Challenging the 'decline' of the industrial elite in the manufacturing town : Middlesbrough's steel magnates and the urban sphere 1880-1931

The last quarter of the nineteenth century has been characterised as a period heralding a decline in participation by British urban elites in the day-to-day activities of the towns and cities that housed their businesses. It is often argued that these businessmen withdrew from leadership in the urban sphere and adopted a more leisurely, country-focused, gentrified lifestyle. Recent work has challenged the extent of elite withdrawal from towns and cities and this paper suggests that it is useful to consider the period as one of reconfiguration of industrialist engagement with the Victorian ‘boom town’ rather than one characterised by decline.