A SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF 

 BLACKPOOL AND DISTRICT 



i. 



PREFACE: A MODERN HOLIDAY 



RESORT 



BY 



ARTHUR GRIME. 



UNLIKE the city of Norwich, where the British Association meetings were held 

 in 1935, Blackpool is strictly of modern growth. It was a mere collection of 

 a few houses on a cliff, on the Fylde coast, in the Hundred of Amounderness, at 

 the end of the seventeenth century. When the order for incorporation as a 

 municipal borough was granted in 1876, the population was only about 

 10,000. 



Growth in the intervening period has been phenomenal. Blackpool has 

 easily outstripped Fleetwood and Lytham, neighbours which once regarded it 

 as of secondary importance. It has now a resident population of about 

 125,000, and at the height of the holiday season is liable to be invaded by 

 double that number of visitors. 



Blackpool exists primarily as a holiday resort. Together with its near 

 neighbours, it acts to some extent as a dormitory for professional and business 

 men who are engaged during the day at Manchester and East Lancashire 

 towns, but its chief revenues are derived from the savings of the people who 

 come for health and pleasure to its shore. 



Apart from one or two ill-defined residential areas, the whole of Blackpool 

 is laid out for the entertainment of visitors. It has a few light industries, 

 chiefly employing female labour, but there are few avenues for employment 

 such as can be found in industrial towns of comparable size. 



Blackpool's administrators keep steadily in mind its mission to cater for 

 visitors. They were the first to extract from Parliament (in 1 879) the power 

 to spend on advertising the town a sum equivalent to twopence in the £ on 

 the rateable value. Last year the Publicity Department had nearly £16,000 

 to devote to this purpose. 



