, it ultimately reinforced their social and leisure life, giving them ‘greater varierty’.62 This included the increase of country-house hospitality and the ability to travel more frequently and widely. Furthermore, Cunningham more cynically states the ability of rail-travel carried the ‘well-to-do to social safety at distances beyond the reach of the working-class’.63

The poor, too, continued their same pursuits – or more accurately, their lack of pursuits. A mention of the public house is in order, the leisure activity that was ‘the principle everyday setting’ of the working class.64 Many historians, most notably Bailey, are keen to praise the pub as a ‘centre of warmth, light and sociability for the urban poor’ in what was ‘an age of social dislocation’.65 However, the benefits of new features such as the train were ‘of little use’ to people who had neither the time nor money to take advantage.66

The real benefactors of the period were the growing middle classes. It was they who reaped in the ‘new bounty’ of leisure.67 It was they who strove to lead the way in the leisure-revolution. ‘By their leisure’, writes Cunningham, ‘they would be judged’.68 However, such grand ideas of class collaboration and conciliation today appear naïve. Cunningham cites the hopes of Charles Kingsley, on how leisure ‘might serve the social function of bringing the classes together’.69 The Great Exhibition showed flickering signs of this, as did the fervour of rational leisure. Cricketers, for example, symbolically wore belts which bore the inscribed motto: ‘The Prince and peasant by cricket are united’.70

But such hopes ended in failure. Agreement could not be possible when considering the high level of hypocrisy in society. Walvin comments that those who attacked the blood sports of the working man had their very own blood sports to enjoy. ‘Such inconsistencies’, he writes, ‘are startling’. Continuing:

‘Cock- fighting was wrong; fox-hunting right. Bear-bating was cruel but shooting, hunting and fishing were thought to be morally neutral – the unquestioned, legitimate pursuits of gentlemen’.71

The thirst for alcohol is another: public houses had connotations to the seedy underworld (such as the relationship between pubs and prostitution). Yet the upper classes were not affected by such scandalous a brush: their drinking, their underworld, was conducted in the privacy of their own homes.

The class dimension, I fear, engulfs the topic. As stated earlier, different men have different means, all of which result in different desires. This influence was so before the industrial revolution, during it and remains the same into today. In his conclusion, and in contrast to the preceding enthusiastic pages, Bailey is keen to point out that ‘leisure could rarely have been a constant in the lives of working people’.72 But yet, as briefly shown on these pages, leisure was around for all – it was only the extravagance that was hindered for some. Further local research could add even more instances to the ones stated by Cunningham. In comparison to the pre-industrial period, a time in which recreations revolved solely around the stuffy confines of the village, the 1800s unleashed a high number of activities. The improvement continued, through the Victorian era – the results of which, most notably the popularity of football, can be enjoyed today.

Bibliography:

Bailey, Peter, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987

Cunningham, Hugh, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, Guildford, 1980

Dickens, Charles, Bleak House, Oxford University Press, Great Britain, 1975

Flanders, Judith, Consuming Passions (Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain), Harper Press, St Ives, 2006

Hamilton Jenkin, A.K., The Story of Cornwall, Thomas Nelson & Sons, Great Britain, 1935

Hammond, J.L. & Barbara The Bleak Age, Penguin Books, Great Britain, 1947

Lowerson, John, & Myerscough, John, Time to Spare in Victorian England, The Harvester Press, Great Britain, 1977

Morris, R.J., & Rodger, Richard (eds), The Victorian City (1820-1914), Longman, Singapore, 1993

Parker, Stanley, The Sociology of Leisure, George Allen & Unwin, Great Britain, 1979

Perkin, Harold, The Origins of Modern English Society 1780-1880, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Great Britain, 1978

Royle, Edward, Chartism, Longman, Hong Kong, 1980

Walvin, James, Leisure and Society 1830-1950, Longman, Bungay, 1978

Yeo, Eileen and Stephen (eds), Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590-1914 (Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure), The Harvester Press Limited, Trowbridge, 1981

End-Notes:

1 Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Oxford University Press, 1975, p.1

2 John Lowerson & John Myerscough, Time to Spare in Victorian England, The Harvester Press, Great Britain, 1977, p.1

3 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, Guildford, 1980, p.12

4 Stanley Parker, The Sociology of Leisure, George Allen & Unwin, Great Britain, 1979, p.8

5 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.6

6 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, Guildford, 1980, p.12

7 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.2

8 Judith Flanders, Consuming Passions (Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain), Harper Press, St Ives, 2006, p.206

9 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, Guildford, 1980, p.12

10 John Lowerson & John Myerscough, Time to Spare in Victorian England, The Harvester Press, Great Britain, 1977, p.8

11 Stanley Parker, The Sociology of Leisure, George Allen & Unwin, Great Britain, 1979, p.21

12 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.2

13 loc.cit

14 John Lowerson & John Myerscough, Time to Spare in Victorian England, The Harvester Press, Great Britain, 1977, p.9

15 ibid. p.8

16 ibid. p.10

17 Judith Flanders, Consuming Passions (Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain), Harper Press, St Ives, 2006, p.209

18 James Walvin, Leisure and Society 1830-1950, Longman, Bungay, 1978, p.2

19 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, Guildford, 1980, p.65

20 Stanley Parker, The Sociology of Leisure, George Allen & Unwin, Great Britain, 1979, p.34

21 John Lowerson & John Myerscough, Time to Spare in Victorian England, The Harvester Press, Great Britain, 1977, p.13

22 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.21

23 James Walvin, Leisure and Society 1830-1950, Longman, Bungay, 1978, p.5

24 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.21

25 J.L. & Barbara Hammond, The Bleak Age, Penguin Books, Great Britain, 1947, p.34

26 ibid. p.81

27 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.27

28 James Walvin, Leisure and Society 1830-1950, Longman, Bungay, 1978, p.3

29 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.177

30 ibid. p.31

31 John Lowerson & John Myerscough, Time to Spare in Victorian England, The Harvester Press, Great Britain, 1977, p.10

32 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.30

33 Anthony Delves, Popular Recreation and Social Conflict in Derby, 1800-1850, from – Eileen and Stephen Yeo (eds), Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590-1914 (Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure), The Harvester Press Limited, Trowbridge, 1981, p.91

34 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.30

35 Eileen and Stephen Yeo (eds), Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590-1914 (Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure), The Harvester Press Limited, Trowbridge, 1981, p.139

36 Robert D. Storch, The Policeman as Domestic Missionary: Urban Discliipne and Popular Culture in Northern England, 1850-80, from – R.J. Morris & Richard Rodger (eds), The Victorian City (1820-1914), Longman, Singapore, 1993, p.287

37 James Walvin, Leisure and Society 1830-1950, Longman, Bungay, 1978, p.19

38 A.K. Hamilton Jenkin, The Story of Cornwall, Thomas Nelson & Sons, Great Britain, 1935, pp.77-82

39 James Walvin, Leisure and Society 1830-1950, Longman, Bungay, 1978, p.19

40 ibid. p.24

41 loc.cit

42 Judith Flanders, Consuming Passions (Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain), Harper Press, St Ives, 2006, p.431

43 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, Guildford, 1980, p.22

44 ibid. p.23

45 ibid. p.27

46 Sally Alexander, St Giles Fair, 1830-1914, from – R.J. Morris & Richard Rodger (eds), The Victorian City (1820-1914), Longman, Singapore, 1993, p.344

47 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, Guildford, 1980, p.128

48 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.24

49 John Lowerson & John Myerscough, Time to Spare in Victorian England, The Harvester Press, Great Britain, 1977, p.13

50 ibid. p.12

51 ibid. p.13

52 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.68

53 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, Guildford, 1980, p.140

54 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.92

55 Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society 1780-1880, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Great Britain, 1978, p.134

56 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, Guildford, 1980, p.140

57 ibid. p.151

58 ibid. p.153

59 Edward Royle, Chartism, Longman, Hong Kong, 1980, p.4

60 loc.cit

61 James Walvin, Leisure and Society 1830-1950, Longman, Bungay, 1978, p.11

62 ibid. p.25

63 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, Guildford, 1980, p.163

64 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.22

65 ibid. p.23

66 James Walvin, Leisure and Society 1830-1950, Longman, Bungay, 1978, p.31

67 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.68

68 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, Guildford, 1980, p.185

69 ibid. p.110

70 ibid. p.119

71 James Walvin, Leisure and Society 1830-1950, Longman, Bungay, 1978, p.10

72 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, (Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830 – 1885), University Paperback, Great Britain, 1987, p.187