Retail Patterns in the Victorian City

Abstract

The paper draws attention to the structure and changing nature of retail patterns in Victorian cities. By way of introduction a brief consideration is given to the relationships between retail change and aspects of urban growth. In addition, a number of important themes are investigated together with an attempt to provide a conceptual framework to explain urban retail developments. This conceptual base proposes more flexible notions of retail locational behaviour than those used in more traditional approaches. THE nineteenth century was a period of considerable change in the system of distribution, particularly with regard to the methods and form of retailing. The creation of the first market halls, shopping arcades, large emporia (forerunners of department stores) and main shopping streets, all represented new and important elements in the Victorian city. Furthermore, these new developments in retailing became increasingly instrumental in the shaping of urban land-use patterns. These commercial structures typified the vitality and scale of the evolving townscapes, and in the eyes of most Victorians the shop and the market played prominent roles in daily life.I However, until fairly recently the full significance of such factors has been largely ignored by many students of the Victorian city. At present published research material has tended to focus attention on two important issues. The first centres around the debate among economic historians, and concerns the timing and growth of the fixed shop form of retailing.2 Early opinion, with the exception of Clapham, strongly suggested that the distribution system in Britain prior to 1850 was of a primitive nature and that major changes only occurred after this date.3 Recently however, this traditional view has been successfully challenged by Blackman, Burnet and Alexander who point out that the timing of change in the retail system can be pushed back at least to the latter part of the eighteenth century.4 This debate has been particularly important since it has focused interest on both the chronology and the nature of retail change. The second research theme has been closely associated with the locational behaviour of shops, at both the inter- and intra-urban levels, and may be viewed as an initial exploration of nineteenth-century retail patterns.s The latter approach, taken by geographers, may possibly have generated rather more questions than answers, especially with regard to the process of retail locational change. Equally important, a number of vital questions still need to be posed. For example, there remains untouched the possibility of relationships between urban social change and corresponding shifts in the retail structure, a theme only really explored by Berry within the post-industrial North American city.6 Significantly, Berry's work on Chicago represented an extension of existing urban ecological studies, since the processes of demographic and retail transition were seen as being synonymous. Hence, an important link was forged between urban ecology and retailing studies, giving the latter valuable points of reference. Considering the growing number of

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