Sybil Fawlty really ran
FA WLTY TOWERS
During the 19th and early 20th centuries Torbay was noted for its redoubtable landladies, with women often holding unusually influential positions for the times. Kevin Dixon tells us more.
S
ybil Fawlty was a far more effective manager than her husband, handled crises calmly, and she knew that the hotel was there to generate an income, rather than to attract a better class of guest. She intimidated Basil who described her as having the ability to “kill a man at ten paces with one blow of her tongue.” This is the stereotype of the seaside landlady. She was usually a resilient and tough businesswoman with an ineffectual man somewhere in the background. Intriguingly, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some commentators were referring to ‘men’s towns’ - which had a masculine presence in industry such as mining or steel working. They also referred, often dismissively, to places where women had an untypical power base. Following this impression, seaside resorts were often known as women’s towns. In 1871 there were 12,772 females to 8,885 males in Torquay, women far outnumbering men, as one of the principal sources of
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employment was domestic service. Of course, much work in female employment was exploitative and poorly paid. Yet, there were a few roles dominated by women that gave them an almost equal place in society. These included the pub landlady and the guesthouse owner. Torquay had a large number of these in a town of landladies. It was a community, which gave women a powerful and influential position in an untypical town. This reinforced the special nature of seaside resorts where class and gender were confused and inverted. The role of guesthouse landlady had evolved with the town. In 1850 there were only 150 hotel rooms available in Torquay, plus 70 lodging housekeepers offering another 350 rooms. From the 1860s onwards, there was a rapid growth in hotels being built to accommodate the well off, and they advertised themselves with prestigious names: The Imperial, The Grand, and The Royal.
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