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 Student Consumer
Culture in Nineteenth-
Century Oxford
Sabine Chaouche
 Student Consumer Culture
in Nineteenth-Century Oxford
 Sabine Chaouche

Student Consumer
Culture in
Nineteenth-Century
Oxford
Sabine Chaouche
School of Arts
Sunway University
Bandar Sunway, Selangor, Malaysia

ISBN 978-3-030-46386-1    ISBN 978-3-030-46387-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46387-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

Firstly, I would like to warmly thank Professor Jane Humphries cbe for her
guidance and care, and my editor Megan Laddusaw for her unwavering
support in making of this study a book.
I would also like to warmly thank Professor Kevin O’Rourke for his
suggestions that have opened up inspiring research perspectives.
This work would not have been completed without constructive advice
given by Professor Laura Ugolini, Dr Chris Day, Dr Julie Marfany and Dr
Christina de Bellaigue.
My thanks go to Tan Sri Dr Jeffrey Cheah ao, Professor John Bowers
qc, Professor Jarlath Ronayne am, Professor Graeme Wilkinson, Dr Liz
Miller and Dr Carole Bourne-Taylor for the wonderful visiting scholarship
at Brasenose College which enabled me to finalise this study.
I particularly would like to thank the Provost of Oriel College Mr Neil
Mendoza and Mr Robert Petre, the archivist of the college, who allowed
me to take photographs of an album of students in the late Victorian era:
this material has been extremely useful for my research and I am very
grateful to him for helping me discover this core primary resource. A few
class photographs of past Oriel College students can be seen in this book.
I would like to thank also the archivists of Oxford colleges for their help
in tracking documents: Mr Simon Bailey (the Keeper of the University
Archives), Ms Elizabeth Back (University Archives), Dr Robin Darwall-­
Smith (Magdalen and University College), Ms Elizabeth Boardman
(Brasenose College), Mr Andrew Mussell (Lincoln College) and Mr Cliff
Davies (Wadham College), and the Faculty of History’s administrators at
the University of Oxford.

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Dr Danna R. Messer and Waqas Mirza for their readings and
useful comments; Professor Katherine Watson with whom a study day was
organised on everyday life in Europe in Oxford; Professor Joel Félix;
Professors Peter Heard and Don Bowyer for their support; and Dr
Edward Nye.
I thank the porters of the lodge at New College for their kindness and
cheerfulness that brightened my days when I was studying at Oxford.
I thank my family, my good friend Jean-Yves Vialleton for his support
along the way and finally, Monique Moreton to whom I owe a great deal.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 College Life and the Local Economy 35

3 Male Consumption and Students’ Tastes 63

4 Undergraduate Culture and Male Consumer Behaviour 93

5 The Formation of Spending Habits129

6 Consumer Credit Traps and Student Consumerism159

7 Excessive Consumption and Insolvency197

8 An Emerging Anti-Consumerist Culture?245

9 Conclusion271

Appendix: Evolution of Law281

Bibliography283

vii
viii Contents

Index of Personalities311

Index of Tradesmen315

Index of Students317
 About the Author

Sabine Chaouche is Professor of Cultural History at Sunway University

and Associate Dean. She has studied at the University of Oxford and the
Sorbonne, and published numerous books on all aspects of theatre history,
including L’art du comédien (2001), La philosophie de l’Acteur (2007), La
Mise en scène du répertoire à la Comédie-Française (2013), Consuming
Female Performers (2015), Masculinité et théâtre (2018) and The Stage
and its Creative Processes (2019 and 2020).

ix
 List of Abbreviations

BC Brasenose College Archives

Bodl. Bodleian Library
CCP Chancellor’s Court Papers (OUA)
Ch.Ch. Christ Church Archives
JJC John Johnson Collection
OC Oriel College Archives
OHC Oxfordshire History Centre
OUA Oxford University Archives
UC University College Archives

Note
All the figures and tables included in this study were made by Sabine Chaouche
with the exception of Table 8.1 directly reproduced from The Oxford
Undergraduate’s Journal, 1867.
A glossary of all the terms relating to college life can be found at:
https://oac.web.ox.ac.uk/glossary

xi
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Evolution of the population of Oxford city and university

(1801–1901)51
Fig. 3.1 Students at Oriel College (1861). (© By kind permission of the
Provost and Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford) 70
Fig. 3.2 Students at Oriel College (1863). (© By kind permission of the
Provost and Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford) 71
Fig. 3.3 Students at Oriel College (1864). (© By kind permission of the
Provost and Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford) 72
Fig. 3.4 Students at Oriel College (1868). (© By kind permission of the
Provost and Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford) 72
Fig. 3.5 A student room in the late Victorian era (13 King Edward
Street). (© By kind permission of the Provost and Fellows of
Oriel College, Oxford) 77
Fig. 7.1 Minimum student population versus CC cases (1800–1900) 207
Fig. 7.2 Comparison between the number of bills in the
1830s and 1870s 222
Fig. 7.3 Distribution of tradesmen taking action vs overall number of
tradesmen per category of trade (1830–9 and 1870–9) 223
Fig. 7.4 Creditors potentially at risk (1830–9) 224
Fig. 7.5 Creditors potentially at risk (1870–9) 224

xiii
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Overall number of tradesmen counted in Oxford directories

(1823–91)49
Table 5.1 Jennings’s expenses 140
Table 7.1 Overall number of Chancellor’s Court (abbrev. CC) cases by
decades since 1750 205
Table 7.2 Creditors: Distribution of creditors by profession (Decade
1830–9)219
Table 7.3 Creditors: Distribution of creditors by profession (Decade
1870–9)221
Table 8.1 College life versus lodging costs, 1867 253

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In early January 1808, sixteen-year-old George Chinnery1 came to read

mathematics and classics at Christ Church. Although he found his first
weeks at Oxford extremely unpleasant and disappointing, he gradually
began to enjoy his life as a student. Unfortunately, several months later the
fresher came across financial difficulties which led him to ask for more
money from his mother who replied on 19 June:

The fashion of running into debt may do very well for the heirs of Lords
Glenbervie and Dartmouth, but it will not suit persons who have to provide
for their children out of a yearly stipend.—the easy way in which you desire
to have some more money sent, without seeming to think it at all as an
extraordinary thing that you should have spent more than your income,—all
this is too much at one time and in one letter. […] You ought to have no
bills to pay but College bills—my strict orders to you were that you should
pay your every article as you had it, and not owe for a biscuit or china,
oranges in the town. Have you done so? If you have now all your bills to pay,
what have you done with your money, and how are you with £15 to dis-
charge them all, not leave a six-pence unpaid, and defray the expenses of
your journey home?2

Mrs Chinnery expected her son to limit his expenses only to necessary
ones. Parents used to give a termly or annual allowance of a few hundred
pounds to their offspring for university fees and college battels,3 that is
food and drinks taken in college.4 They did not expect therefore to pay any

© The Author(s) 2020 1

S. Chaouche, Student Consumer Culture in Nineteenth-Century
Oxford, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46387-8_1
2 S. CHAOUCHE

additional debt. However, students interacted with tradesmen and could

be tempted to overspend. Pocket money served partly to pay in cash for
goods ordered from local suppliers. Consumption and shopping outside
college formed an integral part of student life and culture. An existing
consumer culture prevailed at Oxford: undergraduates living in a city
mainly geared towards retailing and domestic services—and heavily rely-
ing upon local consumption. As evidenced by George’s account, the levels
of student consumption expenditures were not necessarily determined by
the level of their fixed allowances over a period of time. On the contrary,
consumption adjusted itself with personal desires and undergraduate cul-
ture that disconnected not only needs and means, but also ethics and
economics.
Mrs Chinnery’s rebuke spoke to George’s disobedience in relation to
her specific instructions about financial management. Immediate cash pay-
ment should be prioritised since it symbolised ‘moral’ economic conduct.
Not repaying debts was a serious crime during the period, and most cer-
tainly a disgrace to families, especially since individuals could be taken into
custody or incarcerated.5 Young men saw things differently. Their behav-
iour often constituted a form of provocation in making misconduct a prin-
ciple of virtue and irresponsibility in endowing overspending with a
positive meaning. Such juvenile behaviour was not rare, college life being
underpinned by class rituals and symbols, and dominated by masculine
emulation and social obligations.6 Students’ debt for instance stresses the
existence of invisible forces that influenced the market and shaped con-
sumption. Such forces appear in mid-century novels describing the com-
mercialisation of society and the rise of consumer culture among
undergraduates.7 Patterns of behaviour were linked to trends derived from
strong desires and emotions. Some students sought for social distinction;
some were mesmerised by new luxury goods available on the market and
craved to purchase them; some displayed their wealth ostentatiously.
Reasonably well off, the Chinnerys could not compete with the lavish and
self-indulgent way of life of the upper classes. This ‘fancy for debt’ among
young men seems therefore to represent the height of what was called by
the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen at the end of the nine-
teenth century ‘conspicuous consumption’ and ‘conspicuous leisure’.
Being part of the British elite, Oxford students created a world of their
own most likely modelled on the dominant classes’ behaviour.8
Examining students’ engagement with undergraduate and consumer
culture in nineteenth-century Oxford is therefore crucial to understanding
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

why and how some undergraduates consumed goods in excess and devel-
oped consumerist habits. Such an enquiry can give more insight into the
specificities of young male consumer culture and masculinities in con-
sumption. On the one hand, to grasp the evolution of male consumption
and the cultural context underlining overspending in the Victorian era
requires identifying elements such as the students’ class and social and
ideological background, the number of students living beyond their means
and indebtedness mechanisms. On the other hand, assessing excess con-
sumption can illuminate the power of fashion trends or esprit de corps on
the decision-making that led undergraduates to buy goods in quantity and
at high prices, and reveal why and how this consumption impacted the
local economy. Hence, not only scrutinising ordinary student consump-
tion but also consumerism and reconstructing the structure of consump-
tion, notably consumers’ reasons and motivations to purchase, can help to
track the pivotal economic and social phases which marked nineteenth-­
century Oxford, and even their role in the development of debates on
capitalism on a national level.
This book aims to open new pathways in the history of consumption
and capitalism by looking at students’ consumer practices and material
desires, as well as the correlation between undergraduate consumerist
behaviour and modernised forms of credit. It concentrates on the minor-
ity of students who ran into debt. It scrutinises the variety of goods on
offer, in particular their social and symbolic uses and meanings. It recon-
structs undergraduates’ social and economic environment, showing how
consumption impacted on the formation of male identities and contrib-
uted to social inclusiveness through emulation and self-display. It also
reveals how this youth consumer culture intertwined not only with the rise
of competition among tradesmen, but also with the university reforms in
the 1850s and 1860s, with more students being allowed to come to
Oxford and live outside college in the mid-Victorian era. Different disci-
plines including social and economic history, retailing and advertising,
education, law on personal debt and credit, and gender studies build an
understanding of students’ engagement with consumer culture especially
from 1830 when students’ debts started to increase dramatically, to 1880
which coincides with a second critical peak. A gradual decrease followed
this second peak until the First World War. This limited periodisation is
also relevant since the first two residential colleges open to women, Lady
Margaret Hall and Somerville, were founded in 1878 and 1879. The
impact of female student consumption from the 1880s onwards is not
4 S. CHAOUCHE

examined or compared with that of young men. Further study is needed

to assess whether the arrival of women changed the dynamics of consump-
tion in Oxford.

History of Consumption and Male

Consumer Culture
Consumption has been rediscovered by historians such as Neil McKendrick
and John Brewer, through their influential works on the birth of a con-
sumer society.9 As Frank Trentmann puts it, ‘Consumption stepped out of
the shadow of production’. It gained a positive meaning when research
perspectives shifted in the 1970s and 1980s, leading to a ‘publishing
boom’.10
The field has flourished in the past decade with scholars such as Nancy
Cox who analyses trade processes and spaces and the modernisation of
the retail system up to 1820,11 and Maxine Berg who challenges tradi-
tional views of the early modern economy by showing that the so-called
‘Consumer Revolution’12 was a pre-condition for the Industrial
Revolution.13 Berg emphasises luxury and comfort as factors in growth.
Moral standards in line with Christian doctrine rejected the idea of lavish
consumption but access to leisure and wellbeing gradually prevailed. As a
result, the manufacturing of products imitating foreign commodities
increased, in particular goods from the East to which consumers were
exposed through international trade. A wide range of products became
fashionable in Europe such as tobacco, coffee, cocoa, sugar, porcelain
and silk, all imported from the New World or oriental trading posts.
Supply was hugely diversified, attracting more consumers and creating a
virtuous cycle. New objects and food products were bought on a larger
scale than previously. The taste for luxury that had dominated the aristoc-
racy won favours with the bourgeoisie who could now afford these
expensive purchases. Therefore, demand stimulated supply, invigorating
the mechanisms leading to a revolution in production, but also to a con-
sumer culture, more people being gradually obsessed with the acquisition
of material goods. Accumulating and displaying possessions became a
way of self-expression. British society became ‘infatuated’ with artefacts.14
The multiplication of goods was made possible by the development of
emporiums and department stores which became effective incentives and
coincided with the collapse of some religious values which had placed
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

austerity and sobriety as a model of virtue. From the 1860s onward,

domestic display of consumerism was seen as evidence of prosperity and
achievement.
Links between supply and demand were made by Woodruff Smith who
emphasised the social contexts in which consumption boomed: they con-
cerned not only private spaces such as the home but also public spheres
such as shops, playhouses and cafés.15 Jan de Vries’s controversial study
substitutes the adjective ‘Industrious’ for ‘Industrial’ to describe British
industrialisation.16 Industriousness embraces the connections between
consumption and production through household management and
stresses the focal point when labour and consumption converge to meet
both needs and new appetites. Consequently, during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, people worked more to consume more. The student
population was not part of these studies since they did not earn wages.
However, students were not absent from these profound changes. They
too proved to be economic agents: they acted as consumers.
The history of consumption harnesses multiple themes.17 If the family,
that is to say, married couples, were for a long time prioritised, researchers
have only recently started examining the consumption of single people,
even then restricting their scope to domestic life and middle-aged adult
singletons.18 Other perhaps peripheral groups such as children have
received more attention than students.19 Surprisingly, undergraduates’
consumption in the Victorian era has been overlooked, although it was
part of a sub-youth culture. Activities such as shopping and sport were
‘ways of defining, and expressing their distinctiveness, a distinctiveness
both from the children’s world that they were leaving and from the adult
world that they were entering’.20 As John Benson argues, ‘the relationship
between shopping and young people is fundamental to a proper under-
standing of the rise of the so-called consumer society’.21 Yet, this ‘youth
market’ may have constituted a niche of its own for local tradesmen in the
past, worthy of study and touched upon in some perceptive texts by
Christopher Breward, Brent Shannon and Laura Ugolini.22
The Hidden Consumer emphasises that male consumption was neither
visible nor obvious, and suggests tensions between male representations
and male spending habits. Breward describes the class stereotypes that
confronted men, the specificities of male fashion and their impact on
men’s relationship to clothes, as well as the menswear trade and advertising.
He discusses young men’s clothing in relation to fashionable stereotypes
such as the ‘leisured London bachelor’ inclined to ‘sartorial exhibitionism’
6 S. CHAOUCHE

and ‘frenetic consumption’,23 and the shop assistant inclined to ‘inappro-

priate’ clothing ‘emulation’.24 For discussions on such concepts as mascu-
linity, identity and the conformity, or lack of, within dominant sociological
models, the focus has been solely on clothing: ‘use, sale, and purchase’.25
This approach does not cover male consumption in its entirety and more-
over is restricted to the late nineteenth century thus giving an incomplete
view of the nature of Victorian male consumption. Food and drinks, acces-
sories in relation to health and hygiene, equipment for pastimes and hob-
bies need to be included.26
The debate on male consumption and consumer culture has been trun-
cated by leaving out this interesting and essential group constituted by
students (and not just young men). No work deals explicitly with male
undergraduates, with the exception of one recent article by Brent Shannon
which looks at the Oxford novel and its core themes: credit, male con-
sumption and debt.27 Such narratives published mainly in the second part
of the century reveal bourgeois anxieties relating to indebtedness, young
men’s moral failings and unruly behaviour. However, the focus on fic-
tional works remains problematic for historical studies, especially in this
particular case since the Oxford novel actively contributed to the infusion
in society of a stereotyped vision of college life and student consumer
practices. Morally weak undergraduates were portrayed, such as the cler-
gyman’s son falling into a spiral of debt, or the self-indulgent ‘fast man’
unable to self-restrain. Inspired by some scandals making the headlines in
the press, these narratives invariably told the same type of stories and situ-
ations. It was particularly relevant to parents during the period since a
strong link between study at Oxford and ordination in the Church of
England prevailed before 1850. Clergymen’s sons were probably expected
to exercise restraint and avoid profligacy. Although Shannon’s argument is
relevant to the understanding of the middle classes’ ethical and Christian
values and vision of a society, it reflects only partially what students’ col-
lege life was, however, especially in terms of purchase, spending and the
number of students running into debt. A more nuanced view of the world
of Oxford that scrutinises students’ consumer practices and retailing over
a more extended period of time and based on archival material is neces-
sary, especially since the nineteenth century was a significant period of
change for the city.
There is a gap which raises many questions concerning core themes
identified by Frank Trentmann. ‘The public as well as private face of con-
sumption, in relation to public life and social order as well as the
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

organisation of households and social groups, the conflict between fancy

goods and necessaries,28 shopping spaces and fashions, taste and the acqui-
sition of goods’,29 all need to be explored through the lens of the student,
newly emancipated from parental supervision and maturing in a materialist
world. This study therefore gives a better understanding of student life and
consumer culture in the nineteenth century while drawing on works which
have implications for understanding young male consumers though not
absolutely engaging with them.

Gender and Consumption

The historiography of consumption and even ‘mass consumption’ mainly
examines sociological aspects of women’s status in society. Pioneering
works in the field focusing on nineteenth-century Paris link consumption
with women.30 Robert Bocock states that the relation of production and
consumption was quite strongly gendered in the past: ‘production for
men, consumption for women’.31 Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough
remind us also that ‘Consumption, thy name is women’ in the modern
period.32 This stark distinction led to stereotypes of gendered consump-
tion that have been generally accepted by historians, and examined
through the history of female shopping. Married women mainly from the
middle and upper classes managed their households and ordered goods;
rich women entertained themselves through shopping; working-class
women gained independence by working in department stores; crime and
offences such as shop-lifting or medical problems like kleptomania kept
the historians’ attention.33 More generally, female consumption is con-
ceived as a leisure activity symbolising the weaker sex’s légèreté d’être and
in a misogynist way. The spendthrift and hedonist wife shopping several
times a week to satisfy insatiable desires and to alleviate boredom has too
frequently been opposed to the sensible, hard-working husband confined
to the respectable role of a breadwinner, and thus scrupulously conform-
ing to a severe and parsimonious mode of consumption. Such a picture
refutes possible influences, mergers or transfers between these two antago-
nistic roles. A considerable imbalance still prevails in the field with male
consumption clearly overlooked and most often hidden by the ‘historical
and scholarly feminisation of consumer culture, shopping, and fashion’.34
Brent Shannon addresses this issue by analysing the discourses on gendered
consumption of the late Victorian burgeoning commodity culture and the
8 S. CHAOUCHE

strategies developed by the department stores such as Harrods or Selfridges

to attract male shoppers.35
The flourishing department store at the end of the nineteenth century
was presented as a way for women to empower themselves by choosing
goods. This focus on women’s social progress has eluded young men’s
own emancipation through consumption. The question of opposite gen-
der attributions in relation to consumption and production suggests that
prejudices structured society based on specific ideas of what masculinity
had to be and its place in the economy. Students’ debts contradict these
assumptions and ideologies. This paradox therefore requires reassessing
what masculinity traditionally involved in terms of consumption. What
were men expected to buy in order to show their masculinity and conform
to masculine canons and how should masculinity in the nineteenth cen-
tury be understood through the social practice of consuming and buying?
The reality may differ significantly from the stereotypes of gendered con-
sumption, and what they suggest in terms of individual or collective
desires, personal dreams and imaginary spaces of consumption. An account
of undergraduate consumption also requires investigating other concepts
connected to the social construction of masculinity such as ‘manliness’
and ‘Englishness’ since they can highlight what purchases made by stu-
dents concretely meant and to which extent they were ordinary and con-
ventional, as opposed to distinctive and exceptional.
Theories suggest that masculinity is linked to culture and class.36
Masculinity and femininity are inherently relational concepts, which high-
light cultural oppositions and social functions. Hence masculinity is
‘masculinity-­in-relation’.37 In the early modern period, women and men
were systematically opposed. Men symbolised violence versus feminine
sweetness, strength versus weakness, reason versus sensitivity, and so on.
The stereotypes took root in everyday life, defining roles and perpetuating
a dominator-dominated relationship, women being subordinate until fem-
inism and gender politics emerged in the nineteenth century, contesting
unequal rights and patriarchal subordination.38
Men from the gentry class, which fed the undergraduate body, lived up
to these standards, associating with force and violence, commanding
armies, quarrelling and fighting duels with those who offended their hon-
our. Masculinity was ‘performative’.39 From the mid-nineteenth century,
the Arnoldian ideal focused on musculature and athleticism, emphasising
moral courage, stoicism and sexual purity.40 In the 1880s, it led to the
imperialist gentleman, highly disciplined and trained, representing through
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

authority and racial superiority ‘hard masculinity’.41 Hence from 1850 to

1920, undergraduates ‘fashioned themselves […] into an identifiable elite’
which ‘excluded a broad range of outsiders’ with a view to forging them-
selves into imperial leaders and statesmen.42 Finally, the transition to capi-
talism also modified views on masculinity which became a cultural
configuration where aristocratic values converged with those of self-made
Victorian men.43 The monolithic concept of the ‘gentleman’ fractured
into different types: the gentleman officer, the gentleman scholar, the
Christian gentleman and the gentleman sportsman. By the twentieth cen-
tury, the ‘old masculinity of privileges’ which the title of ‘gentleman’ sym-
bolised was under attack since family ties and duties evolved significantly,
fatherhood being less attractive, and sexual orientations such as homo-
sexuality better tolerated.44
These developments point to the need to examine what the ‘mask of
masculinity’ consisted of among undergraduates and how it evolved and
related to consumption, notably since students are missing from histori-
ans’ accounts. Surely they are crucial to any identification of ‘Goffmanesque’
representations of masculinity since students staged themselves in public
spaces and in front of their peers.45 Investigating such representations
requires scrutinising dramaturgical accomplishments through performed
masculinities which entailed specific expenditure, such as eccentric cloth-
ing for dandies or cricket outfits for sportsmen. Purchases inform about
dominant norms and standards shaping behaviours and presenting oneself
in public, in the streets, within college or in private rooms.

Material Desires and Consumer Practices

Young male consumption in nineteenth-century Oxford was at the heart
of the different directions in research pointed out by Trentmann.46 These
directions include the representation and circulation of goods, symbolic
communications between individuals, material practices and identity for-
mation. The acquisition of goods and the material world can therefore be
used as a lens on student life and consumer practices. Objects offer an
insight into consumption through their use, their individual or social
meaning and the contexts in which they are embedded. They are deeply
linked to gender history.47 Moreover, material culture often reflects the
personality hidden behind social obligations, beyond ‘the sex of things’.48
Hannah Greig, Jane Hamlett and Leonie Hannan show the interplay
between gender and material culture, ‘both created and represented in
10 S. CHAOUCHE

society’s cultural products’, as well as their connection to everyday life.49

For much of the nineteenth century, home furnishing was chosen and
bought mainly by men, who were deeply involved in domestic spaces
before the feminisation of interiors in the late Victorian era.50 Looking at
college rooms, Jane Hamlett shows that students could ‘recreate or jetti-
son the material cultures that they had experienced at home’, becoming
more autonomous and achieving ‘masculinity through the conspicuous
consumption of masculine goods’.51 She explores ‘the decorative choices
made by young men and women when they left home’ and stresses that
both ‘feminine’ and male taste could be visible and combined in young
men’s or women’s rooms, gender and decoration being ‘more fluid than
contemporary advice and some historians suggest’.52 The idea of merged
or combined tastes is investigated further by gendering youngsters’ goods
and broadening the spectrum of the objects not only purchased but also
used by students.
Assessing how objects ‘acted’ and interacted with youngsters in gather-
ings or in more intimate spaces can give a better understanding of what
may have constituted masculinity in consumption and what may have set
consumption in motion.53 Trentmann claims that the ‘interest in objects
for symbolic communication has yielded a range of insights about identity
formation, manners, and the cult of the domestic’.54 Did using ‘things’
impact on the construction of these young men’s identities and the devel-
opment—or not—of a manly image and performance? What role did
objects, and also services, play in undergraduate culture and networks, and
what social and/or private life were objects connected to?55 The nature of
young men’s engagement with material culture and commodities during
their studies, and their choices is explored56 to understand whether stu-
dents were all deliberately ‘spenders’, or merely modest customers. What
kind of consumption routine did they adopt and what were their spending
habits? An approach taking into consideration student consumption levels
and politics of performance helps reveal the life of some ‘things’ and iden-
tify their ‘lifespan’ through the rhythms of orders made by some students.
Moreover, ways of practising consumption highlight how new objects
affected some male customers, or more generally, society at large.
According to Trentmann, ‘A practice is the result of doings and sayings
that are linked together through a series of understanding, rules, tasks,
and emotions’.57 Going beyond the study of decorative objects only can
reveal the emotions, thoughts, or even forms of fetishism linked to their
purchase.58 Hence things may also have been or were becoming something
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

in a student’s mind, through the haunting desire to acquire them, but also
through their use, sometimes influenced by moods and often shaped by
affective experiences.59
Advertising in newspapers and commercial practices played a significant
role in the production of desire and the creation of false needs.60 Works
focusing on the Jacobean and Georgian periods showed that the use of
advertising was often the result of growing competition between shop-
keepers from the eighteenth century onwards.61 Word-of-mouth reputa-
tion was no longer sufficient to see a business thrive. Tradesmen therefore
had to develop more aggressive sale techniques over time to get orders and
new customers. Marketing through trade cards, billheads, circulars, cata-
logues and announcements was used to draw in custom in the nineteenth
century. Advertisements in newspapers became necessary to promote a
trade and shape tastes. They also provided customers with a cultural con-
text. They ‘helped to construct an urbane and commercial culture of con-
sumption’ and ‘a virtual consumer landscape in the mind of those reading
them’, especially in provincial cities.62 This role of advertising was relevant
to a city such as Oxford where young consumers had to be made aware of
the goods available in town, as well as those that were fashionable. Many
students were inexperienced in life: they did not know the range of prices
and the real value of goods. Illustrated catalogues with fixed prices were
published from the 1840s onward and became more common in the late
Victorian era. They may have played a core role in preventing some fresh-
men from being induced to order goods in shops as they could familiarise
with retail price lists and perhaps distance themselves with the desires that
promotional campaigns created. New consumer practices may have there-
fore emerged with the development of catalogues, in particular when they
would be sent directly by post to students. Advertisements in newspapers
such as The Oxford Undergraduate’s Journal however did not necessarily
include prices, but rather ‘highlight[ed] the cornucopia on offer’ in Oxford
and ‘contribute[d] to growing consumer knowledge’ in the second part of
the century.63 They were part of a broader range of sale techniques used by
tradesmen to strengthen their selling power.

Fashion and Consumer Culture Engagement

Fashion, and in particular clothing, is seen as a core element of material
culture and an indicator of status. The focus has recently been on the
working class. For instance, Alison Toplis highlights the use of clothes—in
12 S. CHAOUCHE

some cases, as a ‘store of value’ via their resale on the second-hand mar-
ket—but also their social significance and economic purpose.64 Vivienne
Richmond stressed the importance of the relationship between fashion
and imitation.65 Emulation often signalled the lower classes’ desire to
adopt elite habits and show social and economic independence. However,
peer pressure could be brought to bear on working people who tried to
imitate the bourgeois look to force compliance with proletarian style and
identification with their own class. It was difficult, if not impossible, to
afford frequent expenses on quality outfits. Interestingly, the idea of emu-
lation should not be seen as an obsession in all layers of society. Indeed,
not all groups followed the fashions. Some rejected the lure for novelty
that often characterised elite consumption.66 Hence, emulation ‘could
only be partial’.67
What was the importance of emulation among undergraduates?
Consumption as a ‘structuring force’68 among students has not been
investigated so far although conformity to elite norms through emulation
often took the form of overspending and waste, and status often was
achieved through indebtedness. This raises questions in relation to stu-
dents’ age, class and gender, as well as their attitude towards fashion and
consumerism, and actual levels of consumption from thriftiness to excess.
The reasons for buying goods other than purely for conspicuous con-
sumption remain obscure in many cases, although undergraduates most
cherished luxury clothes as they conveyed power. Specific clothes also
symbolised a form of adherence to the ideal of male sartorial elegance
shared by the elites.
Breward, Shannon and Ugolini have discussed the notion of a ‘mascu-
line renunciation’ developed by John Carl Flugel in the 1930s. Flugel
argued that a radical shift led men to sober attire based on the distinction
of gender rather than class,69 and according to David Kuchta, to a form of
‘inconspicuous consumption’.70 Up until the 1840s, men wore bright
colours and displayed their bodies ostentatiously.71 Middle-class men
abandoned ornamentation which had been popular since the Georgian
period, inspired by the flamboyant Macaroni72 and Beau Brummel. It was
gradually satirised in Victorian society as a symbol of upper-class sartorial
excess. New aesthetics emerged which emphasised clothes as utilitarian
commodities, building an image of manly and reasonable Victorian grav-
ity, while disapproving of the recherché and affectation of those who tried
to draw attention to themselves or were obsessed with or sought to be
ahead of fashion. Dark and neutral colours, primarily black, small patterns
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

and elegant simplicity became prominent in working environments. A

man had to avoid overdressing, and although London was the capital of
gentlemen’s dress, spending too much time in cathedrals of consumption
such as department stores was gradually rejected as being a sign of vanity
and effeminacy.73 The Victorian ideal of renunciation required a man to
‘give the illusion that he [did] not care about his physical appearance’ and
to ‘refrain from all discussion of sartorial matters except with his tailor’.74
By assessing to what extent this ideal was put into practice, Breward’s pio-
neering study revealed that men were actually ‘hidden consumers’.
Ugolini claimed that ‘men were fully engaged within contemporary
consumer culture, and that shopping for clothes and other commodities
was more than a marginal or minority activity, relegated to effeminate or
“unmanly” men’.75 Purchasing and wearing clothes was above all a social
activity ‘influenced by an awareness of “others”’.76 Core markers and con-
texts underpinned and impacted on male dressing: gender; ethnicity and
Britishness; class, status and respectability; age and life-course; time and
fashion; public and privates spaces; and, male groups. Conventions in the
workplace, contingent conformism that depend on local habits, gender
unambiguity through the opposition between male trousers and women
skirts, sartorial elegance signalling Britishness, change of clothes and spe-
cific garments such as collars and ties as elements of social distinction are
of significant concern in the consumption and use of clothes. Moreover,
norms are more important than markers of individuality; thus sartorial
practices most often reveal a social use of dressing in relation to different
spaces and contexts. In this sense, Ugolini’s chapter on identities offers a
cogent methodology to examine students’ purchases and use of goods,
their relationship to fashion and style and, more generally, such concepts
as newness and waste.
Pivotal to the understanding of student consumer culture are social and
cultural factors influencing young men’s choices and preferences, and the
desire for inclusion in the undergraduate community by conforming to
upper-class etiquette and university dress codes. Were clothes and shoes a
symbol of the great masculine renunciation, sobriety and elegance, or did
students innovate in terms of style or follow eccentric fashions since
Shannon argues that college-boys were regularly criticised for being vul-
nerable to the ‘latest’ and ‘loudest’ fashions and for adopting ‘flashy’ out-
fits?77 Two divergent strategies underpinned dress in the late Georgian
period: dandies’ desire to display and distinguish themselves, and a
Romantic need for authenticity. Hence clothes have ‘hidden meanings’,
14 S. CHAOUCHE

depending on the consumer’s intention and ideology. They symbolise the

tension between ‘the self as constructed and self-styled’ and the ‘self as
natural and authentic’.78 Moreover, the reference to Beau Brummel’s
‘artifice of appearance’ that was prominent in the first part of the century
gradually faded and other figures such as Oscar Wilde, who had been a
student at Magdalen College, became the emblem of sartorial elegance.79
Dandyism was seen as ‘more or less aberrant’ sartorial practices, ‘not nec-
essarily linked to homosexuality’.80 They were a phase in a man’s life that
was thus ephemeral, and were associated with young unmarried men who
had, despite budget constraints, the freedom to focus only on dress.81 The
type, quantity and frequency of purchase as well as favoured brands, recur-
rent fabrics and garments and the way in which items were matched
defined power dressing among undergraduates and what male identities
and meaningful images of their selves they wanted to project both to their
own group and to others.
Student consumption links up with ‘a social history of the market’, that
is to say, the ‘complex motivations and practices of agents acting out rela-
tionships of economic exchange—together with an understanding of how
they themselves interpreted such actions’.82 Going beyond the ‘self-­
interest theory and utilitarian explanation’ can generate a better under-
standing of how economic agents understood the market, the act of selling
and buying in the Georgian and Victorian eras, a period which saw the
development of a modern capitalist market economy. To grasp the growth
and establishment of the market requires the analysis of the nexus between
tradesmen and their young male customers, what Edward Palmer
Thompson defined in 1971 as the ‘social anthropology of economic
behaviour’.83 The way students developed consumerist and spending hab-
its, and the financial struggles induced by the overuse of long-term credit
are assessed in this study.

Consumerist Behaviour and Financial Struggles

The financial aspect of consumption did not ignite much interest among
historians although overspending and insolvency can be markers of con-
sumerist behaviour.84 Again there are notable exceptions. Margot Finn
examines personal debt from 1740 to 1914 and provides a detailed account
of the evolution of domestic credit and contract structure and obligations,
exploring in particular ‘the pragmatic strategies used by consumers to
obtain goods on credit with the counter-stratagems adopted by retailers to
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

extract payment from recalcitrant debtors’.85 Finn’s approach is useful to

understand the interplay between payment facilities offered by tradesmen
in Oxford and student insolvency.
The use of credit was common practice from the early modern period,86
but its social perception changed over time: in the past it was considered
disreputable, in the twentieth century it was thought to oil the wheels of
commerce.87 Tradesmen institutionalised modern economic forms such
as trade credit which enabled commercial activity. Purchasing facilities
such as credit connected producers and sellers, but also sellers and buyers.
The shortage of cash partly explains why credit was favoured by trades-
men. In 1859, Stephen Colwell stated that it was ‘only in the retail trade
that coins [were] employed in the purchase of goods’.88 Moreover, ‘95
per cent in value of all payments of business and of trade’ were ‘affected
by its [credit’s] means’.89 Strong economic networks developed across the
country. Credit became widespread and a core component of trade, help-
ing to support commercial transactions and ensuring that orders were not
interrupted. While borrowing and repayment could be problematic and
difficulties in credit markets disturbed financial stability, ‘economic prog-
ress was associated with expansion of credit markets alongside all other
markets’.90 Hence the history of credit is closely linked to growth.91 As
the Commissioners on Bankruptcy and Insolvency argued in 1840,
‘Credit must be, or commerce cannot be’.92 The Dictionary of Political
Economy stated in the late nineteenth century that credit played a critical
role in the British economy, being ‘essential to the full development of
competition’, and asserted that ‘the growth of credit’ was ‘historically one
of the most marked characteristics of progress of society from status to
contract’.93
Credit had a moral component. Relationships between consumers and
salesmen were based on a tacit moral agreement, economics and ethics
overlapping when it came to credit. Discussing Adam Smith’s theory of
self-interest in his work on the ‘culture of credit’,94 Craig Muldrew asserts
that ‘contemporaries did not, in fact, understand marketing through the
use of a language which stressed self-interest, but rather one which stressed
credit relations, trust, obligation and contracts’.95 This type of credit was
widespread, leading to numerous reciprocal debts over time. According to
Muldrew, ‘Debts were either remembered, or recorded in account books,
and then mutually cancelled at convenient intervals’.96
The accumulation of debt correlated sometimes to significant financial
problems. Court records show that litigations were very often related to
16 S. CHAOUCHE

insolvency and bankruptcy, or money lending. The number of cases was

high in the seventeenth century and progressively decreased until the mid-­
eighteenth century.97 Small debt courts proliferated from the 1840s.98 The
resolution of such issues through legal actions reveals that ‘courts, as insti-
tutions […] played an important role in economic life’.99 Non-market
relationships between suppliers and their customers persisted in the
Georgian and Victorian eras. As Finn argues, ‘the history of personal debt
and credit relations thus underscores the inability (or refusal) of consum-
ers, creditors, lawyers and judges to endorse the “modern” commercial
concepts of economic individualism and freedom of contract’.100 Does this
apply to Oxford tradesmen since the press accused them of systemising
capitalist tools such as consumer credit to drive consumption and make a
profit? According to these accounts, tradesmen appear to have tried to
move away from the economy of obligation. Was it really the case? Such
accusations question the different forces shaping the use of credit, espe-
cially how commercial customs, social practices and cultural values evolved
and played a pivotal role in driving student consumerism. Did they put a
strong brake on the development of market relationships in the university
town or were they core to what became a hybrid economy in Oxford pre-
venting a radical shift from moral economy to capitalism?
With the rise of the market economy, the relationship between buyer
and seller gradually changed, transactions becoming more impersonal.
Helen Berry claimed that credit was beginning to be replaced by cash pay-
ments by the end of the eighteenth century—especially for small transac-
tions concerning food, clothes or coal. If so, debt cases should have
become less important in Georgian society, and in particular, in the uni-
versity town.101 However, students’ debts increased until the 1840s.
According to Pamela Horn, the nineteenth century saw an expansion of
the number of shops in small towns and larger cities. Retailers knew that
credit would attract and retain customers and were also well aware that
‘long-running accounts and bad debts caused difficulties’.102 She recog-
nised that ‘Problems associated with bad debts and the granting of credit
continued to plague retailers—and their suppliers—well into the twentieth
century’.103 The debt and credit issues are therefore of interest in the con-
text of the students’ consumption since they underpin the contrasts
between an economy of obligation where status was crucial and a market
society where contract ruled.
Oxford embodied these tugs-of-war between past and present behav-
iour: over the Georgian and Victorian eras, credit both looked backward
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

to informal oral agreements and forward to commercialism and binding

contracts. Customers were to be ‘rewarded’ once having proved they were
good payers and thus accumulated a ‘moral’ capital.104 In the meantime,
the dramatic increase of the student body and city population in the sec-
ond part of the century prepared the advent of market relations. Tradesmen
had to evaluate their customers’ creditworthiness but as student numbers
increased and social backgrounds became more diverse, it may have been
more challenging to monitor ability and willingness to pay. Tradesmen’s
business practices may have therefore reflected an attempt to rationally
evaluate increasing financial risks embodied in these relationships, and a
move towards capitalism. The standardisation of interest rates for running
accounts clearly mentioned on billheads from the second part of the cen-
tury seems to point in that direction. Indeed in the past, credit offered to
customers could mean that a payment was simply delayed but this agree-
ment between buyer and seller did not systematically imply extra charges,
especially when ‘lending was reciprocal’, as opposed to loans from money-
lenders.105 This type of credit however created a bond between creditors
and debtors, and entailed a form of cooperation within the market.106 As
Muldrew puts it, debts were ‘mutually cancelled at convenient intervals’
and ‘the standard means of payment was to “reckon” or compare accounts,
cross out equivalent debts, and then settle only the difference in cash’.107
Market and non-market relations both continued to exist within pur-
chasing facilities over the century. The development of capitalism and
novel forms of retailing, such as the burgeoning multiples and department
stores with high turnover and whose fixed-price and cash sales preference
were perceived as signs of modernity—although these innovative practices
surfaced in the eighteenth century—, did not lead to the destruction of
non-market relations which were essential as part of a complex retailing
system and consumption process.108 Regardless, they had a monetary
aspect with rolling accounts and interest rates, credit duration and prices.
This explains why credit practices based on ad hoc individual assessments
of creditworthiness continued, although shops proliferated over the cen-
tury, economic networks became increasingly dense and a formal financial
system developed. Of course, relationships between creditors and debtors
were sustained by a legal framework itself filled with contradictions.
However, were all tradesmen ‘hostages to traditions of consumer activity
rooted in credit, character and connection’109 even if credit based on
contract was gradually institutionalised in the nineteenth century and
‘underpinned the whole economy’?110 In other words, were Oxford
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No. 55, GREAT QUEEN STREET,
STAIRCASE

PLATE 21
 PLATE 22

ELEVATION IN 1779
FREEMASONS’ HALL, PLAN OF PREMISES BEFORE 1779

PLATE 23

FREEMASONS’ HALL IN 1811

PLATE 24
FREEMASONS’ HALL, FAÇADE

PLATE 25
FREEMASONS’ HALL, ELEVATION OF NORTH END OF
TEMPLE IN 1775

PLATE 26
FREEMASONS’ HALL, THE TEMPLE, LOOKING SOUTH

PLATE 27
FREEMASONS’ HALL, SIR J. SOANE’S DESIGN FOR NEW
MASONIC HALL (1828)

PLATE 28
FREEMASONS’ HALL. GRAND
STAIRCASE
VESTIBULE TO TEMPLE SHOWING
MOSAIC PAVING

PLATE 29
MARKMASONS’ HALL,
CHIMNEYPIECE IN BOARD ROOM

PLATE 30
MARKMASONS’ HALL, CEILING IN BOARD ROOM

PLATE 31
MARKMASONS’ HALL, CEILING IN
GRAND SECRETARY’S ROOM

PLATE 32

GREAT QUEEN STREET CHAPEL

 PLATE 33

GREAT QUEEN STREET CHAPEL,

INTERIOR

PLATE 34
LITTLE WILD STREET, VIEW
LOOKING NORTH-EAST (1906)

PLATE 35
PLATE 36
No. 32, BETTERTON STREET,
ENTRANCE DOORCASE

PLATE 37
“QUEEN ANNE’S BATH,” No. 25,
ENDELL STREET

PLATE 38
THE BOWL BREWERY IN 1846

PLATE 39
PLATE 40
SEVEN DIALS COLUMN AT
WEYBRIDGE

PLATE 41