Story Category: Legacy

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

In my recent role of Assistant Curator I was given the task of digitising material from the Local History collections. This is part of the preparation required before items are moved to the Keep, a new archive building for East Sussex. Having digital versions will make the collections more accessible and also help to preserve the original objects. Scanning images was not new to me but I was not accustomed to dealing with audio clips.

I started off with an introduction to the oral history collection by Kate Richardson, Curator of Community History. She talked me through the procedure of digitising recordings and showed me the Adobe Audition software used for this. Kate also gave me an overview of the Brighton & Hove Museums’ collection and the range of topics covered by the interviews, such as life and work in Brighton, youth culture clothing styles, the local Hindu community and LGTB memories of the Pride festival. These interviews have been gathered over the years for particular projects or exhibitions presented by the Royal Pavilion and Museums. In addition, the museums also hold collections created by other organisations, for example Radio Brighton and the Brighton Polytechnic History Workshop.

The History Workshop movement began at Ruskin College, Oxford. It was started by Raphael Samuel, an historian and tutor who supported the study of ‘history from below’, or history as seen from ordinary people’s perspective. Whereas history had traditionally been researched and recounted by academics, Samuel encouraged the participation and contribution of the general public. This was achieved by holding a series of ‘workshops’, the first taking place in 1967. The movement grew, continuing on until the 1990s. Regional groups formed and held their own workshops to gather local information and memories. 1976 saw the launch of the History Workshop Journal, which still continues today.

The first recordings I was given to copy were made in 1978 by Brighton Polytechnic History Workshop. These were a series of interviews with Edward Thomas or ‘Ted’ Sharman who had been an apprentice fitter/turner at the London Brighton & South Coast Railway 1916-1922. We do not have any accompanying documentation for the tapes so it was necessary for me to listen to the recordings and write out summaries of what was discussed. This provides a quick reference point when looking for information on a specific subject that may have been mentioned during the interview.  As someone with no prior knowledge of or particular interest in engineering and locomotives, I was slightly daunted at the prospect of listening to and summarising hours of very technical information.

However this was not the case. Ted clearly liked to chat and spoke fluently about the years of his apprenticeship and beyond. He recounted his early days in the different departments such as the machine shop, the fitting shop and the erecting shop. His descriptions of the appearance and characters of his co-workers brought them to life; from the assistant foreman, “a very military looking gentleman…[who] had a black moustache, waxed and twisted right out here” to the foreman of the machine shop, “ a little short man. He’d got bandy legs. I should know that because I drew a cartoon of him once and got into serious trouble.” However, despite his candid accounts of the management, Ted often mentions his gratitude to the men who taught him engineering and how this early training determined the course of his life.

Another key part of the conversations was Ted’s involvement with trade unions; his membership of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers aged 15 leading to a lifetime commitment to the trade union movement. He describes the somewhat mysterious sounding procedure he went through to join: “And I well remember going along to the public house…called the Springfield Arms on the evening of my ‘reading in’…being kept outside waiting for at least half an hour before I was permitted to go inside, and somebody opened a little window in the door, and that was the doorkeeper…the whole room was full of these fellows…and there I stood in front of them, whilst I was read into being a member, almost afraid of the scene I was in.” Eventually he outgrew his initial fear and later became very active in various political organisations, taking part in regular public speaking on the Level with the Independent Labour Party, and addressing a packed audience at the Dome as part of the No More War movement.

As well as explaining the industrial aspects of the railway works in great depth, he also gave a vivid account of life during the early twentieth century. He talked about the social activities he and his friends enjoyed and I was particularly pleased when he mentioned his local cinema, the Duke of York’s, as I share a fondness for this grand building. Entrance was fourpence but his spending money at the time was sparse and did not stretch to entertaining others. He recalls that ‘…if you were trying to meet a girl friend, you’d meet her inside because you couldn’t afford to pay fourpence to take her in!’

The more I listened, the more I wanted to know about the events, places and people described by Ted. I began to look up information relating to these things, in order to familiarise myself with what was being discussed. My investigations into the railway works led me to The Brighton Circle, a group dedicated to research of the London Brighton & South Coast Railway. At least one of the current members had actually been present during these interviews. Ted’s grandfather was an engine driver of the train ‘183 Eastbourne’, which I can now tell you is of the Gladstone class! Perhaps further research will turn up a picture of this to add to the archive?

Another line I started following was Ted’s athletic achievements. Sport was well covered by the railway company and there were staff clubs for cricket, football, boxing, athletics, rifle shooting and angling. During his apprenticeship Ted was part of the Brighton Railway Athletic Club and I was able to find accounts of some of his appearances at meetings reported in The Times. In 1926 he held the title of Ten Mile (Road Walking) Champion of Great Britain for Sheffield United Harriers and later went on to represent England against Italy.

So where I started with a fear of disappearing under the weight of boilers, axle-boxes, pistons and cylinders, instead Ted took me on a journey through time, into his world and I feel as though I have made a new friend. Although Ted is sadly no longer with us, the oral history archive allows his experiences to ‘live on’ and enrich the learning of future generations. These memories of so-called ‘ordinary’ people are not ordinary to those who grow up in completely different times and circumstances. Therefore it is essential that we preserve this valuable and irreplaceable resource.

And to echo Ted’s words from the end of the last interview, “thank you very much for your patience in listening to me.”

Alexia Lazou, Assistant Curator

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

It’s taken more than a week but I finally found time to nose around the most recently opened exhibition at Brighton Museum, Chilled to the Bone: Ice Age Sussex, upstairs in the Spotlight Gallery.

Probably I hesitated because it’s so flipping cold in real life. But that’s daft, the exhibition is great (and warm!): what a cunning way to bring home some of the grand realities of the ice age, by focusing it closely on the local landscape and history of Sussex.

Chilled to the Bone is full of bones and fossils; smart presenting of the science and makes dense, fascinating use of a relatively small gallery space to get across the sheer bio-diversity and constant shifting of Sussex landmass and coastline during the Ice Age period. It’s also got some cool nuggets on the social history of fossil-hunting and the gradual process by which ‘evolution’ went from being outlandish, revolutionary theory to the proven normality on which so much earthbound science is based.

I particularly like the bears. I’ve been thinking about bears a lot recently; partly since I decided to call my next album The Bear. You know how, once you start thinking about a thing, often you’ll start to see that thing everywhere? I’ve been seeing bears all over the place, all over town. Then the other morning I was up at the Booth Museum and there is a large bear standing right in the doorway. It’s so odd that we’ve made bears ‘cute’ by turning them into soft toys, exaggerating the anthropomorphising of them… but that’s another blog entry. Here in Chilled to the Bone, they’ve actually included a few exhibits and artifacts borrowed from the Booth and there is a huge replica skull of a bear that you can touch, along with some interesting information.

Another big impact of this little exhibition (for me, anyway) was starting to think clearly about the timescales involved in the Ice Age, compared to time frames of human history. For example, compare this stuff to the Ancient Egypt exhibits downstairs. What we think of as “Ancient Egypt” entirely takes place in a window of a few hundred years – and was only a few thousand years ago. When you compare that to an Ice Age, which stretches back hundreds of thousands of years, you can start to comprehend our human scale in comparison with much huger geological timescales.

It’s so hard to think in those terms – which is partly why I imagine people struggle so much with quite simple ideas like evolution or the ‘likelihood’ of natural selection; because it’s so tough to even envision a million years, let alone fathom everything that can occur across a natural environment in that time period.

Anyway, I’m waffling. But Chilled to the Bone is warm, interesting and right by the Café, so I’ll be going back a few more times.

Chris T-T, Blogger in Residence

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

The 17-year-long ceasefire agreement between the so-called ‘reform government’ of Burma and the Kachin Independent Organisation broke down on 9 June 2011 at the Burmese army’s initiation. So far the current civil war has already produced more than 100,000 Kachin refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). Within a year, numerous killings and instances of torture, rape and abuse committed by the Burmese soldiers have been documented.

On the Kachin side, civilians are involved in the fighting, alongside political leaders and soldiers. They are defending their national identity which is under assault by the Burmese military who are threatening the complete extermination of Burma’s Kachin community

In the current civil war, Kachin soldiers are playing an important role. Many of them joined the army to protect their land and cultural identity. For them fighting for future generations of Kachin people is more important than their own life. Their first intentions were not to become soldiers. They joined the army in the hope of resisting the brutal attacks waged against the Kachin people by the Burmese government and of preventing the inhuman acts of the Burmese soldiers.

Many of the photographs taken by Green in north-eastern Burma in the 1920s feature Kachin soldiers. These soldiers worked under the British colonial administration and served in the British Army. Green described them as the being amongst the ‘toughest and most disciplined’ of British military recruits.

Today the majority of the Kachin population respects and supports the Kachin soldiers since they understand their underlying desires. Moreover, Kachins believe that Kachin soldiers are brave and skilful as history has proved.

My name is Gumring and I am a member of the Kachin ethnic community of Burma. Facing many current political challenges and uncertainties, Kachinland is located in north-eastern Burma, between India and China.

I was awarded a scholarship from the James Henry Green Charitable Trust for my postgraduate studies at the University of Sussex. Currently I am working on the James Henry Green collection of photographs and textiles relating to the Kachin community in Burma. This is my third blog about this collection, which is cared for at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.

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

How many ice ages have there been in Earth’s past? Would you expect Britain to be hot or cold during an ice age? And just how big is a mammoth or a cave bear? With our latest exhibition – Chilled to the Bone – at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery we answer these questions and more.

The exhibition came about through a desire to show more of our archaeological collections as well as presenting some of our natural history collections held at the Booth to a wider audience in the centre of town. A new gallery called the Spotlight Gallery has been built on the upper floor of the Brighton Museum in the area previously occupied by the Body Gallery. This space has been designed to be a flexible space with large scale display cabinets suitable for a wide variety of collections, and used to showcase objects from the Brighton Museum collections.

An initial plan for a Piltdown Man exhibition to tie in with the 100^th anniversary of the hoax was discounted due to a lack of material and a clash with a similar exhibition at the Natural History Museum, London. The idea was expanded to include an exhibition on ice ages throughout Earth’s history and on the archaeological discoveries resulting from a Victorian desire to learn more about these stages in our planet’s past, and how humans evolved. This Victorian ‘Bone Rush’ would also include the Piltdown fraud as one of the major events of Sussex archaeology. The exhibition also focuses particularly on the environment of Sussex during the most recent ice age, as well as Sussex archaeology and the search for human origins.

The design and construction of the exhibition was carried out by a small team working with a very limited budget. An additional challenge was that for much of the design stage of the exhibition, the cases were yet to be built. So mock ups were laid out in order to get a general idea of the look of each case and how well things fitted into the space.

The layout of the gallery is such that it was required to be as non-linear as possible as visitors can enter from three different directions, negating a start and end point. As such the intro panel is repeated at both ends of the gallery and each cabinet is built around a theme which should not require the visitor to have read text in a different cabinet before hand.

A welcome addition was an interactive program developed as part of a separate digital project. ‘Chilled to the Bone’ worked as a suitable test bed for the quiz program and allowed us to have a large scale projection and digital interactive that was otherwise out of our budget. The AV section sits alongside an activity wall and handling object to provide an uncluttered and entertaining ‘hands on’ area.

Huge thanks to everyone who worked on the design and installation of the gallery.

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences

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

As the annual closed week at the Booth draws to a close, a number of changes have been made to the museum which the casual visitor may or may not notice.

One of the main aims of the week was to get all of Booth’s birds back on display. As a result the last remaining display boards near the front of the museum have been taken down, opening up those bird cases to visitors once more.

Another major aim of the week was a refurbishment of the Discovery gallery in preparation for new display cabinets, due to be installed in mid March. This extremely well used, family orientated gallery was in need of a spruce up. Over the course of the week the walls and other painted surfaces have been repainted and those surfaces not suitable for repainting have been scrubbed down and made to look as presentable as possible. Many of the labels have also been reprinted and repaired, and some additional objects have been moved out of storage and into the gallery for visitors to see for the first time.

The removal of the panels covering several of the bird displays, as well as the imminent arrival of new cabinets for the Discovery gallery, has required us to move around several of the displays in the museum. One such move was the cornucopia display of exotic birds which has featured on much of the museum’s publicity material in the past. As the move involved building a new plinth and dismantling of parts of the display, we took the opportunity to give the birds and glass a thorough clean. The misty glass is now transparent once more, and the birds have been carefully cleaned to remove the dust that had made its way into the case.

Outside of these major tasks, our team of helpers from across the various museum sites and departments, along with many of our volunteers, did sterling work giving a good clean of the case fronts, carpets and other public areas.

Many thanks to everyone who made time in their extremely busy schedules to give us a hand, and thanks to Lucy, Steve, Peter, Sarah et al, for biscuits and cakes for the troops!

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences

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

9 February marks the anniversaries of the deaths of two well known Brighton figures: John ‘Smoaker’ Miles and John Standing. Aside from the shared first name, these Johns also share the distinction of being working class men who became local celebrities.

John ‘Smoaker’ Miles was a local ‘bather’ who capitalised on the fashion for sea dipping in the second half of the eighteenth century. Like his female contemporary, Martha Gunn, Miles operated a number of bathing machines on the seafront. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with Thomas Rowlandson’s aquatint showing several of Miles’ bathing machines; these are identified as such in this 19th century print based on Rowlandson’s original.

John ‘Smoaker’ Miles’ bathing machines on Brighton Beach. Aquatint by Thomas Rowlandson, 1790 (FA205960)

Portrait of John ‘Smoaker’ Miles by John Russell, 1790s (FA100842)

Miles became a bathing attendant to George, Prince of Wales, and the men established a firm friendship. He was a regular visitor to the Pavilion, and is reputed to have once walked to London to pay his respects to the Prince after a bout of illness.

Miles died on 9 February 1794 and is buried in the graveyard of St Nicholas’ Church. In his honour, the Prince established the Smoaker Stakes at Brighton Racecourse in 1804. His memory is marked today by his portrait which hangs in the Royal Pavilion.

Less is known of John Standing, the ‘Brighton Matchmaker’. A local tradesman, several portraits of him exist, such as this print held by the Bodleian Library. The print may well derive from a drawing in our collections, ascribed to John Bruce. A profile portrait, the matchmaker appears a little less decrepit in the drawing than in the print. The drawing bears handwritten lines of verse that form the opening stanza of the three that can be read in the print:

The Celebrated Matchman of Brighton

There was an old woman

In Rosemary Lane

She cuts ’em and dips ’em

And I doos [sic] the same

Hand drawn portrait of John Standing, the Brighton match maker, 1829

Standing died on 9 February 1833, and the print appears to have been circulated in the last years of his life. Although the precise reasons for his fame are obscure, he is an early example of a tradition of celebrity trades persons in Brighton, such as Brandy Balls and Blind Harry.

Kevin Bacon
Digital Development Officer

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

Few people have been as closely associated with the cultural life of Brighton in the early 20^th century as Henry D Roberts, who moved to the town in 1906 and was involved with our public library, museums and art galleries for nearly thirty years.

Sussex County Magazine, December 1935

The eldest of ten children, Roberts left school at 16 and started work within the library service in Newcastle. He became the youngest librarian in the country when, in 1893, he was offered a post at St Saviour’s Public Library in Southwark. On top of his responsibilities as librarian, he arranged lectures for adults and children, contributed articles to newspapers including The Times, and served on countless committees.  His appetite for work, and his ability to take on many different projects, seems to have been extraordinary.

After his arrival in Brighton, he set about raising the profile of the library, introducing longer opening hours and open access to books, while increasing the average attendance from 150 to more than 500 people per day within his first two years in the job. A profile published in 1908 declared that, ‘Mr Roberts has left no stone unturned to acquaint the public with the advantages of the library.’

In the public art gallery, he broke new ground with a series of exhibitions focusing not on English artists, as had been the norm, but on the modern art of other nations. The first of these shows, an Exhibition of the Works of Modern French Artists, opened in June 1910 and featured paintings by Monet, Degas, Matisse and Cezanne, many of which were for sale.

Sussex Daily News, 30 June 1917

In subsequent years, the art of Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Russia and Japan was showcased in Brighton in this way. Roberts understood the importance of official patronage in raising the status of his events, and was apparently fearless in approaching heads of state or royal family members. It was reported in the Brighton Herald, for example, that he met with Mussolini in Rome to discuss the exhibition of Modern Italian art held in 1926, for which he secured the patronage of the King of Italy. Art critic Robert Dell observed, ‘Brighton is to be congratulated on the possession of a Director of its Public Art Gallery sufficiently enterprising to conceive so ambitious a scheme.’

Brighton Society, 17 February 1916

In 1920, Roberts became the first director of the Royal Pavilion Estate, an additional post for which he was paid £100 per year. During World War One, the Royal Pavilion had been used as a hospital, initially for wounded Indian soldiers and later for limbless men, andRoberts had acted as liaison officer between the military authorities and the town during this time. He was obviously seen as a safe, highly motivated, pair of hands. An article in the Brighton Herald published on 24 April 1920 spoke approvingly of his ‘thorough knowledge of the possibilities of the Royal Pavilion’ and, when he and his family had moved into their quarters within the building, he began a programme of repair and refurbishment, using original archives and accounts for reference. In his own Official Guide to the State Apartments, published in 1929, he described the glorious wall decorations in the Music Room which, he explained, ‘have only recently been exposed to the present generation…until the 1921 restoration their beauties had been covered by layers of varnish, which had become darkened through age.’

On top of his many duties, Roberts found time for a surprising number of activities, which he documented meticulously in scrapbooks that are held in Brighton History Centre’s collection of rare materials. The scrapbooks include newspaper cuttings, correspondence, invitations to official functions and all sorts of fascinating ephemera from the early 20^th century. Roberts also gave lectures, wrote books, including A History of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, published in 1939, and at the request of Sir Charles Thomas-Stanford, transcribed and edited Brighton’s early parish registers.

Lecture invitation, 1916

Sir Charles and Lady Thomas-Stanford are known to have thought highly of Roberts and it was he who suggested that they bequeath Preston Manor and its contents to the town upon their deaths. They were happy to do this, and requested that Roberts act as director of the property. He moved there with his family in 1933 and remained until his death in 1951.

In spite of his high profile, Roberts seems to have been a modest character. His obituary in The Times described him as, ‘a keen-faced, energetic man, more ready to listen than to talk, quick to read a useful suggestion into a casual remark, and with an extraordinary perception  of what was significant, or likely to be significant in modern art.’ Looking back on his own career, he said, ‘I think I have had opportunities which have not always been given to others and I have perhaps taken advantage of many of them… I have loved my work and I have given of my best to Brighton.’

Kate Elms, Brighton History Centre

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

September means the start of a new school year and, as ever, the newspapers are full of stories related to education.

Students at the Municpal Schools for Boys and Girls, based in Pelham Street and York Place, taken from school magazines published in 1911-12

Students at the Municpal Schools for Boys and Girls, based in Pelham Street and York Place, taken from school magazines published in 1911-12

A hundred years ago this month, however, journalists were talking not just about exam results, or who should be taught what, but about pupils up and down the country closing their books and going on strike. It seems that Brighton and Hove were not affected by this extraordinary wave of school strikes – during which pupils demanded free pencils, shorter hours and an end to corporal punishment – but this did not stop the local press taking issue with the strikers.

Brighton Gazette on 13 Sept 1911

According to the Brighton Gazette,

‘The latest news from the strike area is that the revolt has collapsed and that the strikers, on returning to their classrooms, received very conclusive proof that the use of the cane was still in operation.’ The report went on to conclude, ‘The vision of a national strike of schoolboys is a fearsome one indeed…So, all things considered, it is just as well that the schoolmaster still wields an instrument of repression.’

Brighton Gazette, Sat September 30 1911

On a lighter note, later that month the same paper highlighted what was described as ‘an epidemic of marriage…among the lady teachers under the Brighton and Preston Education Authority.’ Citing the coronation of George V as one reason for this wedding fever, the report goes on to say: ‘Though everyone recognises their intellectual qualities, there is no reason to suppose that lady teachers have enjoyed a monopoly of the attention of the Brighton gallants, who must be congratulated on having falsified an impression that they were fighting shy of the nuptial bliss or the responsibilities of conjugal life.’

Kate Elms, Brighton History Centre

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

I first saw the Royal Pavilion one sunny afternoon in July 1993.

I had just finished my last GCSE exam when a friend suggested a celebratory trip to Brighton. I remember driving past the Royal Pavilion having no idea what this exotic building was, but it was one of the most beautiful places I had seen.

My next visit to Brighton was in my last year at University in 1998. I fell in love with the city, instantly making it my home. I enrolled on a Museum Management course and, while studying, read an article by the Royal Pavilion & Museums‘ Head of Retail.

At a time when national museums became free to visit, she was writing interesting thoughts on the importance of income generation. This was right up street and I applied for work experience. As my student loan trickled away, the gift shop manager took pity on me and arranged some paid work, eventually leading to a full time position.

Our head of commercial and business services was already looking at how we developed our customer service and I found myself at the exciting centre of creating a new booking office and implementing a new ticketing and telephone system across our venues.

This sweeping change has been an amazing challenge and the benefits for customers and the Royal Pavilion & Museums service have been bountiful. Constantly striving to improve how we work, my team has been actively engaged in systems thinking, a performance improvement exercise, and I recently had the great pleasure of watching a demonstration of the Business Objects work my booking office colleague has been involved in. This is a powerful piece of reporting software that will quietly revolutionise how we gather and present our figures giving us tools to further develop the service in a much more customer led way.

I have been so fortunate in the opportunities I have been given with the Royal Pavilion & Museums and the support I have received. Although the beautiful Royal Pavilion is thankfully little changed since I first clapped eyes on it back in 1993 I can now count myself among the number of people actively improving that all important income generation I read about as a student some 11 or so years ago. I look forward to an exciting future.

Lucy Cheffy, Booking Office Manager

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

Brighton History Centre’s collection of rare materials contains many unique objects, including handwritten ledgers, albums and scrapbooks. One of the most fascinating examples recalls Billy Boardman’s time as manager of The Hippodrome Theatre in Middle Street.

Billy Boardman and members leaving for France

Boardman came to Brighton in 1910 and presided over the Hippodrome during the golden age of variety performance, bringing stars such as Lillie Langtry and Sarah Bernhardt to town. Passionate about the stage, he was also committed to charitable work, taking the world’s first concert party to France during World War I. There, stars such as Gladys Cooper and Seymour Hicks entertained thousands of troops with their singing, acting and dancing.

At home, Boardman arranged entertainment for wounded troops, including the Indian soldiers being treated at the Royal Pavilion, and raised money to provide wheelchairs for the limbless men who were later cared for there. It’s all the more poignant, then, to discover that his only son, Albert, was killed in action in May 1918.

For King and Country

Hippodrome programme

Boardman retired from the Hippodrome in 1924 and moved to France, but he returned to Brighton some years before his death in 1959. His obituary, published in the Brighton Herald, described him as ‘one of the outstanding personalities of the town. The life and soul of every party and always in the fore with any charity or benevolent appeal.’

If you’re interested in looking at the Hippodrome scrapbook, which contains correspondence, news cuttings and ephemera, see our website for details of how to access the rare collection. Boardman’s autobiography, Vaudeville Days, is also available for reference.

Kate Elms, Brighton History Centre