Story Category: Legacy

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Our current Jane Austen by the Sea exhibition explores the author’s relationship with the seaside. While there is no evidence that she ever visited Brighton, her brother, Henry Thomas Austen, spent some time in the town while serving with the Royal Oxfordshire Militia.

Henry’s experiences almost certainly informed the descriptions of Brighton that appear in Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen’s most famous novel. While these passages are presented through the naive imagination of Lydia Bennet, one of the characters in the novel, it is easy to imagine the militia in Brighton to have been handsome, if perhaps caddish, men in smart uniforms. Yet military life in Georgian England was harsh, and Henry Austen would have been well aware of this. For in 1795, hundreds of his fellow soldiers of the Royal Oxfordshire Militia mutinied in Seaford as a result of poor pay and conditions, an action that eventually lead to the brutal public execution of two men in Hove.

Henry Austen and the Milita

Henry Austen was born in 1771, one of eight children. After completing a Master’s degree at Oxford University, he joined the Royal Oxfordshire Militia in 1793.

Militia were reserve military forces, a little like the present day Territorial Army. Every English county was expected to raise its own militia, with officers appointed from the property owning classes, and the lower ranks recruited from local working class men. The men who served in these milita were part-time soldiers, and not required to serve overseas. During his service with the Royal Oxfordshire Milita, Henry Austen was also able to build a career as a banker.

The primary purpose of these milita was to provide protection against French invasion. Henry Austen joined during the French Revolutionary Wars, and Britain would be at war with France for most of the next two decades.

These militia were also intended to crush any civilian uprisings that might occur. At this time the government was deeply concerned that the French Revolution could inspire a popular revolt in England.

Along with Kent, Sussex was the most likely landing place for any French invasion. As a result, milita units were frequently stationed in Sussex, and large numbers of soldiers would pass through Brighton in the 1790s and early 1800s. Indeed, one early view of Prince George’s Marine Pavilion (an early form of today’s Royal Pavilion) shows a miltary encampment to the north of the building.

Old Steine, Brighton, from the North, 1796

Sussex also carried the advantage that soldiers from other counties would be unlikely to know many local people. As such, if the men were deployed to quell any civilian uprising, they would be unlikely to be required to shoot at friends, family or neighbours.

Background to the Mutiny

The men of the Royal Oxfordshire Milita arrived in Sussex in January 1795. They were accommodated in poor quality barracks near Seaford, and had to endure a hard training regime. Each day they were required to march to and from their training grounds in Brighton, a distance of twelve miles each way.

But the main complaint of the men was a lack of food. As a result of a bad harvest the previous year and the war with France, grain prices were inflating rapidly. The situation was exacerbated locally as shop keepers were accused of raising prices even higher to exploit the large number of men relying on the limited supply of a small town.

Tensions were further inlamed by the presence of the large tide mill near Bishopstone, a few miles north west of Seaford. The men were able to see large quantities of flour being transported away, and it was even rumoured that some of this flour was being sold to the French.

To push the situation to breaking point, some of what little flour the men could afford had to be used for their hair. British Army regulations at the time required soldiers to dress their pig tails in flour.

The Mutiny erupts

Peter Longstaff-Tyrrell’s The Seaford Mutiny of 1795 (2001) provides one of the best accounts of the uprising. The mutiny took place over three days, from Thursday 16 April to Saturday 18 April 1795. It began late on the Thursday when a group of men from the Royal Oxfordshire Milita broke into a local butcher’s shop and stole numerous goods. Officers were able to persuade the men back to the barracks on this occasion, but it had awakened an appetite for looting.

The next day, 500 soldiers fixed bayonets to their guns and marched on Seaford, seizing all the food and provisions they could find. Another group of soldiers raided the nearby mill, and seized 300 bags of flour. They took over a ship that was due to sail to Falmouth and transported the flour to a warehouse in Newhaven. By nightfall, various food stuffs were being sold and traded by the men, and a group of 60 soldiers were left guarding the warehouse.

As the milita officers and local leaders were unable to restore discipline, Captain Thomas Harben of the Seaford Volunteers sought help. By Saturday morning he had brought in troops from the Lancashire Fencibles at Shoreham and the Horse Artillery in Lewes. Accompanied by heavy artillery in the form of cannons, these soldiers marched on the Royal Oxfordshire Milita. Outnumbered and outgunned, the mutineers quickly surrendered. By Saturday lunchtime, the uprising had been crushed.

Discipline and Politics

Although the mutiny had been conducted and quashed with minimal violence, the authorities were determined that it should not go unpunished. A small number of men were identified as ring leaders and were due to received the harshest punishment. Some of these men were tried through the civilian court system in Horsham, while others were court martialled in Brighton. Of those who were court martialled, six men were sentenced to flogging, and one was transported to Australia. The most severe punishment was reserved for two men, Edward Cooke and Henry Parish. Although both seem to have been little more than accidental spokespersons, they were sentenced to death.

An elaborate public punishment was devised for those soldiers who were to be flogged or executed. According to Longstaff-Tyrrell, the architect of this was Prince Frederick, Duke of York, a younger brother of George, Prince of Wales. The Duke had been made a Field Marshal earlier that year, and just a few days prior to the mutiny had effectively been made commander in chief of the nation’s army by his father, King George III.

Frederick was naturally keen to impose discipline on his army and discourage further mutinies, but he would also have been aware of growing political unrest in the country. The American and French Revolutions had inspired a new wave of English radicalism in the 1790s which the government was determined to suppress. The radical writer and former Lewes resident Thomas Paine had been forced to flee the country in 1792, after he was put on trial for publishing his Rights of Man. In 1794, the London Corresponding Society, widely regarded as the first working class political organisation, had been broken up and its leading members tried for treason. The government was even prepared to encourage, or at least turn a blind eye towards, extra-legal violence against potential revolutionaries. According to EP Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class (1963), the wife of one of the leaders of the London Corresponding Society died in childbirth after her house was besieged by a ‘Church & King’ mob.

The Royal Oxfordshire Milita mutiny may have been sparked by hungry men desperate for food, but in the 1790s it was a politically charged action.

Execution at Goldstone Bottom

Goldstone Bottom in Hove was chosen as the location for a grotesque spectacle of punishment. Situated just south of where Hove Park lies today, at the time this was a shallow meadow that formed a natural ampitheatre.

The event took place on 13 June. By 5am soldiers from the 13 regiments stationed in Brighton were assembled around the meadow. The convicted men were punished in turn. First, the six men who had been sentenced to flogging were tied to a whipping post and received multiple lashings. Three received 300 lashings each, and this was only reduced on the advice of surgeons who feared they might die.

Finally, Cooke and Parish were led out to be shot. They were made to kneel on coffins and faced a firing squad made up of twelve of their fellow mutineers. The men were shot dead by their comrades, after which the Royal Oxfordshire Militia led the assembled soldiers in a march past their lifeless bodies.

Execution of Cooke and Parish at Goldstone Bottom, watercolour, 1850

The whole spectacle took some three and a half hours. With many local civilians also looking on, it is estimated that the execution was witnessed by some 8000 people.

Aftermath

It is said that a local shepherd cut two coffin shapes into the ground to mark the site of the execution, and these shapes could still be seen some fifty years later.

The distressing manner of execution and the severity of the punishment angered many. Numerous people, including army officers, had pleaded for clemency for the men during their trial and imprisonment. After their death, pamphlets were circulated containing the last testimony of Edward Cooke, including his appeal that:

‘I am going to Die for what the Redgment done; I am not afraid to meet Death, for I have done no harm to no person, and that is a great comfort to me.’

A handwritten letter by Henry Parish to his mother contained similar sentiments.

Handwritten letter from Henry Parish to his mother, 1795

The execution was also used by political radicals with wider concerns, who referenced it in seditious poems attacking the cruelty of King George III and Prime Minister WIlliam Pitt the Younger. Longstaff-Tyrell quotes one poem that was posted around Sussex following the executions in Hove, including the following lines:

‘Soldiers to arms and revenge your Cause

On those bloody numbskulls, Pitt and George.

For since they no longer can send you to France

To be murdered like Swine, or pierc’d by the Lance

You are sent for by Express to make a speedy Return

To be shot like a Crow, or hang’d in your Turn’

There was, of course, no revolution in England, and both the king and Prime Minister would survive in power for several more years.

Prince Frederick continued to lead the army for almost twenty five years. Although he was forced to resign as Commander in Chief following a scandal with his mistress in 1809, he was reappointed to the role in 1811 by his older brother George, then Prince Regent. He remained in that role until his death in 1820, although he is now largely remembered as the likely inspiration for the Grand Old Duke of York in the popular nusery rhyme.

Although he was almost certainly a witness to the execution, Henry Thomas Austen also continued his miltary career. The Oxford Milita were stripped of their royal title as a result of the mutiny, but Austen served with them until 1801, by which time he had risen to the rank of captain. He continued in banking until a bank he co-founded collapsed in 1816. Thereafter he took up a career in the church until his death in 1850.

But Henry Austen’s most lasting work was his contribution to securing his sister’s literary legacy. After Jane Austen’s death in 1817 he arranged for the posthumous publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. He also contributed biographies of Jane to some of the subsequent editions of her works.

Kevin Bacon, Digital Manager

More information

• Jane Austen by the Sea exhibition
• Video of talk about the mutiny by Kevin Bacon
• View and download images relating to the mutiny from our Digital Media Bank
• Read about Brighton at the time of Pride and Prejudice‘s publication

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

One hundred years ago this month Russia’s October Revolution was launched in Petrograd (now known as St Petersburg) and changed the course of world history.

1300 hunded miles away at Preston Manor in Brighton, Ellen Thomas-Stanford found herself uniquely close to the uprising as her morning post bought first hand reports written in cinematic detail. More shocking still, within a year a dear friend’s niece would die in a hail of bullets alongside Tsar Nicolas II, the last reigning Romanov.

The home front: Brighton 1917

Ellen Thomas-Stanford & ‘1917-18’ scrapbook

Ellen Thomas-Stanford’s five large scrapbooks compiled between 1914 and 1919 are an extraordinary archive. The rarely opened pages positively sing with history made fresh.

Life in Brighton in 1917 was tougher than we can imagine, even without violent revolution on the streets. The First World War, so boldly entered, had been raging three long years. In April 550,000 tons of shipping was sunk by enemy submarines — disastrous for a country reliant on imported food. Even the wealthy were affected by shortages.

‘Please do not worry about the lack of butter,’ writes Princess Beatrice to Ellen before visiting to take tea. ‘I shall be cautious with everything.’

Princess Beatrice note to Ellen Thomas-Stanford regarding butter shortage

Postcard: ‘A Broadside from our land-ship’

Ellen’s comfortable life did not spare her from heartache. Sadness seeps into her 1917 scrapbook as page after page of black-edged mourning notepaper reports deaths of friends’ sons, nephews and husbands. In a snapshot of the age there are newspaper cuttings: mostly obituaries, letters from the Red Cross expressing thanks for fundraising, a postcard of a tank — an invention so new the machine barely had a name beyond, ‘our landship’. A colourful notice bearing the flags of the allies declares ‘A Solemn Oath’ that the signatories will swear not to ‘knowingly purchase anything made in Germany’ or ‘transact business with or through a German for 10 years after peace is declared’. Carefully pasted as a keepsake, the notice is unsigned.

The October Revolution: Petrograd 1917

In the autumn of 1917, peace must have felt like an unimaginable dream. As today, the leaves on the great trees in Preston Park were beginning to fall heralding yet another bleak winter of war on the home front. In Petrograd meanwhile, Ellen’s correspondents, Colonel ‘Croppy’ Henry Vere Bennet and Mr. Oswald Rayner of British Intelligence were living a hair-raising existence and preparing for the bite of the fierce Russian winter described in February 1918 by Croppy:

‘Cold here is normal but we had a fearful 3 days blizzard and furious snow storms which has upset even the Russians. We had 43° of frost i.e. 13° below zero for three days and the wind is what makes this place the limit…the streets are baulked up high with mounds of snow, high as a man’s head, which no amount of work could remove.’

Lieutenant Colonel Benett in the uniform of Aide de Camp to Major R Gillespie, Bombay late 1880s

Revolution in October bought disorder and hardship.

‘There is no electricity, candles cost a fortune and are of very inferior quality. Oil is equally scarce and dear. Bread is very scarce & bad & contains much straw and “foreign matter” which causes much illness especially amongst children & old people & now an outbreak of typhus, which after all is not surprising as the intake of water supply is well below the stream of output of the sewage of the city.’

Croppy reports a severe shortage of meat, vegetables, potatoes and eggs: ‘I’ve not seen an egg since October.’

The October Revolution began in Petrograd on the old Russian calendar date of 25 October (7 November in the UK). Led by Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik Red Guards captured the Winter Palace–  ‘our Buckingham Palace’, as Croppy clarifies for Ellen.

‘The Winter Palace is pitted all over with bullet holes, like the plums in a pudding, & nearly every one of its hundred windows is patched up with paper.’

On the spot while revolution raged, Croppy and Rayner kept Ellen informed of events.

‘On Tuesday 6^th November, the uprising of the Bolsheviks which had been threatening for a week or more came to a head. The whole situation resembled a cauldron full of seething ingredients which still refuse to combine or amalgamate.’

Rayner, about who hangs much mystery regarding his role in the death of Rasputin in December 1916, was briefly back in London but writing on 22^nd September 1917 he informs Ellen: ‘I am now busily engaged in active preparations for my return journey to Petrograd.’

Ever the Secret Intelligence Service officer he writes sparingly. However he can’t resist letting Ellen know he has been asked to ‘make a study of the work carried on in quite a new department (for me) at the War Office.’

At 28 years of age Oswald Rayner comes across in letters held at Preston Manor as a man of immense self-confidence and poise. He was a brilliant Oxford scholar, fluent in Russian, French and German, belying his humble origins as the son of a Staffordshire draper. In 1917 Rayner was in the prime of life and diligently acting upon whatever daredevilry his country asked of him.

On 26 September he tells Ellen:

‘I am making the necessary preparations to be able to leave on October 1^st – these were my instructions. Further details will depend on the next date of sailing of H.M.S ‘Hush-Hush’! As she is called.’

Rayner’s exploits and evident cool head under pressure gives the impression that he was something of a James Bond of the First World War. If the final assassin’s shot that finally ended the life of Rasputin was fired from Rayner’s Webley revolver, as some historians believe, then the picture is complete.

Oswald Rayner died in 1961 leaving instructions that his private papers be destroyed. However a paper trail remains in the outpourings of his heart and reportage of Russian matters to Ellen Thomas-Stanford.

Russia’s revolutionary women

On arrival in Petrograd in the heat of revolution, Rayner reported:

‘There is virtually no government and public business is consequentially at a standstill. We seem to be drifting headlong into utter chaos with never a straw to cling to. Any hope that is left is centred on the proverbial miracle that is always supposed to come to Russia’s aid in her severest extremities.’

Coming to Russia’s aid at this time of crisis were an extraordinary band of soldiers, the Women’s Battalion of Death. Croppy met these all-female combat units out on manoeuvres. Fascinated, he was eager to share his thoughts with Ellen in Brighton.

The Women’s Batallion of Death, 1917

To illustrate he sent two postcards. One he marks with symbols so Ellen might see the Colonel and her Adjutant with whom he spoke.

‘The former is the widow of a soldier and was herself five times wounded…she is of peasant origin and is now in hospital suffering from shock. The adjutant, a girl of 18 only, I found in temporary command. Quite pretty, the daughter of an Admiral, well educated, speaking English fluently and in Petrograd society.’

Russian military women

A military man himself Croppy writes admiringly of these female fighters.

‘They were occupying a sector of the front line and do everything for themselves. I found them quite smart, discipline better than some regiments of men, sentries and snipers alert and all seemed in deadly earnest.’

Safe in the quiet surrounds of her ancient family home, Ellen must have shuddered at Croppy’s description of life in Petrograd sent 9 November.

‘For some time past life here has been unsatisfactory and most unsettled. The police disappeared in our first revolution and the militia which replaced them has gradually melted away. Neither life nor property has been safe and there is no one to turn to for protection. People are robbed not only in the slums but also in the streets of the best quarters of the city. Women are stripped of their boots, their furs or a good cloak in broad daylight…houses are entered and everything removed which takes the fancy of the visitors…last week four-hundred robberies were reported in one night.’

Ellen Thomas-Stanford’s friends in Brighton

Black edged letter

Reading Ellen’s collection of black-edged letters from October and November 1917 is a sobering task. One hundred years on the bitterness and animosity felt towards the German people has the power to shock.

J.N Langley writes from Hedgerley Lodge, Cambridge on 25 November.

‘I do not understand the frame of mind of those who are ready to renew relations with Germans after the war. The pests should be treated as such.’

A friend writing from Barrowfield Lodge, Brighton on 11 October places blame at the top:

‘It is too terribly sad these many bright young lives one after another be sacrificed, and to think that all this misery is caused by one wicked man, the German Emperor.’

A matter perhaps not considered by this friend was Ellen Thomas-Stanford’s astonishing closeness to the ‘wicked man’ for she regularly admitted into her home Kaiser Wilhelm’s aunt,  Princess Beatrice.

Haemophilia: Queen Victoria’s genetic legacy

Beatrice’s mother, Queen Victoria, famously gave birth to a bloodline of descendants destined to be reigning monarchs of Britain, Germany, Russia and Spain at the start of the new century.

Victoria’s lineage bought with it the infamous gene for haemophilia, the devastating blood disorder that would shape the European world map almost as much as war.

Ellen’s friend Beatrice was Victoria and Albert’s fifth daughter and youngest child. Along with her sister Alice she was a carrier for haemophilia, so when she married the German Prince Henry of Battenberg in 1885 the health of any children yet to be born was already imperilled.

Sisters Helena and Louise, who also visited Preston Manor, were not carriers.

Both Beatrice’s sons, Lord Leopold Mountbatten and Prince Maurice of Battenberg, were haemophiliacs and both would die young. Maurice was killed on active service at the Battle of Ypres in 1914, fighting for the Allies irrespective of his German pedigree. Leopold, always the frailer brother, died aged 32 in 1922 the result of an attempted hip operation – certain death for a haemophiliac whose blood fails to clot.

Ellen must have felt Leopold’s death keenly, for he died one month before her beloved grandson, Vere. In many respects Leopold was much like a second grandson to Ellen. The pair corresponded by letter, Leopold writing from his quarters at Clock Court, Kensington Palace.

Of his brother‘s death he writes,

‘There is little comfort in knowing he died a soldier’s death, which I am sure he would have wished but it has been an awful blow to me all the same.’

We can’t know if Ellen and Beatrice talked about world politics. The tone of their letters suggests they kept to uncontentious subjects. Perhaps some subjects were too painful to commit to paper even at this time of revolution, war and family deaths.

Rayner, Rasputin and Russia’s royals executed

The most prominent death linked to Ellen’s circle of friends was one unmentioned in any letter I have yet found between Beatrice and Ellen.

Not written about but surely talked of at Preston Manor were the events of 17 July 1918. On that date Beatrice’s niece, Alexandra (known as Alix), who had married Tsar Nicholas II in 1894 and become Empress of Russia, was executed by Bolshevik troops alongside her husband and their five children. A 200 year old Romanov dynasty was wiped out in one hail of gunfire.

Tsarina Alix’s concern for her young haemophiliac son, the Tsarevitch Alexis, had led directly to the entry of faith healer Grigory Rasputin into the royal household.

One year before the massacre of the Russian royal family, Croppy makes reference to one of the many unorthodox medical practitioners enlisted by the Romanov family in the vain hope of a cure.

In a letter to Charles Thomas-Stanford dated 18 June 1917 he writes: ‘I won’t give his name but I have known something about it in the course of my work.’

Croppy refers to the mysterious man as ‘a strange personage, a Thibetan (sic) doctor,’ who historians identify as Siberian born Pyotr Badmaev, friend of Rasputin.

‘Whether Rasputin was his agent or he Rasputin’s no one can say definitely,’ Croppy writes adding with distain, ‘he is strongly pro-German.’

Rayner’s old Oxford University friend, Prince Felix Yusupov, in whose palace Rasputin was murdered, gave a newspaper interview in March 1917 claiming Rasputin and Badmaev fed drugs to Tsar Nicholas, rendering him useless. Croppy mentions the story in his letter to Charles, ‘with the increasing rumours of the drugging on the Emperor for some time past.’

War’s end and aftermath

Croppy and Rayner continued to keep the Thomas-Stanfords informed of world news after the war ended in 1918. A letter from Croppy written from his residence at 8 Challoner Mansions, West Kensington on 2^nd October 1919 is especially intriguing.

‘I am very busy at the W.O. (War Office) finishing up writing reports and appreciations of my years’ work in North Russia. When we meet I have much to tell you which it was quite impossible to write or hint at on paper.’

As for Oswald Rayner, his whereabouts become international: Japan, the United States, and Sweden – and in March 1919 he was writing from the Headquarters of the British Military Mission to Siberia.

Turning 30 he writes, ‘my future movements are shrouded in mystery,’ and it seems he had moments of homesickness confessing to Ellen:

‘I am accustomed to being abroad, as you know, and never before have I experienced such an overpowering “nostalgie”. I want to be with my friends, my real friends. How good it would be to be at Preston for a weekend. When oh! When will it be?’

Promotion and honours

Like his friend Rayner, Croppy was fascinated by Russia and its peoples.

‘There are very many strange things in this country and it has taught me a great deal about human nature and its weaknesses.’

Croppy was honoured internationally for his contribution to the war effort.

He sent Ellen postcard pictures of his Russian medals, the Order of St Stanislas 1916 and the Order of St Anne 1918 awarded for his efforts in improving the Allied-Russian communications system.

The French awarded him the Légion d’Honneur, Croix d’Officier in October 1918.

Naval & Military Club letter

In 1918 Croppy was made one of the first Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in recognition for his services in Russia, an honour he accepted with modesty. Writing on a Naval & Military Club card dated 20 June 1918 he thanks Ellen for her ‘pleasing’ congratulations. However he prefers to speak of Rayner’s promotion to the rank of Captain, applauding the capability of the younger man rather than basking in personal honours.

Henry ‘Croppy’ Vere Fane Benet died in March 1931 the year before Ellen Thomas-Stanford, his fondly addressed, ‘Mrs Squire’ and recipient of his vivid letters from revolutionary Russia.

Paula Wrightson, Venue Officer, Preston Manor

More information

• Read more about Rayner, Croppy and the murder of Rasputin
• Learn more about Preston Manor

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Did you know that Madeira Terrace played a role in Brighton’s seafront defences during the Second World War? As the Save Madeira Terrace crowdfunding campaign continues, it is worth remembering there was a time when this famous section of Brighton’s seafront architecture faced a very different threat.

Brighton seafront defences, c1940

After the defeat of France in June 1940, Britain was faced with the danger of a German invasion from across the Channel. The South East of England suddenly became a potential front line. Brighton’s beaches were closed off, and the central sections of the town’s two piers were dismantled so they could not be used as landing stages by enemy troops. Barbed wire and barricades were constructed along the whole seafront.

The German invasion was postponed by the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, and ultimately halted by Hitler’s decision to attack the Soviet Union in June 1941. But the threat was very real, as this German reconnaissance photo of Brighton shows.

Luftwaffe reconnaissance photo of Brighton, 1940

Taken by the German air force, the Luftwaffe, in 1940, the photo has marked the dismantled sections of the West Pier and Palace Pier. It’s clear evidence that the Germans were using aircraft to survey Britain’s coastal defences, and it shows why the covered walkway of Madeira Terrace was useful in hiding some of these defence measures from enemy eyes.

The best record we have of Brighton’s seafront defences is a series of photographs taken by the local authority in August 1944. Following the successful D-Day landings in June that year, the beaches were considered safe to reopen. The town’s Borough Surveyor’s department recorded some of these defences as they were cleared away, and these photographs are available to view and download from our Digital Media Bank. One shows a large covered oil tank  situated beneath Madeira Terrace. A section of the structure’s distinctive latticework can also be seen on the right of the photograph, presumably as it was waiting to be reattached following the tank’s removal.

Fuel tank beneath Madeira Terrace, August 1944

It’s possible that this may have been an emergency fuel store for vehicles, and was covered to discourage theft. But it’s more likely to have been set up for use as a potential weapon. In the event of an invasion, oil could have been sprayed onto the beach and the sea and set alight, creating a wall of fire against enemy soldiers.

Although the threat of a military invasion has long passed, Madeira Terrace is in urgent need of funds to save it from irreversible disrepair. To find out how you can help, visit the Save Madeira Terrace crowdfunding page. (Update 28/12/18: the funding target was achieved, and work will begin on the restoration in Spring 2019.)

Kevin Bacon, Digital Manager

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

In May, 33 prop-making students from Brighton Metropolitan College (part of the Northbrook College Campus) spent a day in Brighton Museum drawing inspiration from the eclectic collection of furniture in the 20th Century gallery.

Students and their workbooks outside Brighton Museum

The students’ task was to choose an object that resonated with them. The outcome was to construct a small scale 1:6 replica model, informed by independent research.

Three different scale 1.6 interpretations of the Bugatti chair, shown below. Model-makers: Charles Watkinson Stack, Victoria Lowe and Ben May.

da300157, Chair, c1890-1900, by Carlo Bugatti, Italy

Many students explored the historical context of their chosen piece, looking at its particular narrative or its maker etc. Investigations into the making methods of the original furniture influenced construction of the models. A broad range of materials was used – including everyday household items.

The green tacks, included for comparison in some of the images, show just how small the models are.

Marta Rodrigues, Nicola Gunne and Ed Leader made versions of A Trapped Star/ Irawo Ta De Mole chair, 2015, by Yinka Ilori (photograph by Veerle Evens), UK; the Garden Egg chair, c1968, by Peter Ghyczy, Germany; and the Max Le Verrier lamp, 1925, France.

This was an opportunity for students to develop their model-making skills and learn new making techniques through experimentation. Each piece was made with different methods informed by technical drawing and keen attention to detail.

Students working on their models. 

Staff at Brighton Museum were truly impressed with the students’ results. The pieces are perfect small replicas of familiar furniture in the Decorative Art collection, imaginatively constructed and minutely observed.

Elizabeth Johnson, Raj Dutta and Luke Hemming made versions of the Mae West’s Lips sofa, c1938, by Salvador Dali and Edward James, UK; the Mercier Freres chair, 1920-25, France; and the Clair de Lune screen, c1928, by Jean Dunand, France.

This project was the last of a busy learning year, in which students engaged in projects that focused on sculpting, moulding and casting, fabrication, metal and wood work.

Aaron Kealy, Ed Sole, Katie Merrit and Rebecca Cran made versions of the Fontane cabinet, c1925, by Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, France; a chair and desk, c1905, by E A Taylor, UK, and a Louis Majorelle writing desk, c1900, France.

Lecturers on the course, Rowena Boshier and Caroline Testa, said this:

The fantastically varied collection of 20th century furniture at Brighton Museum acted as a wonderful stimulus for students to hone their skills and demonstrate their abilities in these well-crafted models. RB

When “learners are given responsibility…and opportunities” they begin “thinking for themselves”. (p137 Bowkett 2007). As lecturers, we believe trips like this strengthen responsibility, engagement and self-confidence. CT

Sophie Simpson, Oli Vaughn, Jacob Huxford and Will Foreman made models of the Contour chair, 1968, by David Colwel, UK; the Long Chair, 1935-6, by Marcel Breuer, UK; and the Prince of Wales chair, 1969, by Snowdon and Toms, UK.

The students’ course is a Foundation Degree in Prop Making and Special Effects.

More information and other examples of the students’ work can be found by clicking these links:

https://propsuk.com/

https://www.instagram.com/met.propsuk/ 

All photographs of the models are by Stephanie Farmer.

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

This Wednesday the University of Lancaster will be bringing a hand-cranked digital device to Brighton Museum. While the phrase ‘hand-cranked’ seldom features in descriptions of cutting-edge technology, there are very good reasons why this belongs in this year’s Brighton Digital Festival programme.

What the Butler Saw

Mutoscope in Brighton Museum

The ‘crank machine’ we will be showcasing on Wednesday is inspired by the mutoscope. Originally developed in the 1890s, a mutoscope is a device that produces simple animations. The user turns a handle to rapdily flick through a series of paper images, producing an effect similar to watching a short silent movie.

Mutoscopes rely on the user peering through a small viewer, so they can only be used by one person at a time. Many mutoscopes produced in their Edwardian heyday took advantage of this feature to present risque content. We have an original mutoscope on display in Brighton Museum’s Images of Brighton gallery which features the then notorious ‘Parisian Can Can’ dance. Even today mutoscopes are more commonly known as ‘what the butler saw’ machines, named after one popular example.

Edwardian technology

The crank machine we’ll be showcasing on Wednesday is perfectly safe for families. The content on this device will be focused on another great Edwardian invention: the double backed postcard.

Launched in Britain in 1902, the double backed postcard revolutionised popular communication. By providing a cheap medium in which simple messages could be sent alongside an accompanying image, postcards became enormously popular. At a time when a postcard could be posted in the morning and arrive by lunchtime, the Edwardian postcard anticipated the rapid sharing of text and images through socal media by almost a century.

The digitised postcards used in the crank machine come from the University of Lancaster’s Edwardian Postcard Project collection and our own postcard collections. With the help of a metadata switch, the crank machine will allow the viewer to look through themed arrangements of the two collections, bringing the texts and images together in a new form.

Interfacing the future

The crank machine was built by Adrian Gradinar of the University of Lancaster’s Physical Social Network project team. Although I have yet to try the finished version, I am intrigued by the new interaction on offer here.

Adding a mechanical handle to a computer may seem unnecessary and counter-intuitive, but it may make a lot of sense in a museum environment. Visitors navigate museums in complex and distinct patterns, and different users respond to different means of presenting information. For example, a few of our galleries feature touchscreen interactives that allow visitors to learn more about the subject of the display. But my estimate is that only about 5% of visitors ever use these — and this is hardly surprising. Only a minority of visitors are ever likely to want to know more about any given subject; many are more likely to be focused on the social aspects of their visit (such as keeping a relative or child entertained), others will be looking to relax rather than becoming highly engaged with the displays, and others will quickly suffer museum fatigue — there is already a huge amount of information to absorb.

But what if a digital interactive can become part of a spectacle? A touchscreen interactive might have seemed moderately unusual in the 1990s, but with around 80% of us owning a smart phone or a tablet these are now too common to notice. Can a mechanical handle disrupt that, by enhancing curiosity and inviting visitors to engage with the interactive?

There is also a question of intimacy. Like most medium to large museums, the main mechanism by which we present our digitised collections is through searchable databases. But these are buit around managing and presenting large quantities of data. A user has to do a fair bit of searching before they are likely to focus on a single digitised object. By contrast, the crank machine is built around intimacy, presenting a single postcard at a time, and in a format where the object becomes the user’s sole focus. Can this invite a new relationship with these historic postcards?

Test the crank machine and tell us what you think

If you can join us this Wednesday, come and have a play with the crank machine in Brighton Museum’s MuseumLab from 2-5pm. In addition to trying the machine, you can also chat to Adrian Gradinar and Julia Gillen of the University of Lancaster about their work. I will also be on hand to chat about our digitised collections, and our involvement in the project.

I’m looking forward to welcoming Adrian and Julia and their marvellous machine to Brighton this week. Although Brighton and Lancaster are opposite ends of the country, Brighton seems the perfect place to bring a device that celebrates two technologies — mutoscopes and postcards — which are often associated with the pleasurable escapism of the seaside resort.

Kevin Bacon, Digital Manager

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

This Saturday we’ll be running a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in Brighton Museum. Part of this year’s Brighton Digital Festival, it will be an opportunity for you to learn more about editing Wikipedia from a member of Wikimedia UK, a chance to meet some of our curators, and help improve the online presence of our African fashion collections.

I will also be on hand to ask for your help with a different digital project. I’m looking for volunteers who would be willing to test a new audio tour of Brighton Museum that we’re developing. The tour is still in its early stages, with only a small amount of sample content, but there are several features I’m keen on testing.

Before I explain why we need to test this so early, I’ll talk a little about my experience in developing audio tours.

Linearity and Serendipity

Last weekend I talked to the Fresh Start group in Portslade’s Easthill Park about developing mobile tours. They are working on a community created tour of Portslade Old Village, and I was invited to share a few tips from my experience of working with on these sorts of projects.

While preparing for the talk, I reallised how much time I’ve spent over the last few years working on audio tours of one form or another. These projects have included the revised audio tour for hired handsets in the Royal Pavilion; developing content for the dedicated WW1 military hospital tour of the Royal Pavilion; the Story Drop app the smartphone version of the Royal Pavilion tour; and, most recently, some prototyping with Blast Theory.

Over the years, I’ve learned a few dos and don’ts which I was able to share with the group, but it reminded me that while audio tours all seem to do a similar job, they can be very different in practice. Seemingly small variances in user behaviour, narrative style, and the subject matter can all have a huge bearing on how the tour needs to be developed, and how well it wil work for the audience. In many ways, the technology is the simplest element.

Royal Pavilion mobile audio tour

As an example, the Pavilion tour is a relatively straightforward experience: the user listens to a story in a room, walks to the next room, and then listens to the next story. It’s a simple linear progression that was very easy to convert into a website for mobile phones last year.

A tour for Brighton Museum simply can’t work the same way. Once a visitor steps over the threshold, there is no single route they have to follow. We could insist that they follow one for the purposes of the tour, but while that may be helpful for some visitors, for many it will feel like an artifical imposition that’s at odds with the layout of the building.

As a result the tour we’re developing for Brighton Museum can’t be structured around linearity. Instead, it needs to embrace serendipity — how can it aid and provide pleasurable discovery? That is a tougher challenge.

Storytelling

Designing the tour so that it can facilitate a more open form of navigation is one answer to this challenge. Another is to find ways of telling stories about the exhibits that will grab and hold attention.

Brighton Museum contains a variety of galleries that reflect our eclectic collections. There is no single theme or narrative that brings them together, other than the circumstances of those who donated the founding collections to the museum in the 19th century. As such, the stories have to fragment and splinter, usually becoming tales about individual items on display rather than a grand narrative about the museum.

Our tour is built around two potential solutions to these problems of navigation and narrative. But do they work? Only you can tell us.

Join us

If you are able to pop in and test the tour, I will be available from 10.30am until 4pm in Brighton Museum’s MuseumLab. Please bring your own phone for the test. The tour runs from a mobile website, so there is no need to download and install an app. Free wifi is available in the museum.

See our Brighton Museum pages for details on admission charges.

If you’re interested in coming along, but would like to learn more, do please drop me a line at kevin.bacon@brighton-hove.gov.uk.

If you’d like to know more about our Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, please contact my colleague Stephen Kisko at stephen.kisko@brighton-hove.gov.uk.

Kevin Bacon, Digital Manager

More information

• Brighton Digital Festival 2017

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

This month marks the 70^th anniversary of the death of Christiana ‘Lily’ Blanche Ashworth Macdonald. One of Preston Manor’s more enigmatic residents, Lily’s outwardly quiet life touched upon the supernatural, the mysterious death of a fiancé, and the Aesthetic movement popularised by Oscar Wilde.

Diana and Christiana (Lily) Macdonald 1887

Lily was born at Preston Manor in 1866, alongisde her twin sister Diana.The twins were younger half-sisters to Ellen Thomas-Stanford, who would become the last private owner of Preston Manor.

We know rather more about Diana, who outlived Lily by nine years. This is possibly because she married and led a conventional life, but also because she corresponded with Henry Roberts, Preston Manor’s first curator, and letters exist in her decorative, looping handwriting which reveal some of her character. Lily, however, remains an enigma: the puzzling silent twin.

A ghostly ‘White Lady’

Lily and Diana are best remembered for their brush with the paranormal, as they both saw the famous ghost of the White Lady whilst growing up in the house.

Lily related a vivid encounter to her nephew, John Benett-Stanford, who passed the report to Henry Roberts in the hope he might include the sighting in a guidebook to the new Preston Manor museum.

‘Miss Lily Macdonald tells me that in October or November 1896 as she was trying a new lampshade in the Drawing Room at Preston Manor, the ghost walked in at the door and came straight to her as if to speak. Miss M recognised it as the ghost, seeing her white dress and hair hanging down. She followed the ghost through the Billiard Room to the foot of the stairs, then put her arm around her saying ‘No – you don’t go now’. Miss M’s arms went through the figure and it disappeared at once.’

The Cleves Room c.1896 with vase of white lilies

Later that year Lily and her mother invited two renowned paranormalists to Preston Manor: Ada Goodrich Freer, a spiritualistic medium and Assistant Editor of Borderland, the leading spiritualist magazine of the day; and Thomas Douglas Murray, a member of the illustrious Ghost Club. Together in the Cleves Room the group held a séance with the aim of contacting the ghost to find out why she wandered the house. The dramatic results of the séance remain inconclusive.

The ghost of the White Lady at Preston Manor was described in detail by Lily and Diana. They say she was dressed in flowing white robes and wore her golden hair loose. Although spoken to, clearly she did not reply. Interpretation to date has relied on Ada Goodrich Freer’s suggestion that the ghost was a nun called Sister Agnes. However, descriptions of the White Lady do not mention a nun’s habit, and what nun has long blonde hair?

Further doubt must be cast on Freer’s identification because in 1897 she was denounced as a fraudulent medium and thereafter fled in disgrace to America. Perhaps the White Lady should have been addressed in Latin, as Diana’s description fits that of a high-born Roman woman of the classical period. Preston Manor sits in a part of Brighton known to be Romano-British archaeologically, so perhaps the sisters saw a Roman ghost?

From Goddesses to Mephistopheles

Christiana Macdonald styled herself ‘Lily’, rejecting her birth name for reasons unknown. A carte-de-visité photograph taken in about 1886 shows a fragile young woman photographed from the back, her head turned to make the most of her slender neck and heart-shaped face in three-quarter profile. With her abundant curled hair piled high she wears a ruffle-backed white dress, corseted at the waist with huge gauzy puffed sleeves.

Photograph of Lily by society photographer Alfred D Kissack, 130 High Street Eton, Windsor

Whiteness and purity surround Lily Macdonald. Even from birth she is associated with white. Her middle name Blanche translates as ‘white’ in French, derived from the Latin blancus. Her chosen name of Lily also refers to a white flower.

Had Lily married she may have chosen lilies for her bridal bouquet. According to the Victorian Language of Flowers the lily spoke of virginity and even divinity, for in Christianity the lily is the emblem of the Virgin Mary. For the ancient Greeks the lily was associated with the powerful goddess Hera, Queen of Heaven and wife of Zeus.

Lily sitting on the lawn outside Preston Manor with dachshunds, Bushey and Faust, c1890

Lily would have spent her girlhood at Preston Manor becoming skilled in ladylike accomplishments considered essential to attracting a prestigious suitor, yet she did not marry. This was unusual for a woman of her era and social standing. Instead Lily poured her heart into her pets. Keeping little dogs was a popular pastime in Lily’s day, equal to the modern trend for miniature lap-dogs.

Victorian and Edwardian dachshunds were often given German names but Lily’s choice of Faust and Bushey may hint at a darker side to her character. Faust is a character from German legend, a scholar who makes a pact with a demon, Mephistopheles, gaining a short life of knowledge and pleasure in exchange for eternal damnation.

One remaining sign of Lily’s affection for her pets is the pet cemetery at Preston Manor, which she created with Diana.

A mystery worthy of Agatha Christie

The darkest known episode in Lily’s life was the untimely death of her first fiancé, William Frederick Forsyth Grant.

William of Clan Grant was a member of the landed gentry in Scotland, passing his time as Captain and Acting Adjutant of the Forfar and Kincardineshire Militia Artillery. He was a man accustomed to handling weapons, a fact that puts a question mark over the events leading up to his death.

Grant died at his family home, Ecclesgreig Castle, on 27 January 1902. According to local newspaper reports William died as a result of tripping over a rug with a knife in his hand. This seems to me a spectacularly clumsy accident for a soldier and country sportsman. Was his death suicide, or even murder? Curiously William was buried after a mere three days. Why the haste?

William’s death certificate has been recently acquired from The Highland Archive, Inverness. This shows the cause of death as a ‘wound in chest – haemorrhage’. William died of asphyxiation in the arms of his brother, Maurice, after three agonising hours. He was 33 years old.

William’s last will and testament dated 1 May 1901 speaks of his devotion and intentions towards Lily.

‘I hereby leave to Miss Christiana Blanche Ashworth Macdonald (Lil) absolutely all and every fully paid share I may be possessed of at the time of my decease and any and all policies on my life i.e. any money accruing on my death and all cash etc. in any bank etc.’

William left just over £12,000 in stock, bonds and life insurance (worth in the region of £1.5 million today). Decorum of the age suggests Lily never availed herself of this blood-soaked inheritance, not least because she had disengaged herself from William days before his death in favour of Captain Jackson, fiancé number two. Little is now known of this man except that he painted four interior views of Preston Manor in watercolour.

The Dining Room at Preston Manor, c1896

Secrets to the grave

Following her mother’s death at Preston Manor in 1903, Lily spent her adult life in London. The 1911 census shows 45 year old Lily living at 28 Chapel Street in London’s exclusive Belgravia. She lived alone looked after by Alice Good, a parlour maid aged 21. When Diana was widowed in the early 1930s the twins set up home together at Cumberland Mansions, a grand apartment block near Hyde Park.

We don’t know why Lily never married although she didn’t need a husband for financial support. In 1947 Lily’s worth at probate was £6,738, 6s 2d at a time when two thousand pounds would buy a good sized family house.

I recently applied for access to Lily Macdonald’s will and the document reveals some interesting facts. Lily bequeathed most of her possessions to her twin, Diana, and nieces Phyllis Porteous and Lilas Campion (née Porteous), daughters of the twins’ older sister, Flora. A charming collection of miniature family portraits were left to Preston Manor and can be seen on display today.

It seems common practice for families associated with Preston Manor to make provision for favoured servants in their wills. Lily was no exception. She bequeathed £500 to her maid, Kate Good (perhaps a relation of her parlour maid Alice), ‘in recognition of many years faithful service’. In 1947 this amount was a substantial sum equalling two years wages for Kate.

Whatever secrets Lily held, she took them to her grave. I believe Lily had many secrets, not least, perhaps, the full story behind William Grant’s death. Frustratingly Lily left the following clause in her will:

‘I also give free of duty to the said Lilas Campion all my dispatch boxes and their contents and all my other private papers with the request that she will burn unread all my private letters at once.’

St Peter’s Church, Preston

Lily died aged 81 on 15 August 1947. She was cremated so she might be laid to rest at the church of St. Peter’s next to her childhood home — burials had ceased in the churchyard from 1870. Curator Henry Roberts closed Preston Manor for the afternoon of 20 August 1947 so he might play a key role in the ceremony and host the wake in the house.

He wrote a poignant letter to the family solicitor, F Bentham Stevens of Marlborough Place, describing Lily’s funeral and internment of ashes.

‘We left the Manor by the old private way into the churchyard just before 3.30. I carried the casket, followed by Mrs Magniac and Lady Galway, Mrs Campion and Miss Philcox, the nurse and maid. In the churchyard we were met by the verger and Mr. Tomkinson. The latter took the service.’

Through Henry Roberts’s description of Lily’s funeral we know that Diana placed a sheaf of white carnations on her sister’s grave. The Roberts family cut white and mauve asters from the Manor gardens and these were placed in two vases on the altar.

Henry ends his letter by clarifying ‘what sort of tip’ one pays the verger ‘for verging’ and for ‘digging a small grave…on a very hot day.’ He thought twenty shillings (one pound) would be adequate and asked for Mr Bentham Stevens to send a cheque to A. J. Latta of 6 Bates Road.

Henry’s sharp-eyed daughter, Margery, then aged 39, added further detail in her memoir, A Time Remembered, published in 1998. She describes providing sandwiches for tea in the drawing room but was irked by Diana’s request for luxury eatables at a time of post-war shortages: ‘we had Fuller’s iced cake, chocolate madeira cake, it meant going to many places to buy the food because of rationing.’ Margery goes on to observe:

‘I don’t think Mrs Magniac, Miss Macdonald’s twin sister, really understood. They were beautiful women, but always rather aloof from everyday life and reminded me of Marie Antoinette’s famous saying about the peasants. If they can’t get bread, let them eat cake!’

An enchanting portrait: Lily the Aesthete

In the spring of 2017 a large oil painting of Lily Macdonald came up for auction in London.

Unseen outside private ownership the portrait is a rare discovery and is reproduced here by kind permission of its new owners who visited Preston Manor in June to see Lily’s childhood home and last resting place.

Portrait of Lily Macdonald by John William Schofield (1865-1944) Private collection with permission

Painted by the British artist John William Schofield, Lily is depicted seated at a small circular highly polished mahogany table in soulful profile. Her characteristic heavy head of dressed chestnut coloured hair accentuates the delicacy of her slim neck and pale arms.

Lily’s choice of costume and setting for her portrait shows she may have been influenced by Aestheticism, an approach to life opposed to the brash consumerism and ugly industrialism of the late Victorian age in favour of ‘art for art’s sake’ and the pleasure to be found in beautiful things. The poet and writer Oscar Wilde, at the height of his fame in Lily’s youth, was a leading personality of the Aesthetic Movement and acted as something of a style guru. Wilde was a supporter of dress reform and encouraged the rejection of mainstream fashion in favour of ‘artistic dress’. Embracing Wilde’s advice to discard constricting whalebone corsets and brightly dyed over-ornamented costumes, female followers wore loose flowing garments in subtle muted colours. In accordance Lily wears a diaphanous silvery-grey shawl decorated with dun-gold tassels over an unstructured black velvet gown with a low-cut white satin underdress. A soft poesy of mauve flowers pinned to her breast drops faded decorous petals onto her lap. In lieu of showy jewellery Lily wears a simple gold band on the little finger of her left hand.

Aesthetes delighted in Japanese art and indeed a Cult of Japan hit the Aesthetic home, which became filled with trays, fans, screens and teapots – and was promptly satirised by Punch magazine in cartoons depicting wilting Aesthetes swooning with delight over oriental ceramics. European trade with Japan and the influx of picturesque goods inspired librettist Gilbert and composer Sullivan to create The Mikado, their hugely successful 1885 Japanese fantasy operetta. Theatre-going crowds were enthralled and inspired by the dazzling sets and costumes made from Japanese silks purchased at the Aesthete’s emporium, Liberty & Co.

Voguishly in trend Lily is portrayed gazing upon a glass dome containing a Japanese doll figurine with shimada hairstyle wearing an embroidered silk kimono with paper parasol.

There is no indication of where or when Lily’s portrait was painted, but it may have been Preston Manor, her home in the 1890s. Could the ‘five-fold leather screen’ mentioned in her mother’s will dated 1899 be the backdrop to this picture?

Cleves Room at Preston Manor

If you visit the Cleves Room at Preston Manor you too can revel in the taste for all things oriental. Here you will find a small collection of ceramics dating to the late 19^th century and originating from Japan and China, including examples of the blue and white china so beloved of Wilde and his followers. The ceramics are displayed in the approved Aesthetic manner on the mantelpiece and on plain wooden shelves.

I like to think Lily would approve.

Paula Wrightson, Venue Officer, Preston Manor

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Another year and another publication for the ‘Writing at the Museum’ course run by Creative Future.

This is the forth pamphlet in the series, showing how Brighton Museum & Art Gallery continues to inspire our writers, and how every object (or painting) has its story. This publication contains a selection of work from the two courses held during 2016-2017. Writers featured in earlier Museum Tales publications are seen here again, along with new writers such as Luc(e) Raesmith, Kathleen Weigelt, Maxine Toff, Niall Drennan, James Kerr and Paul Tschinder. Participants were inspired by paintings, furniture, African fashion, punk outfits, and the many eclectic pieces in the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery collections.

Luc(e), inspired by the flower paintings in the permanent collection, writes on modern-day consumerism in his ‘Haikus for a High Street.’

Niall, in his poem ‘War, Claudia’, makes a strong emotional point about war.

Kathleen’s piece ‘Beep, Beep’ tackles female genital mutilation through a poem about a glamorous African woman.

This is a strong, and at times political, emotional and entertaining collection of writing, reflecting the divisive and diverse times we live in. As always, we greatly enjoyed reading this publication’s submissions, just as much as the participants loved writing them. We hope you will enjoy reading them and will see museum artefacts in a new life as a result – and, who knows, they may even inspire you to write.

Read them all online here,

Celia Goth – Dress Code

James Kerr – Bouquet

Jasmine Sharif – Portrait of Mrs  Betsey Chatfield

Kathleen Weigelt – Beep, Beep

Luc Raesmith – Haikus for a High Street

Maxine Toff – The Angel

Miriam Beza – Punk

Moray Sanders – The Nymph

Niall Drennan – War Claudia

Paul Tschinder – African Mannequin

Tony Spiers – Pot Oiseau

Vicky Darling – The Rebellious Octogenarian

Dominique De-Light, Director, Creative Future

Creative Future is a charity that provides training, mentoring and national showcasing opportunities, including the Creative Future Literary Awards and the Tight Modern to talented people who lack opportunities due to mental health issues, disability, health, identity or social circumstance. For more information see www.creativefuture.org.uk

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

War, Claudia

War,

Claudia,

What is it good for?

Well, absolutely everything really:

the economy, science, social progress

and poetry, and then there’s engineering and

unemployment, and did I

mention, poetry?

So, chlorine or whisky?

A toast to the host,

nowhere to be seen

an officer, a gentleman,

what say you, old bean?

And down in the trenches

there’s little to do

So ve all take a Mustard

gas break, at precisely

–             10.22

Ya?

Niall Drennan

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Beep, Beep

She glides down the catwalk

Confident in her African beauty.

Her dress an African sunset,

Swirls of purple, pink, orange and blue

Catch the light, shimmer in the photographer’s glare.

She wears her chains with ease

They don’t shackle her,

She’s reclaimed them in silk.

These feet, encased in jewel encrusted shoes,

Used to walk barefooted on her way to school.

Dust staining her toes saffron.

On Saturday she’d go market with her mother

Buy green plantain, glossy yellow peppers,

Brown dried fish. The fragrance of cinnamon,

Sage, clove and cardamom intoxicated her.

Women wore their weekend best,

Colours as dazzling as the

Vegetables and spices they were buying.

She never forgets where she came from

She’s more than a clothes horse for a nation.

She’ll keep on telling of the day when

Her mother took her to the woman’s house.

Of the lightless interior and the stench of

Disinfectant and blood.  How her mother

And grandmother held her down on the green mat

While the woman cut.  She will keep on telling

How, on her seventh birthday, she became a woman.

Kathleen Weigelt