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Blackpool Victoria Pier (1904)
Edwardian holidaymakers enjoy their new leisure time.
Overview
Blackpool's striking Victoria Pier opened in 1893, just in time to cater for a boom in visitors with more leisure time on their hands. The film shows holidaymakers promenading in Sunday best and parasols, circling past the camera to make sure their faces are in shot. The film would have been shown repeatedly, following Mitchell & Kenyon's usual practice, in this case at the Blackpool Hippodrome.
Travel had grown cheaper by the Edwardian era, and advances like the electric tramway, seen here, offered new and easier ways for tourists to reach the pier. Meanwhile, the beginning of the century saw a reduction in working hours, leading to an explosive growth in the leisure industry. This filmic record highlights the swelling visitors but also proves that the young, the old, men, women and children took full advantage of the Victoria Pier's attractions. Blackpool, commercial centre of Lancashire's seaside resorts, was above all a place of entertainment, and one of the more distinctive sequences here features a band playing violins and trumpets, followed by the Flockton Fosters Entertainers, who performed three times daily to an expectant crowd.
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