Kevin Dixon: Life in Torquay - a TRUE tale of poverty, prostitutes and child killers

FROM a small fishing village of around 800 at the end of the eighteenth century, 50 years later Torquay’s population stood at over 11,000. By the beginning of the twentieth century, it was over 33,000.

The Georgian and Victorian resort’s offer of employment and accommodation attracted thousands of workers. Some lived-in with their employers in the great houses and hotels while others found cheap and poor-quality housing in the centre of town; in places such as Pimlico, Swan Street and George Street.

For many working-class residents these homes were small, cold and damp and perhaps infested with vermin and lice. Water was collected from the River Fleet or pumps in the street while outdoor toilets were shared with dozens of neighbours.

Inevitably, the town centre’s backstreets were the perfect breeding ground for disease. There would also be pandemics. In 1832 and 1849 cholera reached Torquay. The latter outbreak lasted for six weeks leading to 66 deaths mainly in those oldest and impoverished districts.

Stoves were expensive, so many had limited access to hot meals. A local daily diet may well have been mostly bread, cheese and potatoes, occasionally supplemented by leftovers from nearby villas.

Large numbers were looking for work, so wages were barely above subsistence level. Support for working class people came from friendly societies and trades unions which levied a weekly subscription on members, providing assistance in times of need.

Torquay, on the other hand, despite being the wealthiest town in England, relied on service industries and seasonal employment. Hence there was less of a safety net than other places.

Particularly exposed to the vagaries of the employment market were women who, as Torquay needed a large servile class, made up a significant proportion of the population. In 1881 there were 13,665 males and 19,293 females in Torquay. If any of those women couldn’t find work, there were few options.

For well over a century prostitutes could be found at night frequenting harbour pubs and Cary Green, the area in front of the Pavilion. Though prostitution was common throughout England, the resort had its unique characteristics in the gender imbalance and the never-ending demand from tourists. Estimates suggest that there were hundreds of Torquay sex workers.

Generally, their activities were ignored unless they attracted the attention of the authorities or reached the courts.

In 1899, for example, the landlord of the Abbey Inn on Abbey Road was charged with allowing his pub to be used as “a habitual resort of women of ill-fame”. The landlord was fined and the brewery took away his tenancy.

Poverty always impacts most on the already vulnerable.  At Lowe’s Bridge on the Newton Road lived the baby farmer Charlotte Winsor. On 15 February 1865 the body of Mary Jane Harris’ illegitimate four-month-old son was found by the roadside.

Harris had ‘farmed out’ the infant to Winsor for 3 shillings a week. At first, she had resisted Winsor’s offer to dispose of the child though, when the burden of his support became too much, she stood by and watched Winsor smother her son. Testimony revealed that Charlotte Winsor conducted a steady trade of boarding illegitimate children for a few shillings a week or killing them for a set fee of £5.

The case caused a national scandal and laws were enacted to protect children.

Despite legislation in 1880 that those between the ages of 5 to 10 had to go to school, by the time they were eight years old children were expected to start earning. Some worked as errand boys, shoe blacks, or sold matches and flowers. Poor working conditions and long hours meant that children were worked as hard as any adult, but without laws to protect them.

In 1900 a deputation on child labour visited Torquay Council. It was led by Upton and St Luke’s churchmen who raised the issue of “children at a very early age subjected to heavy and laborious work, and more particularly to the late hours at which they were employed”.

The Chief Officer of the Coastguard said that he had rejected for service around half of the Torquay boys who had applied to join. They had bad teeth or poor eyesight, while a third suffered from varicose veins, believed to be caused by long standing and strain.

The plight of the poor impinged on the consciences of more and more people, and we see real local philanthropy. Charity, however, was influenced both by the ideology of self-help and by evangelical religion.

Charities specifically sought to distinguish the 'deserving' from the 'undeserving' poor. In 1904 the Torquay Charity Organising Society instituted a campaign to “elevate the deserving poor by suppressing the haphazard harmful charity existing in Torquay”.

The COS complained that “By tramping around the hills and pulling the bell at the doors of villas, a man or woman could receive any amount of half-crowns”.

However, despite the COS’ efforts, indiscriminate charity clearly continued. In 1911 tramps and beggars would “still present one of the most difficult problems in Torquay”. In response, they produced a leaflet to discourage “rich people on the hills” from giving to vagrants.

Unemployment was always an issue. In 1895 the Torquay Mendicity Society estimated that, “There are at least 200 men who have no work to do, and many of them have wives and families dependent upon them. The districts feeling the pinch most are Ellacombe, Torre, Upton and Melville Street. The Market Corner has been a kind of barometer by which one can tell the condition of the labour market and large numbers of men, anxious and willing to work, if they could get employment, have assembled there.”

The same year journalists visited a soup kitchen in Market Street where food was given out to 500 local people. “Mrs Gibbs and Mrs. Wreyford, with turned up sleeves and armed with large enamelled cups, mount guard… Then arrived the children, some with milk cans, some with milk jugs, and some with even washstand jugs.

"And now the crush has become so great. An old man leaning tremulously on a stick is seen approaching the table. Here comes an old lady who is bewildered by the rush. Then come the mothers, some respectably clad, and evidently experiencing that mortification at receiving charity with which we can all sympathise, and others with torn garments and dishevelled appearance”.

For the truly impoverished there was the workhouse.

The desperately poor of all ages, alongside the mentally ill and disabled, were transported out of Torquay to a place where they would not offend tourist sensibilities; hidden from view and forgotten. Workhouses were made deliberately harsh and had to be seen as a very last resort so even the starving and dying avoided them.

Their destination was Newton Abbot Workhouse. Built in 1837 in East Street, it could accommodate 350. There was a terrible abuse scandal there in 1894.

Even as recently as 1928, the institution still reflected the view that the very poor should be punished. “The pauper suffers in a general sense for the improvidence of which he has been guilty, exactly as a criminal expiates his wrongdoing behind bars.”

It was reported that, “What hurts the bulk of the inmates is the confinement. There are some inmates who very rarely, if ever, go outside the walls… With some of them melancholia is engendered, and eventually become anything but normal. The tempers become deranged.”

Workhouses were only officially abolished by the Local Government Act of 1929, but many persisted into the 1940s.

Today Torbay has the third lowest wages in the UK. In our most affluent areas residents can expect to live on average over eight years longer than those living in our more deprived communities.