scholarly journals From Extraordinary Success to No Considerable Results: Victorian Music Entrepreneurialism and the Crystal Palace Brass Band Competition 1860–1863

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Philip Boardman
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Financial Success ◽  
Managerial Style ◽  
Brass Bands ◽  
Annual Basis ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
Brass Band ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Band Competition ◽  
The Times

The July 1860 Crystal Palace Brass Band contest brought brass bands out of their heartlands to London in unprecedented numbers, The Times (12 July 1860, 9), lauding its success as ‘quite extraordinary’. This landmark event was repeated in three successive years, but in 1863 it was abruptly terminated, and no cogent explanation has been established for its failure. The entrepreneur organizing the contests, Enderby Jackson, later wrote in his autobiography that other business dealings prevented him from further involvement in the series. Jackson had made full use of his talents and contacts to bring these remarkable working-class musical ensembles to the emergent national attraction that was the Crystal Palace. However, Jackson's manipulation of publicity and managerial style obstruct easy analysis of the contests. Moreover, Jackson later sought to protect his legacy by conjuring a smokescreen in his memoirs to obscure the real reasons for the failure of the Crystal Palace contests after 1863. The entrepreneurial environment is never a stable one, and it should not be presumed that the accolades accorded to the opening contest would translate into its continuance on an annual basis. However, the fact that the contests were attended by many thousands of visitors each year and Jackson's assertion that they were a financial success stand in stark contrast to what is implied by their sudden end. This article demonstrates how close examination of previously unconsidered letters, surviving documentation, and other sources cast doubt on whether the contest series was ever an extraordinary success.

scholarly journals Working Class in Soviet and Russian Sociological Discourse

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 86-92
Author(s):  
V. Gavriliuk ◽  
T. Gavriliuk
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Planning And Control ◽  
The Times ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
And Control

The Object of the Study. The correlation of class and stratification approaches in Soviet and post-Soviet sociology.The Subject of the Study. New working class in Russian sociological discourse.The Purpose of the Study. The objectives are to substantiate the necessity of actualizing of the class approach in the study of modern Russian society social structure; identifying the signs of a new working class.The Main Provisions of the Article. In accordance with Marxist ideology, in Soviet sociology a working class was regarded as a protagonist of social change and a center of attraction for the forces of social change. The contemporary integration of workers into the capitalist system, the transition to the economy of the sixth order, the defeat of socialism, the global transition to a postindustrial society require to comprehend the «working question» from a new prospective. The authors actualize the problem of revealing the content and structure of the «new working class», traditional and actual methods of its theoretical conceptualization. The features of class and stratification approaches to the allocation of the working class in the structure of society have been studied. It has been shown that the excessive specification of criteria, non-critical declarative positioning of the middle class into the basis of the Russian society structure, led to a high degree of uncertainty in the model of the social structure of the Russian society of the early XXI century. The author's definition of the concept of a new working class has been given. Defining “the new working class of modern Russia”, we mean a group of employees in all spheres of material production and services whose content and nature of work are routinized and segmented; not participating in management and not having the property rights to the enterprise in which they work. Most of the times, these are workers without higher education. Power and control in the organization do not belong to them, their degree of freedom and authority in organizational structures are limited, they do not influence on the planning and control of labor

‘Called hither by the commotion of the times’: Martineau and the Press, 1837–1850

2020 ◽  
pp. 180-219
Author(s):  
Iain Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Rapid Evolution ◽  
Mass Market ◽  
Leigh Hunt ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Times

This chapter connects Martineau’s contribution to shaping the Victorian press during its extraordinary rapid evolution during the 1840s to her work for Dickens at Household Words and shows that her agenda for the press developed earlier and was far more nuanced than has been previously recognized. Establishing herself in the elite intellectual quarterlies, simultaneously working with Charles Knight on the Penny Magazine and other projects aimed at mass-market working-class readers, and contributing to Thornton Leigh Hunt and G.G. Lewes’s progressive weekly The Leader in 1850-51, Martineau developed a remarkably flexible and constantly evolving journalistic presence that, in the 1850s and early 1860s, would allow her to become a consistent presence in both mass-market and elite press venues, to appear, simultaneously, in daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly outlets.

The Benefits: Process Innovations

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-74
Author(s):  
Arthur M. Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Assembly Line ◽  
Important Process ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
American System ◽  
Process Innovations ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
New Goods

Process innovations mainly benefit consumers by reducing prices of services and of new and old goods, which benefits aspiring ordinary citizens more than the privileged rich. The interchangeable parts of the American system of manufacturing (famously demonstrated at Britain’s Crystal Palace in Victorian England) reduced the costs of many goods, bringing them within the reach of the working class. Process innovations are often financed by rich venturesome consumers who buy expensive early versions of new goods. Besides lowering costs, process innovations also increase the variety, convenience, and quality of goods. Important process innovations include Fritz Haber’s inventing a way to create fertilizer from air; Henry Ford’s adaptation of the assembly line to reduce the costs of manufacturing cars; Sam Walton’s logistical, information technology and managerial innovations to reduce the costs of retailing; and Jeff Bezos’s Internet process innovations to increase the variety, convenience, and speed of delivery of retail goods.

The repertory of a Victorian provincial brass band

Popular Music ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Herbert
Keyword(s):  
Considerable Time ◽  
Brass Bands ◽  
Brass Band

Considerable time and print has been expended in attempting to define and date the first British brass band. This controversy should take a subordinate place to the more interesting questions that can be applied to the topic of brass bands when, unambiguously, they do exist as a fairly widespread activity and can reasonably be regarded as the active embryo of the standard ensembles which eventually formed the brass band ‘movement’.

scholarly journals ‘Smashed by the National Health’? A Closer Look at the Demise of the Pioneer Health Centre, Peckham

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Conford
Keyword(s):  
National Health ◽  
Health Centre ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
County Council ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
The Times ◽  
Second World

The Pioneer Health Centre, based in South London before and after the Second World War, remains a source of interest for advocates of a positive approach to health promotion in contrast with the treatment of those already ill. Its closure in 1950 for lack of funds has been blamed on the then recently established National Health Service, but this article argues that such an explanation is over-simplified and ignores a number of other factors. The Centre had struggled financially during the 1930s and tried to gain support from the Medical Research Council. The Council appeared interested in the Centre before the war, but was less sympathetic in the 1940s. Around the time of its closure and afterwards, the Centre was also involved in negotiations with London County Council; these failed because the Centre’s directors would not accept the changes which the Council would have needed to make. Unpublished documents reveal that the Centre’s directors were uncompromising and that their approach to the situation antagonised their colleagues. Changes in medical science also worked against the Centre. The success of sulphonamide drugs appeared to render preventive medicine less significant, while the development of statistical techniques cast doubt on the Centre’s experimental methods. The Centre was at the heart of the nascent organic farming movement, which opposed the rapid growth of chemical cultivation. But what might be termed ‘chemical triumphalism’ was on the march in both medicine and agriculture, and the Centre was out of tune with the mood of the times.

scholarly journals ‘Useful Knowledge’ versus ‘Wastes of Print’: Working-Class Education and Edward Lloyd

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-139
Author(s):  
Manon Burz-Labrande
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Educational Environment ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Urban Street ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Relationship

This article delves into the dismissal of penny bloods and penny dreadfuls as “wastes of print” (Oliphant 1858: 202) on the grounds of public concern for education, and relies on a close reading of an Edward Lloyd unstamped penny publication in order to reassess the relationship between education and the wider world of penny periodicals. The first part examines the upper classes’ attempts to establish an educational environment aimed at the working classes in the first part of the nineteenth century, among which the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and proposes to reconsider the reasons for the relative failure of such initiatives in relation to popular penny publications. I then draw on Edward Jacobs’s analysis of ‘industrial literacy’ and urban street culture to analyse the rejection of such publications as Edward Lloyd’s, by disentangling the mechanisms to which contemporary critics consistently resort. Finally, in keeping with Louis James’s statement that “periodicals are cultural clocks by which we tell the times” (1982: 365), I explore the various pieces contained in a full 1846 number of Lloyd’s penny publication People’s Periodical and Family Library contemporary to the failure of the SDUK, in order to understand the potential dialogue in place with publications and criticism advocating ‘useful knowledge’. This article aims to prove that Lloyd’s penny publications were, in fact, an undeniable point of contact between the working classes and education.

The cosmopolitan world of Victorian portraiture: the Crystal Palace portrait gallery, c.1854

After 1851 ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Plaster Cast ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
Specific Subset ◽  
Cultural Experiences ◽  
The World ◽  
The Ideal

‘The World of Victorian Portraiture’ focuses on the 500 plaster cast busts that make up the largely ignored portrait sequence at the Crystal Palace, that ran throughout and alongside the Fine Arts Courts, treating the portrait collection as a microcosm of Sydenham as a whole. Focussing on a close reading of Samuel Phillips’s official 1854 guide to the portrait sequence, in relation to the few surviving images of portrait busts at Sydenham, the chapter seeks to counter a myopic, insular, working-class historical emphasis on Sydenham as a provincial, proletarian pleasure park. In its place, the chapter returns to centre stage the complex, cosmopolitan, high cultural experiences and ambitions of a specific subset of visitors - the ideal audience imagined by the official guides.

New Studies for New Students

1979 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nasaw
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High Schools ◽  
Working Class ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
High School Curriculum ◽  
Saturday Evening ◽  
Saturday Evening Post ◽  
Institutional Solution ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Masses

The traditional high school education, by unfitting its graduates “for work with their hands,” encouraging them instead to look beyond the factory for their future employment, had become more of a problem than a solution. Still, despite its faults, it remained the only viable institutional solution to the “youth” and “worker” problems. To eject working-class youth from the institutions best situated to ease them through the perils of adolescence into the responsibilities of adulthood would serve no good purpose. The task confronting the business community and the critics of the high schools was a complex one: they wanted to bring as many “plain people” as possible into the high schools and keep them there through their teens, but in such a way that their expectations for life after graduation would not be inappropriately raised. Industrial schooling appeared to be the solution. Not only would such programs direct students towards realistic and realizable futures, but they would also attract many working class students who, the experts claimed, had been frightened away by the traditional secondary school curriculum. The masses, it was said, were not entering or remaining in the high schools because the high school curriculum had not been adjusted to their special needs. The muckrakers took great delight in calling attention to what they considered the failure of the high schools to move out of the dark ages. The secondary schools' exclusive emphasis on “culture,” it was argued, might have been appropriate to an earlier era, but was most definitely not appropriate to the modern age. “Our medieval high schools: shall we educate children for the 12th or the 20th century?” asked a Saturday Evening Post article somewhat ingenuously in 1912, the conclusion having already been reached that the schools were at least eight centuries behind the times. The critics of the public high schools, especially those from the business world, accepted without question the inability of the “masses” to proceed at the same academic rate as the “classes.” The working-class children were failing because they could not keep up with their middle-class counterparts and, in fact, were totally incapable of learning the same kinds of things.

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