Baedeker's London : The 1900s

This covers my two Baedeker editions from just before and just after World War One.  

1911 : The Twilight of Edwardian Britain : 14th Edition

The picture that history paints of this period is one of elites partying while storm clouds gathered over Europe. Queen Victoria had been called staid and stuffy, but no one could accuse her son and successor Edward of that. But he, too, had now passed on to a high plane, so Britain was between monarchs. 

Over the thirty years since the 2nd Edition, the London that tourists would experience had changed radically. Electric lighting, motorised taxis, wireless and the first species of plastic made their appearance while Einstein had pointed out that even Baedeker’s timelines were relative.  H G Wells' Martians had been and gone from Woking, Sherlock Holmes had moved into his (non-existent) home at 221b Baker Street, and G K Chesterton had anticipated an invasion of Notting Hill by the French. In the febrile atmosphere of the real world, the nations of Europe shuffled alliances. 

London Motor Cab 1910s

Oxford Circus

Baedeker did the sensible thing. It took the hard work of the earlier editions and, without doing too much research, simply updated it. This is not about the lives of ordinary Londoners, but visitors and, for them, a lot doesn’t seem to have changed. But this is the era of the Entente Cordiale, of high spirits and high hopes, wild imaginings, decadence and dissolution. Not a whiff of this emerges from the Guide! 

Between 1879 and 1911, American incomes had surged ahead of Europe’s, while the exchange rates remained steady. Passports were helpful, but still not a requirement.  Baedeker’s suggested budgets for travel and accommodation didn’t change either, even though the voyages seemed quicker. In fact, the only noticeable change to the advice on money is a reference to the new-fangled travellers' cheques being offered by Amex and Thomas Cook. Tourism had become a big business! 

(A few) other Agencies are available

London ‘proper', was reportedly the same size as it was in 1879, but had acquired a hinterland, bringing its population up to around 7.5m. That introduced new challenges and the City now sported road tunnels under the Thames, tube trains with lifts, ticket machines and trams reaching out into the new suburbs. Indoors, the gas lighting that was common in 1879 was just beginning to be replaced by electricity. Baedeker was still obsessing about sewage.

In 1911, beer was still a penny a pint, along with oysters, but the wine was still usually execrable.  London was renowned for its theatres, and there were lots of them, hosting plays as well as music hall and variety shows. The Guide lists quite a few of these with little comment other than that, for tourists visiting 'people's theatres', 'the audience forms part of the entertainment'.  

Electricity opened up new horizons. Now, you could visit one of the new cinematographs, some of which were quite palatial. In London, take a look at the Islamic Centre of England at 140 Maida Vale. Its provenance is obvious. Even then, most of what was shown came from Hollywood. Diverting perhaps, but scarcely devilish. Maybe the real fun was to be had in the clubs and behind closed doors. Baedeker provides no introductions whatsoever to those!

As now: Once the Maida Vale Cinematograph

My biased view is that pubs are the greatest British institution. When the 1879 edition of the guide was published, the temperance movement was in decline, while few new licences were granted. The result was a rush to buy and upgrade existing ones. This was responsible for many of the beautiful old London pubs you can still see. The example in the photo below is one I frequent and is a short walk from the old Cinematograph above, although I doubt the new users there make much use of it!  None of this struck a chord with Baedeker, who scarcely gives the pubs a mention. Unforgivable! 

The Warrington : Maida Vale

The variety of sports available to watch or participate had grown significantly over the 30 years since the first guide and, notably, as well as boxing, croquet, cycling, golf, lacrosse, tennis, etc, you now had Rugby and, most popular of all, Association Football. The Guide suggests that the best games could be seen in the park at Crystal Palace or at the County Ground at Leyton. I conclude that their contributors were not sports fans. The former was indeed used for the FA Cup Final (won by Manchester United), but both Spurs and Arsenal were well established at the time, and Leyton's main claim to fame was as the home of Essex County Cricket and England’s best Baseball team! 

Cyclists 1880s. Pre-lycra.

In some cases, it is mysterious what doesn’t get into the Guide, even if only in anticipation. A sporting instance is the forerunner of the Commonwealth Games, where the white (only white!) colonial chappies appear to have done rather better than the home side. 

Another major but ignored attraction in 1911 was the 'Festival of Empire' at a remodelled Crystal Palace Park, aimed at celebrating the rationale and attractions of the Empire, which was soon to head into its downward spiral. 

Festival of Empire flyer

A little red electric tram trundled around the laughable depictions of the various countries. Thousands of rabbits from Oz, fish from Newfoundland and a cottage to show just what the Empire didn’t do for Ireland. Then there was the ‘Master of Pageants’, celebrating the 'magnificence, glory and honour of the Empire and the Mother Country'. Puff that chest out, cry Hoorah! But none of this found its way into Baedeker, which instead highlighted Daffodil Day at Kew or a cart-horse parade in Regent's Park.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the World, the ‘Titanic’ descended the slipway in Belfast and Bleriot flew across the channel in what was basically a moped engine strapped to an Ikea frame. The Daily Express screamed that ‘Britain is no longer an island’. 

Bleriot over the White Cliffs

Bleriot's aircraft

1923  : Post-War Recovery : The 18th Edition 

Between 1911 and 1923, Europe had been shredded by WWI and then by the Spanish Flu epidemic, which was both far deadlier than Covid and more centred on Europe.  Baedeker had invested in German war bonds and lost both money and customers, so the 1923 edition was part of their attempt to bounce back. Germany itself was essentially bankrupt. 

London itself hadn't suffered physical damage on the scale that it would in WW2, but in Baedecker's words, the Guide still ‘necessitated a particularly thorough revision’. In fact it still looks similar, a bit like those indistinguishable mobile phone updates. 

One result of the war was that the gold standard wobbled from the effort made to finance the war. Baedeker dodged the issue by simply not quoting the rate. Prices also changed. What cost you £10 in 1879 and 1911 would cost you £25 in 1923. Wages in England had broadly risen to match.

London was becoming more cosmopolitan. Following their revolution, there were now more Russians living in London than Germans, Americans, French and Italians combined, although they still only comprised a small proportion of the otherwise homogenous 7.5m people. And of course, a new world needed a new bureaucracy. Now the aliens (!) as well as the dogs needed passports, and their number (aliens, not dogs) had grown.

As you know, it hadn't gone well for the Titanic, which had sunk on its maiden voyage in 1912 while the band played and Kate Winslet pirouetted on the prow. The Lusitania, whose rates were quoted for my earlier cost summaries, lay on the sea bed near Kinsale having been torpedoed in 1915 with the loss of 1200 lives.

White Star 'Majestic'.

If you weren't put off by all this, you might now pay £55 for a good cabin and £20 for a cramped and shared billet. Once you were on terra firma, Baedeker reckoned that £3+ a day would buy you a good time, while you could just about get by on £1. If you were only coming from Europe, you also had the option of a 2-hour Handley Page flight to Paris for a mere £6.6d. The real cost of living had reached 5p a pint. 

Croydon to Paris

There is one major omission in the guide, and it cannot have been an accident. You have to look very hard to find traces, allusions or references to the war, and there is no mention of the fate of the Lusitania at all. The introduction simply refers to the ‘interval’ since the last edition, and their history timeline stops in 1910. 

Cheapside 1919

At this point, the company was in decline anyway. Over the decade to come, they had to cope with hyperinflation and the collapse of the domestic economy, make accommodations with the Nazis, cope with another war and the detestation of anything German afterwards. It would take a long time to recover. 

Back in 1923, though, you got more for your money. At the top end of the range, a hotel would have electric lighting, phones, lifts and perhaps its own orchestra. At the bottom end, the hotels were reckoned ‘clean and comfortable’ and would have provided the legendary British cuisine now preserved as 'Pub Grub'.

Toad in the Hole

The Gentlemen's Clubs are still listed. Some are still around today, desperately defending centuries-old ideas about what is right and proper, blackballing undesirable candidates for membership and excluding the hoi polloi and occasionally women as well. I imagine a scene of smarmy politicians, snoozing colonels and asinine aristocrats. Among those now listed was the Eccentrics Club, which at least sounded entertaining. Pictured below. The members don't exactly look.....eccentric! 

Eccentrics Club 1906

My free reading suggestion, to get a bit of period colour, is one of the always entertaining Jeeves series. Link

It is perhaps less surprising that Guide doesn't trespass into the glittering side of London’s post-war nightlife, which had moved from tea dances towards the ‘illicit and scandalous activities’ in the clubs run by the likes of Kate Meyrick, the ‘Queen of Soho’. At her ‘43’ club, you might bump into Rudolph Valentino, Tallulah Bankhead or Joseph Conrad, but it was never entirely above board. She went into the business to support her eight children, and the transgressions cost her five spells in prison.

Most visitors were male....

Mrs Meyrick and the 43 Club

Baedeker's other preoccupation hadn't changed, but they recognised that the facts had. We are told that 370 miles of mains sewer carried 116bn gallons of sewage a year. Is this a persistent German fascination? There hasn’t been a Baedeker dedicated to London since the 1950s. If they ever do produce another, will they faithfully report on London’s ‘Thames Tideway Tunnel’ or highlight the turds that will still be bobbing around upstream?

So what did I get out of my deep dive? In all, I probably learnt more about 'respectable' early tourism than about London. The Guide’s focus on the practicalities rather than the possibilities and on buildings rather than activities missed so much of what there must have been to be savoured or suffered in the city. Maybe they do better in Germany? I don't know, but I somehow doubt it. 

It seems to me that the compilers had a formula or a rubric to follow and, in doing so, they sold the adventurous tourist short. Of this lot, I would have loved to have seen Maskelyne, visited Mrs Meyrick's 43 club, explored the world's greatest docks and, of course, enjoyed the pubs. All this fell below Baedeker's radar. Throughout this period, they eschewed advertising. Now, I might have appreciated it just for a wider view of what was on offer.

I expected to be shocked by the changes between 1879 and 1923, but what actually astonished me most was the lack of change in the Baedekers themselves and in particular between 1911 and 1923. You would think that the war never happened. They effectively pulled a curtain down over the whole thing. Even if the damage wasn't anywhere near as great as London was to suffer 25 years later, the militarisation must have been very visible.  

In contrast, the contemporary edition of a Ward Lock guide quotes damage figures but says that 'the aspect and character of London streets and shops underwent a remarkable transformation which contrasted with the Victorian legacy '. This all came wrapped in patriotic puffery, which understandably wouldn't have appealed to Baedeker, but some reflection on the scale and pace of change would surely have been useful. 

Their heads could not have been buried more deeply in the sand! 

Elsewhere in the World, Germany was disintegrating, and the French had annexed the Ruhr. The first ‘talkies’ movie had been shown in the USA, where women were now legally allowed to wear trousers.

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