London Club Culture

by bloger21

I've been a fan of the Sherlock Homes series for most of my life and the stories continually reference a fictional London club called the 'Diogenes Club'. London clubs are also mentioned extensively in 'The Long Firm', which is set in the 1960's. I would be interested to know the answers to the following questions.

  1. What exactly were these clubs ?

  2. How did one join ?

  3. What were the costs of membership ?

  4. Do many of these clubs still exist ?

  5. Were there clubs for all social classes at this point in history or just the wealthy ?

  6. Was this culture unique to London or did other major European cities have gentleman's clubs ?

CptBuck
  1. Large club houses, usually highly luxurious, complete with bars, restaurants, billiards rooms, smoking rooms, and guest bedrooms.
  2. Each club typically has it's own requirements, which have shifted over time. The Oxford and Cambridge Club is for graduates of Oxford and Cambridge University, The East India Club was originally intended for officers and civil servants who had served the East India Company. Today it recruits from recent graduates of Britain's elite "public" schools (i.e. private schools.) There is also usually some mechanism by which the children of members can become members.
  3. Varied from club to club and the type of member. Younger and older members usually pay less, as do those who aren't residents of London.
  4. Yes they very much still exist, which is how I'm able to answer this question.
  5. Class in the UK is separate from a question of wealth. These clubs are a bastion of what the British call the "middle class" but the middle class in Britain can refer to a billionaire so long as they don't have a title. The aristocracy have their own club affiliations. Then there are political clubs. There's even "alternative" members clubs for those involved in the arts and entertainment like The Groucho Club: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Club
  6. They are extensive throughout the United States (virtually every Northern City has a Union League. New York and Boston, in particular, have many) and in Anglo/American expat communities around the world, but while the continent certainly it's share of fraternal organizations and salons I don't know of any non-English speaking countries where this took off in the same way.

edit: in reference to class there are also the working men's clubs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_men%27s_club

TheTimeRoadRunner

I highly recommend: Milne-Smith, Amy. London Clubland: A Cultural History of Gender and Class in Late Victorian Britain. New York: Palgrave, 2011. it addresses many of these questions as well as how clubs contributed to gender norms of "the gentleman."

myimportantthoughts

I can answer question 4)

There are still numerous clubs still active, including the Savile Club: http://www.savileclub.co.uk/ and the Caledonian club: http://www.caledonianclub.com/.

There is a list of London gentlemens' clubs on Wikipedia that you might find interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_London's_gentlemen's_clubs

EDIT: CptBuck has covered everything in depth anyway.