Análisis vertical

Introduction

Once public parks had been created, debate about their proper use regularly occurred between different groups of park users as well as between park users and park author­

ities. While any type of park use could result in dis­

agreement, including mundane disputes about priority in sports grounds or rights of way, the conflicts most sig­ nificant for public culture overall fell into three categ­

ories. These issues were the boundaries of the parkgoing

public, the degree to which park rules should encourage more civilized behavior in the parks, and the relationship between politics and public space.

Each of these three controversies illuminated a different facet of the central dilemma for park users and

managers. Should public parks cater to, and foster the

development of, the ideal citizen? Or on the contrary,

should parks merely accommodate diversity in public behavior

without any restraint other than existing laws? This

question inspired vigorous opinions on both sides by parkgoers, and demanded difficult decisions by park managers

who created and enforced park bye-laws. The perceived

opportunity to influence the future of urban society conferred a sense of urgency on debates about public parks.

First, even as park use increased, the public com­ munity still remained amorphous with ill-defined boundaries. Though by definition public parks served all members of the

public, those parkgoers not meeting specific, though

varying, standards of respectability could be excluded. Thus, up to the mid-nineteenth century, lower-class citizens

found royal park admission sometimes denied. Conversely,

wealthy and socially influential parkgoers often acquired special privileges in park use forbidden to the public at large. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, class discrimination in park admission had largely been overcome, with "respectable" workers now eagerly admitted, only to generate new efforts to exclude "verminous" persons from definitions of the public and from parks.

Second, broad-based efforts to use parks as a platform

for reforming society met stiff resistance. Attempts to

deny park admission to disease-carriers and degenerates sig­ nalled a larger battle over public behavior inside parks. Reform efforts stemmed from different but overlapping campaigns promoting "rational recreation," religion and sports, or attempting to suppress "indecent" sexual be­

havior. Code words such as "rational," "respectable" and

"civilized" were often interpreted in contradictory ways by various groups, all claiming to represent the public

and resistance to private reform societies interested in influencing park behavior.

The third facet of controversy over park use concerned

political behavior. Londoners struggled to acquire the

right of assembly in public parks for political purposes. Though designed primarily for leisure activities, public parks eventually became political spaces and largely con­ tributed to the development of a broader political culture,

at least in London. Public meetings produced the most

physical confrontations occurring in parks, occasionally developing into full-blown riots.

Conflicts within public parks were framed by park bye- laws drafted by park managers and enforced by park-keepers or police. These guidelines varied from one park authority to another, even within the same city, and they also changed significantly over time with the shifting balance of power between local park authorities, Parliament and the Home Office, and public opinion. Public opinion itself fluctuat­

ed over this period. Existing class and gender tensions

influenced both reformers and their targets. Female

athletes gained public support as preachers lost it, while lower-class parkgoers were reclassified as respectable or reprehensible, as discrimination based on dress evolved into a more sophisticated rejection of morally deviant members of society by the end of the nineteenth century.

Comparisons of official records, the press and in­ dividual complaints to park authorities illustrate the slow and uneven process through which the splinters and fragments of Victorian society fused into a broader, if still un­

stable, public culture in twentieth century parks. Dif­

ferent interpretations of the public and of park use

contended for victory. This chapter will investigate the

evolution of the three types of conflicts in public park use — defining, reforming and politicizing the public — whose eventual resolution was integral to the development of more consensual park use and public culture.

Defining the Public

Conflict began at the very gates of parks designated as open to a "public" whose definition was by no means fixed. Admission to public parks could be, and at different times was, denied on grounds of class, age and cleanliness; gender

and ethnicity proved less important characteristics.

Furthermore, particularly in royal parks, some park users

enjoyed special privileges forbidden to others. Those

refused admission or privileges protested their exclusion, as controversy over the boundaries of the public continued into the twentieth century.

Class Distinctions. The earliest park admission

eighteenth-century practice of admitting only fashionable society to London's royal parks, which continued into the

early nineteenth century. In 1856, the Illustrated London

News noted in an article on St. James's Park:

Within a comparatively recent period the gate was barred to servants in livery, and even to sold­

iers in uniform. Persons in working attire or

carrying burdens are still denied entrance at the discretion of the gatekeepers, who have sometimes turned away studious members of our own craft, merely because they were conveying home a few

just-purchased volumes under their arms. Dogs,

also — to say nothing of children — must obtain a permit.1

This definition of the public clearly excluded many London

residents, and led to criticism. One 1846 letter to the

Times argued: "What is the use of this excessive exclus­ iveness ...? It is enough to make any person's blood boil to see a well-dressed mechanic refused admission into a park considered public."2

By 1870, with a broader understanding of public space and more liberal social behavior, restrictions on workers as such disappeared. No municipal park in London, first opened in 1869, ever had such limits. In Birmingham, public parks

welcomed industrial workers. In Calthorpe Park in 1861,

"The majority of the Visitors are artizans and their families," while Cannon Hill Park opened in 1873 with a "carriage drive and a footway side by side," not "exclusive­ ly for one class" but "open to, and used by rich and poor alike," showing a commitment to broad class representation.3

Though class divisions created some conflict in park use, class status alone no longer determined park admission.

Social prestige garnered special privileges within

parks for a much longer period, however. Again, some

privileges stemmed from long traditions in London's royal

parks. Certain people were issued keys to the royal parks

and could then use the parks after hours. Privately-owned

carriages and later cars could drive around Hyde Park while taxis were forbidden until 1924. But the most resented park privilege given to fashionable society was the leasing out of private areas within royal parks, especially in Regent's

Park. The park had originally been planned as a site for

elegant villas surrounding a never-built royal palace, and had been opened to the public by degrees as the Crown

changed its plans. By the late nineteenth century, enclo­

sures still closed to the public in Regent's Park included several villas with individual gardens, a subscription garden for wealthy tenants of Crown property surrounding the park, and grounds leased to the Zoological Society, the Royal Toxophilite [archery] Society and the Royal Botanic Society.

Public pressure arose to open these areas to all

parkgoers. The Botanic Society and the Zoo, discussed in

Chapter 6, supported their claims to public space with efforts to represent the nation and empire. Protests about

the private subscription garden, on the other hand, focused entirely on public boundaries and will be discussed here. The OW, which managed the royal parks, had lost control of this garden when the Office of Woods and Works split

administratively in 1851. Conflict thus occurred not only

between members of the public and park authorities but just as vehemently between different government departments. The OW considered it unfair to devote parts of a public park to privileged individuals. "The general public may ... justly complain that they are excluded from a garden which is prac­ tically kept up at their expense in order that it may be enjoyed by a few rich residents in the neighbourhood," one official noted in 1880/ In contrast, the Office of Woods and those who enjoyed these privileges argued that the public had enough space already, and furthermore that the wealthy residents paid a fair price for their privileges.

Class awareness clearly played a role in this conflict. The Office of Woods complained that "If the enclosure is thrown open" and "frequented in the same manner and by the same class" as had access to the public part, "such an oc­ cupation of the enclosure would absolutely destroy the amenities" for wealthy tenants.5 The Toxophilite Society, also threatened with repossession after public protests, en­ visioned the "public" as opponents in similar terms even in 1913:

No doubt the Public have a claim to a fair share of the Park, but ... Professional men, members of the Civil Service and others, who from the nature of their occupations are precluded from leaving their places of business till late in the after­ noon should also be considered.

In these views, "public" referred to commoners as opposed to privileged Londoners who interpreted public claims as a threat to their own rights.

But the balance of power shifted away from exclusions of workers from parks, and by the late nineteenth century most Londoners viewed "public" as an inclusive term un­

related to class. Upper-class unity fragmented over this

issue. In 1882, an "influential deputation" called on the

OW to protest against the private subscription garden, and stressed

the extent to which the Royal Parks are appreci­ ated by the Poorer classes and their excellent behaviour therein ... the indignation with which that portion of the public saw themselves ex­ cluded from the enjoyment of one of the most beautiful portions of a pleasure ground which they could not but look upon as their own;

the group further noted that "a meeting had recently been held in which the views which they expressed temperately had been insisted upon in very strong language and even with

threats."7 Shaw Lefevre, then OW First Commissioner,

endorsed this broader interpretation of the parkgoing public. He thought it "both right and politic to accede to the desire of the public," since the private garden was "not in harmony with the now advanced ideas which obtain at

present," and deplored the "tone [of] the Crown Lessees ... protesting against the admission of the 'Marylebone roughs'

to the reservation."8 With his support, the subcription

garden was reduced in size, with the remainder divided into two parts guaranteed private only until 1922 when the Crown

tenants' leases ended. This new public area became an or­

namental garden where, in an effort to placate Crown

tenants, children would be discouraged. In 1913, after a

Parliamentary investigation sparked by public complaints, even more private land in Regent's Park was opened to the public.

Crown tenants geared themselves for one last battle to preserve their privileges in the park as 1922 approached. Admitting the public "would greatly depreciate the Annual Value of your Petitioners' Houses," noted one letter, while

another more pointedly stressed the residents' "being

deprived of all playground space for their children except such as is common to the slum children as well."9 But by this time, popular agreement on broad meanings of "public" and "public parks" overwhelmed these last holdouts for class

privilege. In 1921 the Toxophilite Society's land was re­

claimed and turned into public tennis courts, and the private subscription garden was thrown open to general public access the following year.

Such private aristocratic areas never existed in

Birmingham or Bath parks. A tennis club requesting ex­

clusive privileges in Birmingham's Small Heath Park in 1883 was informed that the park committee would not "grant the exclusive use of any portion of the ground to any club or party."10 Instead, a different kind of privileged park use developed in these two cities, in which private organiza­ tions could rent out portions of public parks for the day. Though less permanent, these privileges also occasioned some criticism. In 1868, the Band of Hope Union held a festival in Birmingham's Aston Park and charged admission to the park that day, but after protests were received, the park committee decided that "Aston Park should not be closed to the public nor any charge made for admission to the Park."11 Nevertheless, when a similar request was made for an agricultural exhibition in Aston Park in 1873, one which the park committee wanted to support, a new bye-law was passed: "The Council may close any of the Parks wholly or in part, on any days in the year, not exceeding seven days in the whole, and ... may charge or permit any person or persons to whom the use of the Park may have been given, to

charge for admission, on any of such days."12 Following

this decision, donors of several new Birmingham parks, in­ cluding Cannon Hill, Small Heath and Lightwoods Parks,

specified that their parks could never be closed to the public in this manner.

Numerous private festivals of religious and civic organizations occurred in Birmingham's parks in the follow­

ing years, and sometimes led to complaints. In 1912 resi­

dents near Handsworth Park complained: "It is surely bad enough that a Public Park is closed for two days for a private concern, which should be able to provide its own ground, without compelling us to suffer the intolerable and

continual noise of hurdy-gurdy organs, etc."13 However,

national legislation in 1890 allowed local councils to charge for entry to public parks on a limited number of days, and to close parks to the public so that they could be used by public charities or institutions, though not for more than twelve days a year or on Sundays or public holidays.14 This act legitimized Birmingham's policy.

In accordance with this legislation, Bath park auth­ orities reserved the right to close parks for private festivals in their 1898 byelaws, and similar patterns of park use occurred there, including meetings by the YMCA in 1911, the National Union of Railwaymen in 1916, and the Red

Cross in 1917. No conflicts arose about these meetings

until 1919, when the Twerton Cooperative Society's request to hold a fete in Sydney Gardens was refused, leading to protests and accusations of business favoritism. But by the

turn of the century, the most vehement dispute about access to public parks involved discrimination based not on class or private organization, but rather on disease.

Verminous Persons. Campaigns against "verminous"

parkgoers suddenly appeared in London around 1900. They

quickly gained press and public support, uniting diverse

sectors of the community. While press coverage was due

partly to the summer "silly season," the volume of citizens' letters to newspapers and complaints to park authorities

showed widespread and genuine concern. Park authorities

were sympathetic to fears of vermin, but found their power to exclude anyone from space officially designated as public

legally limited as well as ideologically troubling. While

most working people, now considered respectable, were eagerly admitted to parks, unclean, unemployed men and women were deemed intentionally deviant from social norms and therefore unworthy of sympathy or public rights such as

access to parks. The emergence of this discourse on

disease, not previously a matter for complaint, showed the new lines along which public definitions were being drawn.

The first complaints, in the late 1890s, mentioned vagrants and loafers generally, but vermin and disease soon became the most objectionable aspects of these parkgoers. As sports gained popularity, respectability now meant cleanliness and physical health rather than social status.

In 1899 one MP questioned the OW about "the number of unclean and verminous persons who, especially in warm weather, pass the night in Green Park, and Hyde Park," and argued either for complete exclusion or, failing that, "places for these persons to sleep in; hedged, and fenced round; so that the general public can be warned to avoid them during the day, and thus escape the present risk of unwitting contagion from the seats, and grass."15 His plan for isolation failed, but his ideas continued to spread.

Discussions of verminous parkgoers contrasted "respect­ able" people of all classes with those who ignored new and

higher cultural standards of cleanliness. The Saturday

Review argued that while "The freedom of the subject will doubtless be invoked in protection of such pariahs," park authorities must "protect the freedom of honest and res­ pectable people by assigning to the unclean and foul-mouthed

a certain portion of this vast area."16 And the Daily

Chronicle concurred: "Poverty may be due to no fault of his

own. But the elementary duty of every citizen is to keep

himself clean, and to the incorrigibly and persistently dirty no mercy should be shown."17 Similar complaints came

from local borough councils. St. Marylebone suggested

better supervision and lighting in Hyde Park as well as "Cleansing & purification of public seats" and "Removal of

18 verminous persons" in 1902.

Verminous persons posed a particular threat to innocent

children, citizens thought. One mother protested to her

local council in 1904 against allowing "the children of our schools" to see in parks "day after day the loathsome, in­ decent and degrading spectacle of the lowest dregs of humanity, stretched in all attitudes and in every degree of filth," and wanted tramps either segregated or removed.19 This concern to protect children from contamination extended

through all classes. The Daily Telegraph complained: "not

only the well-to-do, but small tradesmen and self-respecting artisans have already had to forbid their children the outdoor life which is so essential to their health and happiness. "zo

Letters to the press from victims of lice showed that

contagion was a real and not merely imagined threat. One

Londoner whose children caught lice in Hyde Park in 1913 protested to his MP, who forwarded his letter on to the OW. The OW's reply shows that they considered the problem a

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