Brighton
was an important fishing village in the 16th century, with 400 fishermen
and sixty boats. By the early 17th century Brighton was the largest
town in Sussex with a population of nearly 4,000 people.
The decline in the fishing industry during the 18th century resulted
in large numbers leaving the town in search of work. Those that remained
found life very difficult and by 1740 over three quarters of Brighton's
households were too poor to pay rates.
In the middle of the 18th century some doctors began to claim that
diseases could be cured by bathing in sea-water. George
III was the first monarch to believe this advice and he regularly
visited Weymouth for a swim. His son, the future George
IV, spent a great deal of time in Brighton and eventually built
the Royal Pavilion in the town.
Rich people tended to imitate the behaviour of the royal family, and
holidays by the sea became very fashionable. The number of people
visiting these resorts increased further because of the claims made
by some doctors, such as Richard Russell of Brighton, that drinking
sea-water would cure asthma, cancer, consumption, deafness and rheumatism.
Brighton soon became the most popular seaside resort in Britain, with
over 2,000 people a week visiting the town. The cost of transport
meant that it was extremely rare for most people living in towns to
visit the coast. For example, the cost of a coach ticket from London
to Brighton was more than most people could earn for two weeks work.
However, the large number of rich people in the town enabled the Theatre
Royal to be built in 1807.
After the success of the Liverpool &
Manchester Railway, a group of businessmen decided to build a
railway between London and Brighton. The
first train entered Brighton Railway Station
on 21st September 1841. At first, the railway company concentrated
on bringing the rich to the coast. It was not long, however, before
the company realised that by offering cheap third-class tickets, they
could increase the numbers of people using their trains. In 1843 the
London to Brighton Railway reduced the
price of their third-class tickets to 3s. 6d. In the six months that
followed this reduction in price, 360,000 people arrived in Brighton
by train.
Large numbers of people now moved to the town to provide these visitors
with food and entertainment. Between 1841 and 1871 the population
of Brighton increased from 46,661 to 90,011, making it the fastest
growing town in Britain.
James Wilson Carmichael, Brighton
from the Sea (1840).
(1)
Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole
Island of Great Britain (1724)
Brighthelmston
(Brighton) is a poor fishing town, old built, and on the edge of the
sea. From hence, still keeping the coast close to the left, we come
to Shoreham, a sea-faring town, and chiefly inhabited by ship-carpenters,
ship-chandlers, and all the several trades depending upon the building
and fitting up of ships, which is their chief business. Here in the
compass of about six miles are three borough towns, sending Members
to Parliament: Shoreham, Bramber and Steyning. Shoreham and Steyning
are tolerable little market-towns; but Bramber (a little ruin of an
old castle excepted) hardly deserves the name of a town, having not
above fifteen or sixteen families in it.
(2)
In 1848 two of Elizabeth Fry's daughters collected together her papers
and published them as The Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry.
The book included an account of a visit by Elizabeth
Fry to Brighton in 1824.
During her stay at Brighton, Mrs. Fry was often distressed by the
multitude of applicants for relief. This was not confined to beggars
by profession, who infested the streets, following carriages and foot
passengers with clamorous importunity, but extended to the resident
poor, many of whom had obtained the habit of asking assistance to
the houses, not only of the inhabitants, but the visitors to the place.
It was difficult for the former, but almost impossible for the latter,
to discover the true state of the case, whether their poverty was
real or assumed. Mrs. Fry established the Brighton District Society.
The object of the Society were stated to be, "The encouragement
of industry and frugality among the poor, by visits at their own inhabitations;
the relief of real distress, whether arising from sickness or other
causes; and the prevention.
(3)
Dr. G. S. Jenks, Report
on the Sanitary Condition of Brighton (1839)
Owing to the imperfect and insufficient drainage of the town, the
inhabitants are compelled to have recourse to numerous cess-pools
as receptacles for superabundant water, and refuse of all kinds; and
to save the inconvenience of frequently emptying them, they dig below
the hard coombe rock till they come to the shingles, where all the
liquid filth drains away. The consequence is inevitable; the springs
in the lower part of the town must be contaminated.
Nottingham Street is the well-known haunt of tramps and beggars; Egremont
Street of the lowest prostitutes and thieves. In Nottingham Street
there are eight or nine lodging-houses. Lodging keepers have commonly
three of four houses, for each of which they pay 2s. 6d. per week.
The following is a description of one of them. One room, common to
the whole of the inmates, who amounted to 30, including the children,
served both as kitchen and sitting-room. The room was crowded when
I visited it in company with the chief police-officer, Mr. Solomons,
with not less than 17 people covered with filth and rags. In the largest
of the sleeping rooms, 16 feet by 10 feet, by 7 feet high, there were
six beds, five on bedsteads and one of the floor, to accommodate twelve
people of both sexes, besides children. Each person paid 3d. per night.
(4)
J. G. Bishop, Brighton As It Is (1860)
The houses
of the poor in Brighton, which are situated in narrow streets and
courts, are for the most part ill-ventilated, badly drained, if at
all. The numbers which are huddled together in them render decency
and decorum next to impossible. Many of them being built with inferior
bricks and mortar made of sea-sand are wretchedly damp so that even
the walls are covered with lichens, and the miserable tenants, unable
to endure the depression of spirits which is the necessary result,
try to drown their uneasy sensations in the neighbouring beer shops.
(5)
Edward Carpenter, My Days and Dreams,
(1916)
The scenery and surroundings of Brighton are also bare
and chilly enough; and trees, whose friendly covert I have always
loved, do not exist there; but the place has two nature-elements in
it - and these two singularly wild and untampered - the Sea and the
Downs. We lived within two hundred yards of the sea, and its voice
was in our ears night and day. On terrific stormy nights it was a
grisly joy to go down to the water's edge at 10 or 11 p.m. - pitch
darkness - feeling one's way with feet or hands, over the stony beach,
hardly able to stand for the wind - and to watch the white breakers
suddenly leap out of the gulf close upon one, the booming of the wind,
like distant guns, and the occasional light of some vessel labouring
for its life in the surge.
(6)
Evelyn Sharp used to be a regular visitor
to Brighton with her parents in the 1870s.
Brighton in the seventies was not Hove. For us it was Kemp Town, with
a background of bare Downs and a foreground of untidy shingle on which
lay rowing boats and fishing smacks when they were not afloat - a
beach strewn with bits of treasure cast up by the tide, and with fishing
nets spread out to dry, and, when the tide was out,presenting a long
stretch of rather black smooth sand on which to build castles. Over
all it was the smell of the sea - or was it only of stale fish and
decaying seaweed? - which, with the smell of the magic-lantern and
the circus, may be ranked among the subtle smells of Victorian childhood
that never failed to thrill.
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