‘The Carnival Revels of Manchester’s Vagabonds’: Young Working‐class Women and Monkey Parades in the 1870s
2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 15; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09612020500529630
ISSN1747-583X
Autores Tópico(s)Cultural History and Identity Formation
ResumoAbstract This article discusses the Sunday evening ‘monkey parades’ of Oldham Street, Manchester in the late nineteenth century. The parades attracted young working‐class men and women from surrounding areas, hoping to meet members of the opposite sex. They also attracted criticism from middle‐class observers because of their rowdy, openly sexualised character. The article places the monkey parade within a broad context, illustrating the ways that Oldham Street became the centre of debates around the ownership and use of public spaces in the city. These debates involved not only bourgeois anxieties about working‐class ‘invasions’ into city‐centre spaces, but also included fears about changing female behaviour in public across the class spectrum. This article also shows, however, that participation in the parades involved a different set of narratives, which helped to construct alternative versions of the space. Oldham Street and its monkey parades provide an excellent example of a location with a variety of meanings and uses, showing how ideas about gender, class and sexuality are incorporated and articulated within contested constructions of space. Notes [1] Oldham Street on a Sunday Night, Free Lance, 6 August 1870. [2] Phases of Life in Manchester, Comus, 14 February 1878, p. 6. [3] ‘Oldham Street on a Sunday Night’, Free Lance. [4] Ibid. [5] See C. Hosgood (1999) ‘Doing the Shops’ at Christmas: women, men and the department store in England, c. 1880‐1914, in G. Crossick & S. Jarmain (Eds) Cathedrals of Consumption: the European department store 1850‐1939 (Aldershot: Ashgate). [6] See S. Gunn & R. J. Morris (Eds) (2001) Identities in Space: contested terrains in the western city since 1850 (Aldershot: Ashgate); S. Gunn (2000) The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class: ritual and authority and the English industrial city 1840‐1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press); also Gunn (1999) The Public Sphere, Modernity and Consumption: new perspectives in the history of the English middle class, and Gunn, The Middle Class, Modernity and the Provincial City: Manchester c.1840‐80, both in A. Kidd & D. Nicholls (Eds) Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: middle‐class identity in Britain 1800‐1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press). [7] A. Davies (1992) Leisure, Gender and Poverty: working‐class culture in Salford and Manchester 1900‐1939 (Buckingham: Open University Press); also (1987) Saturday Night Markets in Manchester and Salford 1840‐1939, in Manchester Region History Review, I, p. 3. [8] A. Davies (1999) ‘These Viragoes are No Less Cruel Than the Lads’: young women, gangs and violence in late Victorian Manchester and Salford, British Journal of Criminology, I, p. 72. Also (1998) Youth Gangs, Masculinity and Violence in Late Victorian Manchester and Salford, Journal of Social History, 32, p. 349. [9] Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class. [10] Ibid., p. 6. [11] Ibid., p. 6. [12] M. Beetham (1985) ‘Healthy Reading’: the periodical press in late Victorian Manchester, in A. J. Kidd & K. W. Roberts (Eds) City, Class and Culture: studies of cultural production and social policy in Victorian Manchester (Manchester: Manchester University Press), Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class. [13] Ibid., p. 7. [14] A. Kidd & T. Wyke (1993) ‘More Than an Example’: Ancoats in historical perspective, Manchester Region History Review, Special issue, Ancoats: the first industrial suburb, VII, pp. 3‐14. [15] Ibid. [16] T. Swindells (1906) Manchester Streets and Manchester Men, vol. I (Manchester: J. E. Cornish). [17] Slaters Directory (1869‐1899). [18] Free Lance, 3 April 1869, p. 110. See also Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class for St Ann’s square promenades. [19] F. Engels (1892) The Condition of the Working‐Class in England in 1844 (London: George Allen & Unwin). [20] For example, see Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty, and Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class. [21] Free Lance (5 October 1867). [22] Ibid. [23] Ibid. [24] A Sunday Promenade, City Lantern (6 August 1875). [25] Shadow, 20 March 1869. [26] See Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty and Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class. [27] See Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class, and also K. Hill (1999) ‘Thoroughly Embued with the Spirit of Ancient Greece’: symbolism and space in Victorian civic culture, in Kidd & Nicholls, Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism. [28] For an example of such a letter see Free Lance (13 August 1870), p. 259. [29] See, for example, B. Lancaster (1995) The Department Store: a social history (Leicester: Leicester University Press); M. Nava (1996) ‘Modernity’s Disavowal: women, the city and the department store in M. Nava & A. O’Shea (Eds) Modern Times: reflections on a century of English modernity (London: Routledge); L. Nead (2000) Victorian Babylon: people and images in nineteenth‐century London (London: Yale University Press) and J. Walkowitz (1992) City of Dreadful Delight: narratives of sexual danger in late‐Victorian London (London: Virago). [30] See E. Abelson (1989) ‘When Ladies Go A‐Thieving’: middle‐class shoplifters in the Victorian department store (Oxford: Oxford University Press) and E. Rappaport (1996) ‘The Halls of Temptation’: gender, politics and the construction of the department store in late Victorian London, Journal of British Studies, 35, p. 58. [31] M. Nava, Modernity’s Disavowal; E. Wilson (1991) The Sphinx in the City: urban life, the control of disorder, and women (London: Virago). [32] See M. Domosh (2001) The ‘Women of New York’: a fashionable moral geography, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 19, p. 573. [33] C. Hosgood (1999) Mrs Pooter’s Purchase: lower‐middle class consumption and the sales, 1870‐1914, in A. Kidd & D. Nicholls (Eds) Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: middle class identity in Britain 1800‐1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press), and ‘Doing the Shops’ at Christmas. See also E. Rappaport (1996) ‘A Husband and His Wife’s Dresses’: consumer credit and debtor family in England 1864‐1914, in V. De Grazia & E. Furlough (Eds) The Sex of Things: gender and consumption in historical perspective (London: University of California Press). [34] Rappaport, ‘“The Halls of Temptation”’, p. 75. [35] See, for example, F. Barret‐Ducrocq (1989) Love in the Time of Victoria: sexuality and desire among working‐class men and women in nineteenth century London (London: Penguin); L. Nead (1988) Myths of Sexuality: representations of women in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Blackwell); J. Walkowitz, (1992) City of Dreadful Delight, (1982) Male Vice and Feminist Virtue: feminism and the politics of prostitution, History Workshop Journal, 13, p. 77, and (1980) Prostitution and Victorian Society: women, class and the state (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); and Wilson, The Sphinx in the City. [36] See Barret‐Ducrocq, Love in the Time of Victoria, and A. McClintock (1995) Imperial Leather: race, gender and sexuality in the colonial contest (London: Routledge). [37] ‘The Ancoats Rough’, Odds and Ends, Easter 1882, p. 342. [38] ‘Out Ancoats Way’, Free Lance (14 November 1873). [39] ‘The Ancoats Belles’, Spy (12 September 1891). [40] ‘A Sunday Promenade’, City Lantern. [41] Davies, ‘Saturday Night Markets’. [42] ‘Shop Gazing’, Saturday Halfpenny (28 April 1888). [43] For example, see M. Penn’s (1979) semi autobiographical novel Manchester Fourteen Miles (Sussex: Caliban Books). [44] Spy (7 November 1891), p. 4. [45] Shadow (20 March 1869), p. 394. [46] Nava, ‘Modernity’s Disavowal’ p. 46. [47] Free Lance (5 October 1867). [48] A. Briggs (1956) Friends of the People: the centenary history of Lewis’s (London, B. T. Batsford). [49] Penn, Manchester Fourteen Miles, p. 228. [50] ‘Oldham Street on a Sunday Night’, Free Lance. [51] For example, see the series ‘Phases of Life in Manchester’ that ran regularly in Comus, especially 17 January and 14 February 1878. [52] ‘Phases of Life in Manchester’, Comus (14 February 1878), pp. 6‐7. [53] ‘A Sunday Promenade’, City Lantern. [54] F. Mort (1987) Dangerous Sexualities: medico‐moral politics in England since 1830 (London: Routledge). [55] Mort, Dangerous Sexualities, p. 74. Also see Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, for discussions on the Contagious Diseases Acts. [56] K. Hill (2001) ‘Roughs of Both Sexes’: the working class in Victorian museums and art galleries, in Gunn & Morris, Identities in Space. [57] For example, see N. Dreher (1997) The Virtuous and the Verminous: turn‐of‐the‐century moral panics in London’s public parks, Albion, 2, p. 246. [58] ‘A Sunday Promenade’, City Lantern. [59] For a fascinating discussion on how discourses of ‘race’ came to be applied to a range of social groups, including prostitutes, beggars, criminals, the mentally ill and many more groups of social ‘others’, see McClintock, Imperial Leather. [60] ‘A Sunday Promenade’, City Lantern. [61] Free Lance (27 August 1870). [62] ‘Oldham Street on a Sunday Night’, Free Lance. [63] Ibid. [64] Shadow (5 August 1870), p. 253. [65] N. Enstad (1999) Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: working women, popular culture, and labor politics at the turn of the twentieth century (New York: Columbia University Press); K. Peiss (1986) Cheap Amusements: working women and leisure in turn‐of‐the century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press); C. Stansell (1986) City of Women: sex and class in New York, 1789‐1860 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf). [66] Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 58. [67] Enstad, Ladies of Labor, p. 78. [68] Stansell, City of Women, p. 93. [69] ‘A Sunday Promenade’, City Lantern. [70] ‘Oldham Street on a Sunday Night’, Free Lance. [71] C. Russell (1905) Manchester Boys: sketches of Manchester lads at work and play (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 116. [72] Ibid. [73] See Mort, Dangerous Sexualities, for a discussion of different ideas about male and female sexuality, and the way that female sexuality was regarded as more problematic. [74] Notes on women before admission to the Female Penitentiary, Greenheys and the Home for Fallen Women, Greenheys, 1873‐1875. [75] Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty. [76] H. Mitchell (1977) The Hard Way Up (London: Virago), p. 83. [77] For details on the many new ‘social actors’ in the city see Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class and The Public Sphere, Modernity and Consumption; also Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight. [78] Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 186. [79] For example, as Andrew Davies shows, scuttling and working‐class gang culture was a major area of concern in the local press in the 1880s and 1890s; see ‘Youth Gangs, Masculinity and Violence’ and ‘These Viragoes’. [80] The Manchester Studies Collection (henceforth MSC) contains oral history tapes covering a wide range of subjects, and is especially rich in regard to working‐class life in the early twentieth century. [81] Mary, quoted in A. Cox & P. Duffin (1985) Day In, Day Out, Memories of North Manchester from Women in Monsall Hospital (Manchester: Gate House), p. 34. [82] Mitchell, The Hard Way Up, p. 83. [83] MSC, Tape 480, Mrs Smethurst. [84] For example, Mrs Buckley, MSC, Tape 605, and Mrs Williams, Tape 84, also Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty. [85] See Cox & Duffin, Day In, Day Out and Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty. [86] Shadow, 20 March 1869. [87] Russell, Manchester Boys. [88] Ibid., p. 117. [89] Nava, Modernity’s Disavowal, p. 46. [90] The Ancoats Rough, in Odds and Ends (St Paul’s Literary and Educational Society, 1882), vol. XXVIII. [91] ‘Oldham Street on a Sunday Night’, Freelance. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJenny Birchall Jenny Birchall works at the Equal Opportunities Commission in Manchester. Her PhD was a study of Oldham Street, Manchester, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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