Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Opposition Emerges

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Injurious Vistas: The Control of Outdoor Advertising, Governance and the Shaping of Urban Experience in Britain, 1817–1962

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

  • 119 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter looks at the development of opposition to outdoor advertising from around the 1870s that betokens a fledgling set of ideas about what lived space was for and how the experience of it should be regulated. It illustrates the emergence of two strands of opposition: the first strand of was from local government, who were expanding attempts to regulate and control the urban environment in ever more detailed ways. Outdoor advertising control thus fits into broader patterns of improvement, inspection and regulation that characterised local government in the later nineteenth century. The second strand came from those who felt that outdoor advertising was a disruptive presence in the urban setting in ways that went beyond physical nuisance. Advertising was presented as a disfiguring beautiful and historic architecture, its content and influence on public morals were questioned, and its interference with the wellbeing of the population started to raise concerns amongst a small band of influential groups.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Tom Crook, ‘Sanitary Inspection and the Public Sphere in Late Victorian And Edwardian Britain: A Case Study in Liberal Governance’, Social History 32:4 (2007), pp. 369–393.

  2. 2.

    Michael F. James, Construction Law (London, 1994), pp. 63–64.

  3. 3.

    Bill Luckin, ‘Pollution in the City’, in Martin Daunton (ed), Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. 3, 1840–1950 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 207–228; Katrina Navickas, ‘Keep Britain Tidy: From Public Health to Patriotism in the Twentieth-Century Campaign Against Litter’, Unpublished Paper, 2021.

  4. 4.

    Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (Manchester, 2003), p. 62.

  5. 5.

    David Bernstein, Advertising Outdoors: Watch This Space! (London, 1997), p. 12; W. Hamish Fraser, The Coming of the Mass Market, 1850–1914 (London, 1981), pp. 135–138.

  6. 6.

    Lynda Nead, Victorian Babylon (London, 2000), pp. 149–206.

  7. 7.

    On the developing capacities and remit of local government see: James Chandler, Explaining Local Government: Local Government in Britain Since 1800, (Manchester, 2007), pp. 70–92; Barry M. Doyle, ‘The Changing Functions of Urban Government: Councillors, Officials and Pressure Groups’, in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. 3 1840–1950 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 287–314.

  8. 8.

    John Davis, ‘Central Government and the Towns’, in Martin Daunton (ed), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. 3 1840–1950 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 261–286 (p. 263).

  9. 9.

    Huddersfield Improvement Act, 1871 (34 and 35 Vict. c. 151), s. 71 and 232.

  10. 10.

    Sheldon, History of Poster Advertising, p. 130.

  11. 11.

    Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 19 September 1891, p. 13.

  12. 12.

    For example, the LCC allowed advertising on hoardings enclosing surplus land, but left it up to the discretion of individual committees when dealing with council works. The Times, 8 July 1896, p. 6.

  13. 13.

    The British Architect, 6 September 1895, p. 161.

  14. 14.

    Clerkenwell News, 9 May 1870, p. 6.

  15. 15.

    Shoreditch Observer, 6 October 1877, p. 3.

  16. 16.

    Marylebone Mercury, 2 October 1875, p. 2.

  17. 17.

    Hansard, HC, 20 April 1874, vol. 218, cc. 1347 and 1356.

  18. 18.

    Hansard, HC, 20 April 1874, vol. 218, cc. 1347.

  19. 19.

    Chester Improvement Act, 1884 (47 and 48 Vict. c. 239), s. 146; Carlisle Corporation Act, 1887 (50 Vict. Sess. 2. c. 19), s. 147.

  20. 20.

    See Chapter 2 on rental incomes from advertising and The Graphic, 11 February 1882, p. 6, for example, which reported that rental income for advertising was more than 15% higher than letting the land for other purposes.

  21. 21.

    Edward Bullock, The Law Journal Reports, 1877 (London,1877), pp. 243–251.

  22. 22.

    Manchester Evening News, 8 May 1876, p. 4.

  23. 23.

    Wigan Observer and District Advertiser, 16 July 1887, p. 2.

  24. 24.

    Advertising Stations (Rating) Act, 1889 (52 and 53 Vict. c. 27).

  25. 25.

    Local Government Act, 1948 (11 and 12 Geo. 6 c. 26), s. 56.

  26. 26.

    The Metropolitan Board of Works Act, 1877 (40 and 41 Vict. c. 8), s. 15.

  27. 27.

    Lisa Keller, Triumph of Order: Democracy and Public Space in New York and London (Chichester, 2009), p. 102.

  28. 28.

    Punch, ‘Advertising Offences’, 12 September 1874, p. 111.

  29. 29.

    Weekly Freeman’s Journal, 3 November 1877, p. 5.

  30. 30.

    The British Architect and Northern Engineer, 27 July 1877, p. 51.

  31. 31.

    The Times, 11 March 1896, p. 13.

  32. 32.

    West Middlesex Advertiser and Family Journal, 23 March 1867, p. 3.

  33. 33.

    Islington Gazette, 6 September 1872, p. 3; Stead was repeating a variation phrase in common circulation when he said ‘the picture gallery of the English poor is the hoardings of the street’ William T. Stead, The Art of Advertising. Its Theory and Practice Fully Described (London, 1899), p. 95.

  34. 34.

    John Hewitt, ‘Poster Nasties: Censorship and the Victorian Theatre Poster’, in Simon Popple and Vanessa Toulmin (eds), Visual Delight: Essays on the Popular and Projected Image in the Nineteenth Century (London, 2000), pp. 154–169 (p. 157).

  35. 35.

    Punch, ‘Advertising Atrocities’, 14 January 1865, p. 21.

  36. 36.

    Punch, ‘The Modern Art of Illumination’, 27 May 1865, p. 216.

  37. 37.

    Punch ‘The Art of Advertising’, 14 March 1868, p. 119.

  38. 38.

    Punch, ‘Ideas on Advertising’, 4 April 1868, p. 144.

  39. 39.

    Morning Post, 18 January 1871, p. 3.

  40. 40.

    Morning Advertiser, 13 September 1872, p. 4.

  41. 41.

    Douglas A. Reid, ‘Playing and Praying’, in Martin Daunton (ed), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. 3 1840–1950 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 745–807 (p. 763). Doyle, The Changing Functions of Urban Government, p. 291.

  42. 42.

    Laura Baker, ‘Public Sites Versus Public Sights: The Progressive Response to Outdoor Advertising and the Commercialization of Public Space’, American Quarterly 59:4 (2007), pp. 1187–213; Kurt Iveson, ‘Branded Cities: Outdoor Advertising, Urban Governance, and the Outdoor Media Landscape’, Antipode 44:1 (2012), pp. 151–174.

  43. 43.

    Mark Jackson, The Age of Stress: Science and the Search for Stability (Oxford, 2013), pp. 34–36; Leif Jerram, Streetlife: The Untold History of Europe’s Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2011), p. 328; Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903) for one of the classic studies of urban experience at the turn of the century.

  44. 44.

    Caroline Arscott, ‘The Representation of the City in the Visual Arts’, in Martin Daunton (ed), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. 3 1840–1950 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 811–840 (p. 812).

  45. 45.

    Illustrated London News, 19 August 1882, p. 18.

  46. 46.

    Newtownards Chronicle & Co. Down Observer, 9 September 1882, p. 3.

  47. 47.

    Folkestone Express, Sandgate, Shorncliffe & Hythe Advertiser, 20 March 1886, p. 5.

  48. 48.

    Liverpool Mercury, 14 October 1882, p. 8.

  49. 49.

    ‘The Man About Town’ The Sporting Gazette, vol. XIX, no. 990, 30 April 1881, p. 461.

  50. 50.

    John Hewitt, ‘Designing the Poster in England, 1890–1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 5:1 (2007), pp. 57–70 (p. 57).

  51. 51.

    The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, 31 July 1886, p. 152.

  52. 52.

    John Hewitt, ‘“The Poster” and the Poster in England in the 1890s’, Victorian Periodicals Review 35:1 (2002), pp. 37–62.

  53. 53.

    Punch, ‘Our Recreations, or How We Advertise Now’, 28 January 1882, p. 37 parodies the style of newspaper classifieds; ‘How We Advertise Now’, 5 November 1887, p. 216 is a comment on a popular dental product advertisement; ‘How We Advertise Nowadays’, 14 July 1888, p. 21 is a pastiche of Millais’ famous ‘Bubbles’ advertisement that notes the tendency for quack remedies in advertising. ‘How We Advertise Now’, 3 December 1887, p. 262 is a full-page street scene (described above) displaying a carriage assailed by crowds and sandwich men in front of a giant wall of grotesque advertisements that have become somewhat emblematic of the period. Cited in Taylor, ‘Written in the Skies’, p. 793 and Hewitt, ‘Poster Nasties’, p. 157.

  54. 54.

    Punch, ‘Horrible London: Or, the Pandemonium of Posters’, 13 October 1888, vol. 95, p. 170.

  55. 55.

    Sheldon, History of Poster Advertising, p. 65.

  56. 56.

    Hansard, HL, 8 April 1889, vol. 334, cc. 1761–1766.

  57. 57.

    Waterford Mirror and Tramore Visitor, 12 November 1885, p. 4; The Times, 9 October 1885, p. 5; The Times, 28 October 1885, p. 13.

  58. 58.

    Hansard, HL, 8 April 1889, vol. 334, cc. 1762.

  59. 59.

    Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics, and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800 (London, 1989).

    Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992).

  60. 60.

    Nead, Victorian Babylon, p. 149.

  61. 61.

    For example, with respect to visual culture see: Brenda Assael, ‘Art or Indecency? Tableaux Vivants on the London Stage and the Failure of Late Victorian Moral Reform’, Journal of British Studies 45:4 (2006), pp. 744–758.

  62. 62.

    Hansard, HL, 8 April 1889, vol. 334, cc. 1761–1762.

  63. 63.

    Richard Anthony Baker, British Music Hall: An Illustrated History (Barnsley, 2014), p. 44; Tracy C. Davis, ‘Sex in Public Places: The Zaeo Aquarium Scandal and the Victorian Moral Majority’, Theatre History Studies 10 (1990), pp. 1–13.

  64. 64.

    Davis, Sex in Public Places, p. 12.

  65. 65.

    Punch, ‘Babes on the Wood’, 14 November 1885, p. 230.

  66. 66.

    Daily Telegraph and Courier, 10 October 1890, p. 5.

  67. 67.

    Richardson Evans, The Age of Disfigurement (London, 1893), p. 1.

  68. 68.

    West London Observer, 7 November 1891, p. 7.

  69. 69.

    Greater London Record Office (now London Metropolitan Archives), ‘Testimony of W.A Coote’, London County Council Minutes (LCC/MIN) 10,891, 2 October 1890, quoted in Davis, Sex in Public Places, p. 2.

  70. 70.

    Nead, Victorian Babylon, p. 150.

  71. 71.

    Chris Otter, ‘Making Liberalism Durable: Vision and Civility in the Late-Victorian City’, Social History 27:1 (2002), pp. 1–15.

  72. 72.

    Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (London, 1843), p. 303.

  73. 73.

    James Taylor, ‘Written in the Skies: Advertising, Technology and Modernity in Britain Since 1885’, Journal of British Studies 55 (2016), pp. 750–780 (pp. 763–765).

  74. 74.

    West London Observer, 7 November 1891, p. 7.

  75. 75.

    The Billposter, November 1890 quoted in Sheldon, A History of Poster Advertising, p. 58.

  76. 76.

    The Globe, 3 May 1890, p. 1.

  77. 77.

    Daily Telegraph and Courier, 10 October 1890, p. 5.

  78. 78.

    Sheldon, A History of Poster Advertising, pp. 62–65.

  79. 79.

    For sceptical takes from newspapers the Aberdeen Evening Express, 11 October 1890, p. 2 is typical in its witheringly sarcastic assessment of the potential effectiveness of self-censorship.

  80. 80.

    Sheldon, A History of Poster Advertising, pp. 62–65.

  81. 81.

    Turner, The Shocking History of Advertising, p. 132.

  82. 82.

    Central London Railways Act, 1891 (54 and 54 Vict. c. 196), s. 54 and s. 68.

  83. 83.

    Sheldon, The History of Poster Advertising, pp. 135–137.

  84. 84.

    The Times, 18 November 1893, p. 3.

  85. 85.

    Sheldon, The History of Poster Advertising, pp. 135–138.

  86. 86.

    Select Committee on Police and Sanitary Regulations Bills: Special Report, Proceedings, 5 July 1895, vol. 12, XII.113; Brighouse News, 11 May 1895, p. 2.

  87. 87.

    Taylor, ‘Written in the Skies’.

  88. 88.

    Ernest Turner, The Shocking History of Advertising (Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 110.

  89. 89.

    Taylor, ‘Written in the Skies’, p. 757. In September 1890 the Western Mail claimed that they had been invented and patented in either 1886 or 1887. Western Mail, 4 September 1890, p. 4.

  90. 90.

    The Graphic, 6 September 1890, p. 4.

  91. 91.

    Birmingham Daily Post, 15 July 1890, p. 4.

  92. 92.

    Taylor, ‘Written in the Skies’, p. 768; on attempts to control pollution and air quality see: Peter Brimblecombe, The Big Smoke: A History of Air Pollution in London Since Medieval Times (London, 1988); Catherine Bowler and Peter Brimblecombe, ‘Control of Air Pollution in Manchester Prior to the Public Health Act, 1875’, Environment and History 6:1 (2000), pp. 71–98; Stephen Mosley, The Chimney of the World: A History of Smoke Pollution in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester (London, 2009). On buildings impinging upon light and air, Chris Otter, ‘Making Liberalism Durable: Vision and Civility in the Late-Victorian City’, Social History 27:1 (2002), pp. 1–15 (p. 8).

  93. 93.

    Taylor, ‘Written in the Skies’, pp. 768–769.

  94. 94.

    Alvin Sullivan, British Literary Magazines: The Victorian and Edwardian Age, 1837–1913 (London, 1984), p. 135.

  95. 95.

    The Ipswich Journal, 6 September 1890, p. 8; Western Mail, 4 September 1890, p. 4.

  96. 96.

    Taylor, ‘Written in the Skies’, p. 757; original act The London Sky Signs Act, 1891 (54 and 55 Vict. c. 78) amended by The London County Council (General Powers) Act, 1893 (56 and 57 Vict. c. 221), s. 17 and The London Building Act, 1894 (57 and 58 Vict. c. 213), s. 125.

  97. 97.

    A Beautiful World: The Journal of the Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising, 3, p. 89.

  98. 98.

    Richardson Evans, ‘The Age of Disfigurement’ first published in the National Review, October 1890, he stated that he was spurred into action by the sky signs issue in the republished version of the essay: Richardson Evans, The Age of Disfigurement (London, 1893), p. 27.

  99. 99.

    Evans, The Age of Disfigurement, pp. 20–21.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

    James Greenhalgh

Authors
  1. James Greenhalgh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to James Greenhalgh .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Greenhalgh, J. (2021). Opposition Emerges. In: Injurious Vistas: The Control of Outdoor Advertising, Governance and the Shaping of Urban Experience in Britain, 1817–1962. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79018-9_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79018-9_3

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-79017-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-79018-9

  • eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation