Story Category: Legacy

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

Writing table commissioned by George, Prince of Wales, c1810

Thanks to the generosity of the late Barbara Curd née Coombes, a writing table made for George, Prince of Wales, in about 1810 has returned to the Royal Pavilion. The mahogany writing table was removed from the Royal Pavilion by Queen Victoria between 1845 and 1850 and given by her to her third son Prince Arthur, later Duke of Connaught ( 1850-1942). The Duke had a distinguished military career, rising to the rank of Field Marshall. He spent part of each year at Bagshot Park, Surrey or at Clarence House, London. The table was probably used at one or both of these residences.

Charlotte Haskins, date unknown. Photograph by Madame Yevonde.

The Duke died at Bagshot on 16 January 1942, nursed in his last years by Charlotte Haskins (1897-1965 ). At some point he gave the table as a present to his nurse and it descended to Barbara Curd (1919-2011) who wished to leave it to the Royal Pavilion in memory of her aunt, Charlotte Haskins.

The table is marked on the underside PAVILION and carries the monogram of George IV. It is possible that it was made by the royal cabinet makers Tatham, Bailey and Sanders.

David Beevers
Keeper of the Royal Pavilion

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With the London to Brighton Bike Ride taking place on 19 June, many would be surprised to learn that a similar event took place as long ago as 1870.

Old Steine 1877

Thomas Moon, son of the licensee of the Union Inn, Gloucester Road cycled from Brighton to London and back in a day. He was accompanied by Captain Fry of the Fire Brigade.

The run seems to have been quite leisurely, after leaving Brighton at 4.55am they stopped for breakfast for three quarters of an hour at Crawley and arrived at the Elephant & Castle Inn, London at 11.45am – a time of six hours.  They dined at the inn for two hours and started their return to Brighton 1.55pm arriving in the town at the Elephant & Castle, London Road at 10pm.  The entire distance of 104 miles was completed in fifteen hours.

The Brighton Gazette reported that Mr. Moon, ‘who is an expert bicyclist’, recently completed the run from London to Brighton in five hours and forty minutes, ‘the quickest time in which it has been known to have been run’.

The bike run in its present form seems to have begun in 1976 according to the

Queen Victoria

Evening Argus in 1983. That year all manner of bicycles were entered including unicycles, penny farthings, rickshaws and tandems. Theatre groups and brass bands entertained the cyclist on route and a bicycle boogie took place at the Royal Albion Hotel.

In 1976 there were thirty four entrants, eleven thousand in 1983 and twenty seven thousand in 2010!

Paul Jordan, Senior History Centre Officer

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Living Chess, 1904, HA901542

The Brighton Mayor’s Children’s Ball was a regular event. Usually held in the Royal Pavilion, it appears to have been a charitable occasion that took place in the early part of the year. The theme for 1904 was ‘Living Chess’, and this postcard shows the children dressed as black and white chess pieces.

Although the ball was, presumably, a fun occasion, the image seems stilted and awkward. The children are all unsmiling or supressing grins. Most likely, this is because the stiff poses of Victorian portraiture had yet to fade from the photographer’s art, but it could also be a reflection of the game. Chess may be fun, but it is a cold, logical, strategic type of pleasure.

As is often the case with postcards, the message side is a clear contrast. Written to ‘Miss M Hardwick’ in Putney, the sender’s message consists of three simple sentences.

Handwritten side of Living Chess postcard, 1904

‘I hope you are almost well & that it will not be long before you are able to come home. With love to Uncle Frank. Your loving Daddy.’

This message tells us very little. We don’t know the name of the sender, we don’t know what illness his daughter was suffering from, or whether she ever got better. We know nothing about Uncle Frank, or why the daughter had to convalesce with him. But we do know that this father missed his daughter. And, appropriately for Father’s Day, that’s the least mysterious thing of all.

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.

One of the most interesting aspects of our work at Brighton History Centre is answering enquiries from members of the public. These range from the very specific to the more general. We might be asked, for example, when the houses in a particular street were built, or who designed the city’s Victorian schools. Or, perhaps, how Brighton was affected by the coming of the railway.

Charles Dickens Farewell Tour

Recently, we were asked if we had any information about Charles Dickens’ links to Brighton. How often did he come here? Where did he stay? It seems Dickens was a frequent visitor, coming first in October 1837, around the same time that Queen Victoria was making her first appearance in the town. Unlike Victoria, Dickens obviously liked what he saw and came back repeatedly over the next 30 years, staying in a variety of places on the seafront. The Bedford Hotel seems to have been a particular favourite, but he also ‘put up’ at the Old Ship Hotel and, from time to time, stayed in private lodgings with friends and family.

On one occasion, he and his entourage, which included the illustrator John Leech, were forced to flee their rented accommodation because the landlord and his daughter apparently went quite mad. Dickens described the scene vividly in a letter to a friend: ‘If you could have heard the cursing and the crying of the two, could have seen the physician and nurse quoited out into the passage by a madman at the hazard of their lives; could have seen Leech and me flying to the doctor’s rescue…you would have said it was quite worthy of me…’

While parts of Bleak House and Barnaby Rudge are said to have been written in Brighton, the novel that has the closest connection with the town is Dombey and Son, first published in monthly parts from 1846. In it, the young Paul Dombey, a frail and sickly child, is sent here by his father for the good of his health. He and his sister Florence lodge with Mrs Pipchin, whose home ‘in a steep bye-street at Brighton’ is thought to be based on a house in Upper Rock Gardens, and he is sent to Dr Blimber’s academy, which was probably inspired by one of the many private schools for young gentlemen that operated here at that time.

In later years, Dickens came to town for readings of his works, which always attracted a large and fashionable crowd. After one event at the Town Hall, Dickens wrote, ‘Last night I had a most charming audience for [David] Copperfield, with a delicacy of perception that really made the work delightful.’ In 1868, Brighton was included as part of his ‘farewell tour’, and again, each performance was hugely popular – a report in the Brighton Gazette describes ‘a room full to repletion’ at the Grand Concert Hall, where ‘the dialogue throughout was delivered by [Dickens] in his liveliest and most felicitous manner.’

For more information about Brighton History Centre’s Research Service, please refer to our website. To see images of Brighton Museum & Art Gallery’s Dickens-related objects, posted to commemorate the anniversary of his death in June 1870, vistit Flickr.

Kate Elms, Brighton History Centre

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This pair of flint axeheads were found together at Clappers Platts near Fulking in 1905 and were later purchased by Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. They date from the Neolithic Period, around 5,000 years ago.

Although they are unpolished, the axes have been finely worked so that they are almost identical in size and shape. The flint they were produced from was carefully chosen to ensure that the patterning and coloration match perfectly. Given the effort and care put into their production, it would seem unlikely that the axes were intended for practical use. They were probably made by the same person and then deliberately buried in an act that must have had some important ritual meaning.

The production and trading of stone axes, particularly polished axes, is an important feature of the Neolithic. At a time when land was being cleared of woodland and then cultivated to produce crops, the axe may well have been an important symbol of the change of lifestyle from hunter-gatherer to farmer.

This importance may be reflected in the deliberate burial of groups or ‘caches’ of axes which is fairly common at that time. In general, axes are found in unpolished pairs and because of the similarities in their production, it is thought that in each case the same person would probably have produced them. At the Neolithic site of Combe Hill, one of the six Sussex sites where axe caches have been found, three axes were found carefully placed in the eastern ditch of a causewayed enclosure. Local archaeologist, Professor Peter Drewett, has speculated that the eastern side may well have faced the wilder, uncultivated land and the burying of the axes may well have signified the boundary between the tamed and the untamed.

Although we have little information about the discovery of the axes at Clappers Platts it may well be that they were buried on a similar boundary, as Neolithic farming communities spread from West to East, using their axes to tame the wild woodland.

Andy, Volunteer Local History & Archaeology

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June marks the anniversary of the death of Charles Dickens (1812-1870). To mark the occasion, we take a look at an object from the Decorative Art collection which was inspired by his work.

The blue-printed plate made by Doulton has a central portrait of Dickens with the profile of St Paul’s Cathedral in the background. Around the rim are many of his best known characters, including Fagin and Bill Sykes from Oliver Twist, Sam Weller and Mr Pickwick from the Pickwick Papers.

Charles Dickens Memorial Plate

The works of Charles Dickens are, understandably, well represented in the collections at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. He was born in Portsmouth to John and Elizabeth Dickens. Soon after being sent to school in 1821, his whole family, apart from Charles, were sent to the Marshalsea prison because of his father’s bad debts, an episode that was to inform the experience of Little Dorrit whose father was similarly detained. Charles’s father was the inspiration for the character of Mr Micawber in David Copperfield. Charles spent three years working in Warren’s blacking factory and endured appalling conditions as well as loneliness and despair. Although he returned to school, the experience became fictionalised in two of his best-known novels, David Copperfield and Great Expectations.

Dickens began his literary career as a journalist, becoming parliamentary correspondent for The Morning Chronicle in 1833. In 1836 he published the highly successful Pickwick Papers with illustrations Hablot Knight Browne, known as Phiz, who died in 1882 and is buried in Brighton’s Extra-Mural Cemetery. Dickens himself spent time in Brighton and wrote Dombey and Son while staying at the Bedford Hotel.

Stella Beddoe, Senior Keeper and Keeper of Decorative Art

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Henry Willett, a founding father of Brighton Museum, was a man of great energy, enthusiasm and wide-ranging interests.

Henry Willett pictured with a child, possibly his grand-child

He was born in 1823, the youngest of the eleven children of William Catt an energetic farmer and miller. His mother Hannah died shortly after his birth, so Henry was raised by his eldest sister, Elizabeth. She died in 1863 leaving her 8 surviving siblings £13,000 in her will provided they change their name from Catt to Willett. Three challenged this in a High Court case entitled ‘Catt’s Trusts’ and were able to benefit from her will but keep their name.  Henry was happy to adopt the name of Willett, perhaps to forestall teasing. In 1864, during an early foray into Brighton politics on behalf of the Liberal candidate, Professor Fawcett, he was mocked by the Tory press under the headline;

‘Mewsings on Cat-iline Willett’s Cat-asstrophe’.

Henry and his brothers and sisters were raised at Newhaven Tidemills, the largest watermill in Sussex, built on reclaimed land. He moved to Brighton in 1841 where he ran the West Street Brewery (another family business) and bought property throughout Sussex, particularly after his marriage to Frances Coombe, who came from a landed West-Sussex family. He was an astute businessman, investing in the Blackpool Electric Tramway, the Midland Railway and public utilities including electricity companies in Western Australia. In his will of 1905 he left an estate worth over £230,000.

At his family home in Upper North Street, Brighton he cultivated the acquaintance writers and thinkers such as John Ruskin, the American Oliver Wendell Holmes and Sir Augustus Franks, an influential curator at the British Museum who helped him to develop his ideas on collecting. Willett’s first collecting passion was for chalk fossils, which he excavated from the Sussex Downs. He also collected natural history specimens, archaeology, local products such as iron fire-backs and Sussex pottery as well as artefacts from other cultures.  Most of the important paintings he collected were later sold to international collections.

His most innovative collection was that of pottery and porcelain intending to illustrate British history, political social and cultural through the medium of ceramics. In pursuing his idea he acquired many mass-produced pieces that were disregarded at the time as well as rare ones, uniquely signed or decorated. They were first shown as a loan collection in the newly opened Brighton Free Museum in 1873, then enlarged and developed until it was presented as a gift to Brighton in 1903.  In his catalogue of 1899 he grouped the 2000 pieces in the collection, vessels, plaques, tiles and figures, under the twenty-three subject headings.

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Lieutenant Colonel John Fawcett, first Mayor of Brighton, 1854.

Lieutenant Colonel John Fawcett

Before the creation of the Borough of Brighton by Incorporation on 19 January 1854 the town was led by Town Commissioners. Several attempts had been made to create a Borough prior to 1854; supporters arguing that the Town Commissioners were extravagant, too numerous and had only limited powers. Those who were anti-incorporation argued that there would be an even greater burden on the town’s rate-payers if incorporation took place.

John Fawcett was born in Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1803 and was listed on the 1851 census as ‘retired Major (East India Service)’. Fawcett was elected to Town Commissioner in January 1854 and was an active promoter for the Charter of Incorporation. At the first election of Councillors and was returned second for the newly formed Park Ward behind  William Hallett (who became Mayor of Brighton in 1855).

Brighton’s first Mayor

On 7 June 1854, at the first meeting of the new council, Fawcett was elected Mayor of Brighton. A strong Liberal in politics, he wasn’t without his critics. One newspaper article stated that:

‘The Mayor on his inauguration, addressed the Council in one of his incomprehensible speeches’.

The Brighton Guardian was outraged when the Mayor suggested he should be paid a salary. One figure mooted was £300 per annum. The Brighton Herald was no less shocked, stating that:

‘By once fixing a salary, the door is open to numerous abuses’

The Mayor’s chain was presented to the Fawcett by Jeremiah Pilcher. He had worn it himself when Sheriff of the City of London. The badge was added by ‘some ladies of Brighton’ and the borough arms and motto were selected by Alderman Burrows (Mayor of Brighton in 1857, 1858 and 1871).

Fawcett left Brighton around 1865 and resided in Jersey where he died on 24 March 1878.

Paul Jordan, Senior History Centre Officer

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Countryside 2011 takes place from the 28^th May to the 12^th June. To celebrate we take a look at some of the species on display at the Booth Museum.

The stoat has had an unfortunate relationship with man over the centuries. Along with being a highly prized fur species, gamekeepers and farmers have persecuted stoats in Britain for hundreds of years because they eat game bird eggs, chicks and even the sitting hen. However, in their natural ranges stoats are far more likely to eat rabbits, and act as a strong natural control on their numbers. This relationship is so clearly marked, that the rabbit myxomatosis outbreak in the 1950s decimated stoat numbers due to an overwhelming loss of prey.

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The stoat’s predilection for rabbits was used as justification for introducing them into New Zealand in order to control the rabbit population (which had also been introduced). However, the flightless indigenous birds proved to be easier prey for the stoats, and they have in turn become pests, helping to push many bird species to the brink of extinction. Efforts are now underway to completely eradicate stoats from many of the islands of New Zealand.

Stoats are often mistaken for weasels, but there are several differences. Appearance wise, weasels do not have a black tipped tail, and do not have a white winter coat. Stoats can live significantly longer than weasels, some living for up to ten years. Stoats also have one of the longest gestation periods in mammals, demonstrating delayed implantation, where the fertilized eggs are held in suspension for up to ten months before beginning to develop.

There are several examples of stoats in the Booth Museum collection, but one of the best examples is a case of two stoats in their winter ermine coat. This case was created by the award winning taxidermist William Farren. Farren operated in the late 19th and early 20th century, and his shop was located at 23 Regent Street, Cambridge. Farren often accompanied the Hon. E S Montague, Secretary of State for India, on expeditions, and many of his works are cared for by Leicester museums’ service. The case of stoats is typical of Farren’s creations as they usually depict the animals in their natural surroundings, with an absence of prey species. This particular example is part of the education collection, and is often used in the Booth Museum for learning.

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences