The Dangers of the Victorian Pleasure Garden

by Mimi Matthews

The Dancing Platform at Cremorne Gardens by Phoebus Levin, 1864.

When thinking of nineteenth century pleasure gardens, most of us instantly conjure up images of Vauxhall. But those in the Georgian era weren’t the only ones to enjoy a pleasure garden in London. In 1830 Cremorne Gardens was opened in Chelsea. Over the decades that followed, it offered concerts, circuses, dancing, and fireworks. It also offered military exhibitions and feats of dangerous daring, including high-wire acts and balloon ascents. Though many of these feats were successful, earning acclaim for various wire-walkers and aeronauts, still others ended in tragedy. Gruesome injuries and even fatalities occurred with some regularity—in full view of the Victorian public.

The Collapsed Platform

In 1855, during a military fete at Cremorne Gardens, a platform collapsed under the weight of sixty soldiers carrying their muskets and bayonets. According to an 18 August 1855 edition of the Huddersfield Chronicle, the soldiers were comprised mostly of Grenadier Guards who were enacting “the capture of the Mamelon and rifle pits by the allied troops before Sebastapol.” The performance had received the patronage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, as well as of “the highest military authorities.” Both the Household Troops and Royal Artillery were in attendance.

Banqueting halls at Cremorne Gardens, mid-19th century.

To enact the mock siege, stages of various heights had been constructed. As the Huddersfield Chronicle reports:

“Just as the spectacle was reaching its close, when the defenders of the Mamelon and the rifle-pits had been drive to the highest part of the staging by the assaulting columns below, the gallery on which they stood gave way, bringing some 60 men, with bayonets fixed on their muskets, crashing to the ground through a fall of at least 20 feet.”

During the fall, some of the men were bayoneted on their own weapons. Others broke their legs or fractured their ribs and limbs. No soldiers died at the scene, but one is reported to have suffered serious internal injuries.

The Broken Wire

An even more frightful accident occurred at Cremorne Gardens in June of 1863. The public had gathered to watch a show put on by the acclaimed acrobat Carlo Valerio. For the past two months, the twenty-five year old Valerio had been performing a high-wire act at the Gardens during which he walked along a wire cable that measured 600 feet across. The 27 June 1863 edition of The London Daily News reports that, on the night in question:

“He had advanced nearly to the point from which he usually returned backwards, when the wire rope suddenly gave way, and he fell heavily to the grassplat, a distance of upwards of sixty feet.”

Valerio’s injuries were severe. He suffered a fractured skull, a broken collar-bone, and many other injuries. According to a graphic first-hand account published in the 30 June 1863 edition of the Dundee, Perth, and Cupar Advertiser:

“When the wire slackened the unfortunate man staggered, and was precipitated violently to the ground on the back of his head, the blood pouring profusely from the wound and from his ears. Numbers of persons, particularly the females, were dreadfully shocked and affected, many of the corps de ballet being afterwards scarcely able to go through their performance. He was immediately removed, and the dance and music proceeded.”

The Ashburnham Pavilion at Cremorne Gardens, Illustrated London News, 1858.

The London Daily News states that Valerio was taken to Chelsea Hospital where he “lingered in great pain” until three o’clock in the morning, at which point “he expired” from his injuries. His death prompted an outcry against dangerous exhibitions. It was reasoned that, since acrobats would continue to test their skills in ever increasing feats and since the public would continue to arrive in droves to see such performances, it was up to the proprietors of places like Cremorne Gardens to prohibit exhibitions which put performers’ lives at risk.

In fact, Valerio’s death prompted Mr. E. T. Smith, then the proprietor of Cremorne Gardens, to write to the editor of The Era declaring just that. His letter, printed in the 28 June 1863 edition of The Era, reads in part:

“The sad accident that occurred at these Gardens on Thursday evening to the unfortunate Carlo Valerio during his performance on the wire rope, and which no person can more deeply regret than myself, induces me, with your permission, to seek the earliest moment of announcing, through your columns, that no such exhibition will ever again be permitted to take place here as long as I remain the Proprietor.”

The Flying Man's Shroud

Unfortunately, Valerio’s death was not the last fatality to occur as a result of an exhibition at Cremorne Gardens. In 1874, crowds again gathered to watch a death-defying feat. This time, the stunt was performed by M. Vincent de Groof, a thirty-five-year-old performer known as the Flying Man. According to the 11 July 1874 edition of the Belfast News-Letter, M. de Groof promised to:

“Fly a distance of 5,000 feet through the air by means of a pair of wings shaped like a bat’s, which were fixed to his shoulders and worked by his arms.”

Balloon Ascent at Cremorne Gardens, Walter Greaves, 1872.

M. de Groof ascended into the air by means of a balloon, from which he was suspended by a rope “about twenty feet below the car.” As the balloon rose to a height of approximately 1000 feet, M. de Groof flapped his wings, making for a churchyard some fifty years away. When he hit a favourable current of wind, he cut the rope, fully expecting to fly free of the balloon by virtue of the wings attached to his arms. Instead, as the Belfast News-Letter grimly relates:

“He came crashing through the air; the wing closed around him like a living shroud, and narrowly escaping the outer parapet, he fell with fearful violence on his head and right side in the road, immediately opposite the front entrance of St. Luke’s Church. Hundreds of persons immediately rushed to his assistance, and found him bleeding violently from the nose and ears, and without any sign of life.” 

In Conclusion

As the decade progressed, Cremorne Gardens’ reputation as a popular venue for wholesome entertainment began to sink. After the sun had set and Victorian families had departed, it transformed into what one Baptist minister of the 1870s referred to as “a nursery of vice.” Robberies and assaults were regularly reported, as were the goings on of prostitutes and their clients. In the end, it was this less gruesome but rather more unsavoury aspect of Cremorne Gardens which led to its closure in 1877. An increasingly prudish Victorian public objected to the goings on there, especially after dark.
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Sources

Belfast News-Letter (Antrim, Northern Ireland), 11 July 1874.
Dundee, Perth, and Cupar Advertiser (Angus, Scotland), 30 June, 1863.
Elgin Courier (Moray, Scotland), 17 August 1855.
The Era (London, England), 28 June 1863.
Guard, Richard. Lost London. London: Michael O’Mara Books, Ltd., 2012.
Huddersfield Chronicle (West Yorkshire, England), 18 August 1855.
Illustrated London News (London, England). 5 June 1847.
London Daily News (London, England), Saturday 27 June 1863.
Thomas, Donald. The Victorian Underworld. London: Orion Publishing Group, 2014.

This article is an Editor's Choice and was originally published September18, 2017.
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USA Today bestselling author Mimi Matthews writes both historical nonfiction and award-winning proper Victorian romances. Her novels have received starred reviews in Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, and her articles have been featured on the Victorian Web, the Journal of Victorian Culture, and in syndication at BUST Magazine. 

In her other life, Mimi is an attorney. She resides in California with her family, which includes a retired Andalusian dressage horse, a Sheltie, and two Siamese cats.

For more information, see Mimi's website MimiMatthews.com or connect with her through Facebook and Twitter. 

Editors' Weekly Round-up, September 24, 2017

by the EHFA Editors

Join us every week for quality articles on all aspects of British history.

The Dangers of the Victorian Pleasure Garden

by Mimi Matthews

St. Germanus: A Reluctant Bishop

by Kim Rendfeld

Yeavering - Anglo Saxon Royal Palace
by Annie Whitehead

Editors Weekly Round-up, August 13, 2017

by the EHFA Editors

Enjoy this week's articles from the blog.

The Vulnerable Victorian Governess

by Mimi Matthews

Cheltenham Spa

by Lauren Gilbert

(Editor's Choice from the Archives)

Inheriting an Estate

by Maria Grace

Organised Crime in the 14th Century

by Susan Appleyard

Editors Weekly Round Up: July 3, 2016

by the EHFA Editors

Enjoy this week's wrap up of posts on the blog:

The Sailor and the Shark: an 18th Century Tale of the Thames

by Mimi Matthews

Who Stole Britain's Sixth Century?

by David Ebsworth

Medieval Monks' Meals

by E.M. Powell

Sherry: an Ancient Beverage Shared with Angels

by Lauren Gilbert

Who Were the Celts

by Annie Whitehead

Little Mothers and Proto-proletarians: Growing up in Mining

by Lesley Hulonce

The English Historical Fiction Authors blog has also been running a Giveaway this week. David Ebsworth is giving away a signed paperback of The Song-Sayer's Lament: A Novel of Sixth-Century Britain. You can find the details in the link below. Entries are open until Midnight (Pacific Time), Sunday July 3 2016.

Giveaway- The Song-Sayer's Lament: A Novel of Sixth-Century Britain 

Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management: A Victorian Publishing Phenomenon

by Mimi Matthews

Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Colored Plate

Published in 1861, Beeton’s Book of Household Management is perhaps one of the most famous non-fiction books to come out of the 19th century. At over one thousand pages long, it was the first publication of its kind to address all aspects of household management, covering everything from cooking and cleaning to childrearing and animal husbandry. It even includes a section on the law, providing the inquiring housewife with general information on leaseholds, the legal rights and obligations between husband and wife, and the questionable validity of an I.O.U.

Original Title Page

In the first year alone, Beeton’s Book of Household Management sold more than 60,000 copies. Over the next decade, it would sell 2 million more. The book Voices of Victorian England, edited by John Wagner, explains the enormous popularity of Beeton’s Book of Household Management, stating:

By the 1850s, middle-class wives were expected to frugally and efficiently run their husband’s households, and thus had to be skilled in such tasks as hiring, firing, and supervising servants; planning and cooking meals; dealing with tradesmen; and teaching, nursing, and disciplining children. Because many girls were no longer automatically learning these skills from their mothers, there existed a need for a practical handbook on household management, which the Beetons recognized and sought to meet.

Isabella Beeton was only twenty-five at the time she wrote Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Married to publisher Samuel Beeton, she was a working journalist herself. She began her career in 1857 by contributing three articles a month to The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, one of her husband’s most popular periodicals. By 1860, she was one of the magazine’s editors, as well as its fashion correspondent. Parts of Beeton’s Book of Household Management originally appeared in The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. Explaining her reasons for expanding those separately published columns into one, comprehensive guide, the Encyclopedia of British Writers quotes Beeton as saying:

What moved me, in the first instance, to attempt a work like this, was the discomfort and suffering which I had seen brought upon men and women by household mismanagement. I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife’s badly cooked dinners and untidy ways.

Isabella Beeton, 1860

Beeton’s Book of Household Management was not the first book of its kind. In 1845, English cook Eliza Acton published Cookery for Private Families and in 1848 French chef Alexis Soyer published The Modern Housewife. Beeton’s book, however, far eclipsed those of her predecessors. Not only did it cover every aspect of household management, Beeton’s particular “tone and form of address” offered inspiration and assurance to her readers. As the book Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century explains:

Any woman who felt her position to be unimportant and useless could be persuaded by the strength of Mrs. Beeton’s rhetoric: the mistress is ‘the first and last, the Alpha and Omega in the government of her establishment’ and ‘it is by her conduct that its whole internal policy is regulated.’ In her opening sentence, Mrs. Beeton compares the mistress of the house to ‘a Commander of an Army’ who attains the ‘highest rank’ of the female character when she enters into knowledge of household duties.

It was not only the rhetoric that made Beeton’s book a Victorian phenomenon. Her guide included innovations that changed the face of cookbooks for generations to come. For example, Voices in Victorian England reports that Beeton was the first writer to place the list of ingredients at the start of the recipe. She was also the first writer to supply recommended cooking times. This was all part and parcel of Isabella Beeton’s genius for “compiling and organizing information.” She was not an accomplished cook herself. In fact, very few of the recipes in her book are her own. Even so, she possessed a talent for making the recipes of others easier to follow and conveying ideas on every aspect of household management to a middle-class audience without challenging “the more conventional notion of bourgeois femininity.”

Upon its publication in 1861, Beeton’s Book of Household Management was met with instant acclaim. A review in the November 9, 1861 edition of the Edinburgh Evening Courant closes by declaring:

Mrs. Beeton has endeavored to adapt her book to nearly all circumstances and conditions of life. She shows that, while luxurious repasts and sumptuous hospitalities rightly belong to the high and wealthy, there is no monopoly of good digestion or of appetite, and that enjoyment may be found in a ragout of yesterday’s cold meat, and even a relish imparted to our traditional ‘kailbrose.’ It is on the cook rather than on the materials, on the preparation rather than the cost, that a good dinner mainly depends; and hence the value of a book like this, which duly studied by mistress and cook may yield us a different and enjoyable dinner every day, whether our means be great or small, and whether one dish or twenty be set before us.

Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Colored Plate

Recipes were, indeed, a large component of Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Beeton provides instructions for the preparations of staples like meat, potatoes, and various puddings. She also provides recipes for foods which are very much of the moment today, such as boiled sea kale. In addition, Beeton advises on the best diet for livestock, the dangers of ‘rust’ in bacon and ‘rot’ in rabbits, and the perils of poisonous mushrooms. In the final segment of her cookery section, Beeton even includes recipes for beverages, such as the following for Cowslip Wine:

Recipe for Cowslip Wine from
Beeton's Book of Household Management, 1861

Perhaps the best bits of Beeton’s Book of Household Management, at least in my humble opinion, are those sections where she imparts advice to Victorian housewives. For instance, in the first pages of the hefty tome, she writes:

Early rising is one of the most Essential Qualities which enter into good Household Management, as it is not only the parent of health, but of innumerable other advantages. Indeed, when a mistress is an early riser, it is almost certain that her house will be orderly and well-managed. On the contrary, if She remain in bed till a late hour, then the domestics, who, as we have before observed, invariably partake somewhat of their mistress’s character, will surely become sluggards.

And later, in her chapter on Domestic Servants, she addresses the lady’s maid, advising her on her duties to her mistress and providing helpful recipes to assist her in her work, such as the following recipe for shampoo:

Recipe for Hair Wash from
Beeton's Book of Household Management, 1861

The chapter on Domestic Servants also provides guidelines for the hiring and firing of servants, the writing of a character reference, and the respective wages commonly paid for each position in the household. For those of us who write novels set in the 19th century, this section of the book is invaluable.

Guidelines for Servant Wages from
Beeton's Book of Household Management, 1861

On February 6, 1865, less than four years after the publication of Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Isabella Beeton died from puerperal fever contracted during the birth of her fourth child. She was only twenty-eight years old. Samuel Beeton initially suppressed news of her death so that he could continue to publish under her now famous name. This strategy was ultimately not a successful one. Within only a few weeks, newspapers were printing reports of her death. The following appeared in the February 18, 1865 edition of London’s Illustrated Times:

February 18, 1865, Illustrated Times, London, England

Beeton’s Book of Household Management has been in continuous print since it was first published in 1861. Now popularly known as Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, it has remained a perpetual bestseller and can be purchased in its various incarnations from booksellers all over the world (*though being a purist, I advise the original edition which is currently free in the public domain). If you are at all curious about Victorian life, I highly recommend you give it a look. It is much, much more than a mere 19th century cookbook.
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Works Referenced or Cited in this Article
Beeton, Isabella. Ed. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. London: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1861.
Beetham, Margaret. Ed. Victorian Women’s Magazines: An Anthology. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.
Hartley, Cathy. A Historical Dictionary of British Women. London: Routledge, 2013.
Krueger, Christine L. Ed. Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: Facts on File, 2003.
Wagner, John A. Ed. Voices of Victorian England: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life. Greenwood, 2014.
Wagner, Tamara S. Ed. Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century: Narratives of Consumption, 1700-1900. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.
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© 2015 Mimi Matthews
For more Romance, Literature, and History, follow me on:
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Author Biography
Mimi Matthews is an author of contemporary and historical romance. She is a member of Romance Writers of America (PRO), The Beau Monde, and Savvy Authors, and is currently represented by Serendipity Literary Agency in New York. In her other life, she is an attorney with both a Juris Doctor and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. She resides in Northern California with her family – which includes an Andalusian dressage horse, a Sheltie, and two Siamese cats.

Website: MimiMatthews.com
Facebook: Facebook.com/MimiMatthewsAuthor
Twitter: Twitter.com/MimiMatthewsEsq