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 received image 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 higher-living 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 first appearance while Einstein had pointed out that even Baedeker’s timelines were relative. H G Well's 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.
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| London Motor Cab 1910s |
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| Oxford Circus |
Baedeker did the sensible thing and simply took the hard work of the earlier editions and, without looking to the left or right, updated it. Maybe because we are looking at the tourist beat rather than the lives of ordinary Londoners, at first blush a lot doesn’t seem to change. 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. Just don’t bring your dog. 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 big business!
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| Other Agencies are available. But not many. |
London ‘proper’, now under the auspices of the London County Council, 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 you could follow up your pint of beer (the beer was still a penny a pint in today’s money, the wine was still usually execrable and oysters also around a penny each) with a trip to one of a long list of theatres (then as now London was renowned for them), a music hall or variety show. 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. It’s providence 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 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 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 cord with Baedeker who scarcely gives the pubs a mention. Unforgiveable.
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| The Warrington : Maida Vale |
To the sparse earlier menu of sporting activities, you now had Rugby and Association football and in general the variety of sports available to watch or participate in, grew significantly over the 30 years since the first guide.
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! No matter, the Guide also directs you to boxing, croquet, cycling, golf lacrosse, tennis etc. The list goes on.
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| 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.
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| 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.
Reading on the Omnibus : Major Barbara. A play by George Bernard Shaw. A Salvation Army do-gooder in London’s East End & her arms manufacturing father.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3790
Elsewhere in the World
The White Star Line’s ‘Titanic’ descended the slipway in Belfast.
Bleriot flew across the channel. The Daily Express screamed ‘Britain is no longer an island’
(You can see the type of aircraft he used at the Shuttleworth collection on my cycle route through Bedfordshire. See www.pootler.co.uk/2024/10/greensand-gravel-great-ouse.html This is the oldest airworthy plane on the planet.
1923 : Post War Recovery : The 18th Edition
Between 1911 and 1923 Europe had been shredded by WW1 and then by Spanish Flu epidemic which was both deadlier than Covid and more centred on Europe. Baedeker had invested in German war bonds so lost both money and customers. The 1923 edition was part of their attempt to bounce back. Germany itself was essentially bankrupt.
The only upside was that London itself hadn't suffered physical damage on the scale that it would in WW2 but in their words it still ‘necessitated a particularly thorough revision’. It isn’t that thorough though, most of it looks similar. A bit like mobile phone updates. What they changed was not as remarkable as what they didn't.
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 the 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 new bureaucracy. Now the aliens (!) as well as the dogs needed passports and their number (aliens, not dogs) had grown.
A tourist might have wanted to avoid the White Star line. They seemed unlucky. As you know, the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage in 1912 with 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.
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| White Star 'Majestic'. |
If you dismissed this as superstitious prejudice you might pay £55 for a good cabin and £20 for a cramped and shared billet. Once you were on terra firm, 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 the equivalent of a modern 3p a pint.
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| Croydon to Paris |
You have to look very hard in Baedeker to find traces, allusions or references to the war and there is no mention of the fate of the Lusitania at all. The introduction refers to the ‘interval’ since the last edition and their history time line stops in 1910.
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| 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 now got more for your money. At the top end of the range, a hotel would have electric lighting, phones, lifts and perhaps their 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'.
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| Toad in the Hole |
The Gentleman's Clubs are still listed and it is a tribute to their longevity that some are still around today, desperately defending centuries old ideas about what is right and proper, blackballing undesirable candidates for members and excluding the hoi polloi and often 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!
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| Eccentrics Club 1906 |
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.
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| Most visitors were male.... |
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| Mrs Meyrick and the 43 Club |
Baedeker's other preoccupation hadn't changed. We are told that 370mls of main 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 1950’s. 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 worlds 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' 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!
Reading on the tram: My Man Jeeves by Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1921), Obv. www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8164
Elsewhere in the World.
The first ‘talkies’ movie had been shown in the USA, where women were now legally allowed to wear trousers.
Germany was disintegrating and the French had annexed the Ruhr.