Rational Recreation in the Age of Affluence: The Café and Working-Class Youth in London, c. 1939–1965

Abstract

Rational recreation is a term scholars have used to describe the paternalist philanthropy of the nineteenth century that attempted to control and contain the working classes through constructive leisure activities that would also promote more orderly communities. A youth culture around cafés, coffee and milk bars was apparent from the 1920s. As David Fowler notes, young female workers in Central London developed a vibrant ‘flapper’ culture based around the Lyons Corner Houses. Innovations in catering in the mid-twentieth century had an impact on youth cultures. As Erika Rappaport writes, the promotion of tea by the temperance movement as a wholesome alternative to alcoholic drinks in early Victorian Britain was part of a broader process of addressing concerns about the impacts of industrialization and the globalization of taste on the working classes. The milk bar model of rapid counter service began to change the shape of the more formal and ‘traditional’ tea and coffee houses.