SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



But a great change was not far distant for two at least of the ancient 

 Dorset boroughs. About the middle of the century sea-bathing became 

 one of the popular amusements of the fashionable world, and many of the 

 decayed south-coast ports sprang to life again as watering-places. In Sep- 

 tember, 1748, R. Prowse and J. Bennet of Weymouth received twenty-one 

 years' leases that they might erect ' two wooden bathing houses on the North 

 side of the Harbour.' In 1783 the popularity of the town as a bathing 

 resort had so far increased that a tax of 2j. td. a year was placed on every 

 bathing machine. Six years later George III paid the first of a series of 

 visits to Weymouth, where the duke of Gloucester already possessed a house, 

 and in 1790 the duke of St. Albans was allowed to erect a seat on the 

 esplanade opposite his house, and make steps on the sand there. This royal 

 and aristocratic patronage led to rapid developments — new fire engines were 

 bought in 1792, and in 1800 the contract for building the esplanade wall 

 was signed. ^^' In the meantime Lyme Regis had received a similar im- 

 petus to renewed life from the moment when Mr. Thomas Hollis bought 

 the Three Cups inn and a whole row of houses in Bond Street. ^^'' His 

 influence brought Lord Chatham as a visitor, and it soon became a favourite 

 resort for visitors from Bath, amongst whom in 1804 was Jane Austen,''^ 

 whose impressions of the town and its neighbourhood were recorded in 

 Persuasion, wriittn between 181 1 and 1816. In August, 1833, the duchess of 

 Kent and Princess Victoria were among the visitors. Here the Assembly 

 Rooms were the great source of attraction. Many of the visitors had tea or 

 coffee there every night at a charge of 6d., and twice a week they met for 

 card-playing, while on Fridays dancing was indulged in.*'' In 1788 a certain 

 William Morton Pitt attempted to bring Swanage into notice as a seaside 

 resort,*^' but his efforts were not so successful as were those of the patrons of 

 Lyme and Weymouth, and it is only of late years that it has really extended 

 its accommodation to any great extent and become popular. 



But in spite of this periodical influx of fashionable society and the im- 

 petus to trade and enterprise to which it gave rise, the county as a whole 

 was slow to alter. In its local government it long preserved a degree of 

 informality which must have made slackness on the part of the magistrates 

 very easy. No chairman of Quarter Sessions seems to have been elected until 

 1773,'^* and though the judicial business of the court was conducted openly 

 in ' County ' business, there was no publicity to check expenditure or secure 

 the ratepayers against fraud.'" Nor do the justices appear to have been par- 

 ticularly zealous in the performance of their duties. In 1752 the account of 

 the Clerk of the Peace records the expenditure of considerable sums upon 

 dispatching riding messengers through the county to try to persuade even 

 two magistrates to hold a court of Quarter Sessions."' Primitive methods 

 were adhered to until a comparatively late date. The old hundredjuries con- 

 tinued to be summoned and to make presentments before the justices certainly 

 as late as 1752,'" and the only way in which repairs of roads could be effected 

 was by the presentment of the defaulting parish or parishes by a magistrate, 



"' Moule, Descriptive Catalogue, 125, 126, 127. 



"" Roberts, SoaW //»/. 551-2, and Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, ii, 68. 



"' Diet. Nat. Biog. "> G. Roberts, Social Hist. 553. 



"" Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, i, 657. "' Webb, Engl. Local Govt, i, 434, note 2. 



•" Ibid. 444 and 445, note z. "■ Ibid. 422-3, note. '" Ibid. 462, note 3. 



255 



