Life in 1896
Spray was built in 1896 for John Gardiner of Morecambe. What was the world like in 1896?
Morecambe
Morecambe was booming. Morecambe only developed as a town following the coming of the railway in 1849. It was not till 1889 that the name Morecambe was officially adopted. Prior to the railway the main settlement was the fishing village of Poulton, which was absorbed in the new town.
Railways enabled people from the growing industrial towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire to travel to coast for "Wakes Weeks" when all the mills in a town closed down for a week. Whole towns departed to the coast on mass for a week's unpaid leave. Sea bathing was seen to be healthy. With rail links to Yorkshire, Morecambe became known as "Bradford by the Sea."
Then as now people were attracted by the beauty of Morecambe Bay with views across the Bay to the Lakeland Hills. Morecambe's motto is "Beauty surrounds. Health abounds,"
Horse drawn carriages waited by the station to take the wealthy to their accommodation whilst the less well off walked. Sailing boats took holiday makers dressed in their Sunday best for trips out into the Bay to Grange and Arnside. The horse and cart was the main way of delivering goods round the town.
A new attraction in 1896 when Spray was built was the West End Pier, which at 1800 feet (550 metres) was one of the longest piers in the country, The Pier was demolished in 1978 following a storm. A recent innovation was the Morecambe and Heysham horse drawn tramway, which opened in 1887. Spray is one year older than the Winter Gardens which opened in 1897.
The town had a fleet of around 100 prawners, Railways meant that the perishable catch could be transported quickly to the industrial towns of the North. Morecambe's coat of arms features a prawner,
Two early films give an idea of what Morecambe was like at the turn of the nineteenth century
Elsewhere
The British Empire was at its height. Queen Victoria was on the throne. Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury was Prime Minister.
The FA Cup was won by Sheffield Wednesday, with the final taking place by Crystal Palace. Yorkshire won the County Cricket Championship, which only started 6 years before in 1890. The Derby was won by Persimmon owned by Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, with the crowds cheering the royal victory for a full quarter of a hour. Oxford won the Boat Race. The Kaiser launched his new yacht "Meteor", competing against Edward VII's Britannia on the Clyde and during Cowes Week,
The first Olympic Games were held in 1896 in Athens, with the UK winning 9 medals.
A sign of technological advance was the country's first motoring facility when Mrs Bridget Driscoll was run over outside Crystal Palace. Cars were only invented ten years before in 1896, so there would have been very few about. The first plane did not fly till 1903.
Many houses did not have indoor toilets or bathrooms. House were heated by coal. Clothes were washed by hand. Vacuum cleaners did not exist. Carpets were swept by broom or taken outside and beaten to shake out the dust. Fridges did not become common in the UK till the 1960s. The middle classes employed live-in servants to do the household chores. Women wore long dresses and hats, and used parasols to shade themselves from the sun.
The first film shown in UK was in 1896 by the Lumiere brothers in London, just two years before the first Morecambe film. The crowning of Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia in May 1896 was the first coronation to be filmed.
Life expectancy in 1896 in the UK was 46 years compared to over 80 years today,
