Civilizing the Urban

by Croll, Andy

• ISBN13: 9780708316375
• ISBN10: 0708316379
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-12-13
• Publisher: Univ of Wales Pr

Summary

Early industrial Merthyr is synonymous with the darker side of the British urban experience. The spectacular rates of urban growth, the acute social unrest and the appallingly high death rates that shocked and horrified many Victorian observers continue to command the attention of historians. In contrast, attempts to construct a 'civic image' for the town in the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras have gone unnoticed.This book considers the efforts of a group of dedicated civic 'boosters' to civilize the town's public spaces and its inhabitants, and it shows how this vision of Merthyr depended on the taming and regulation of popular culture. Streets crowded with respectable choral singers and well-behaved rugby fans were often regarded as proof that civic Merthyr had arrived; the presence of public drunks, pugilists and prostitutes suggested otherwise.Civilizing the Urbantraces elements of the fascinating journey from the 'urban' to the 'civic' and develops new ways of understanding the often uneasy relationship between popular culture, public space and urban meaning in the context of the nineteenth-century British 'civic project'.

Author Biography

Andy Croll is Lecturer in History at the University of Glamorgan. He is the author of several articles on urban culture and social order in nineteenth-century England and Wales.

Table of Contents

Editors' Foreword	v
List of Abbreviations	viii
Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(23)
The `Old Metropolis of Wales': An Urban Settlement with Civic Pretensions	24	(38)
Civilizing the Streets: Space, Surveillance and Shame	62	(42)
Conducting Social Relations: The Civic Discourse, Crowds and Popular Music	104	(33)
Merthyr United? Sport, Space and Urban Meaning	137	(39)
The Civic Spirit(ual): Nonconformity and the `Pursuit of Pleasure'	176	(40)
Conclusion	216	(8)
Bibliography	224	(11)
Index	235