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The death of Whitehawk girl Maria Colwell in 1973 brought the issue of child abuse into the public consciousness for the first time and resulted in radical changes in the law and social care policies. The murder of Brighton teacher Jane Longhurst in 2003 led to the creation of a new law to make possession of ‘violent and extreme pornography’ a criminal offence. The unsolved murders of Moulsecoomb schoolgirls Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows in 1986 became one of the prime examples cited in the successful campaign to have the 800-year-old double jeopardy law revoked in 2006. This led to the conviction of their murderer Russell Bishop – found ‘not guilty’ of the killings in 1987 – in 2018. And which city is the leading contender for the Banana Skin Award? Yes, you’ve guessed it… step forward Brighton & Hove, where people are more likely to die in road crashes, falls and accidental poisonings than almost anywhere else in England, according to figures released in March 2012 by the Public Health Observatory. The last outbreak in Britain of once-deadly infectious disease smallpox (now eradicated worldwide) occurred in Brighton in the winter of 1950/51. Emergency vaccination centres were opened and, by the end of the outbreak in February, 85,918 people had been vaccinated. The cast of Mother Goose at the Theatre Royal, including Beryl Reid, were quarantined and then had to queue for vaccinations, ‘principals first’.
DEATH AND THE CITY Sussex-based author, performer and playwright (among other talents) Rose Collis here updates the intro to her fascinating book about Brighton & Hove’s relationship with death to reflect the impact of Covid-19 on the city ) In his diary, the writer JR Ackerley noted a quote from Sophocles’s Antigone: ‘We have only a little time to please the living, but all eternity to love the dead’.
clergy, chosen hymns and secular music, picked out coffins, selected crematoria, collected ashes, given eulogies and even sang solo at a funeral.
He died the next day.
Over the years, my research has borne out what I had long suspected: that Brighton is a perfect microcosm of the British national experience of death, in all its forms. Hence, my book, published in 2013. Brighton teems with innumerable idiosyncrasies and uncanny landmarks that have had a profound effect on both the national consciousness and history.
That, for me, sums up what death brings: sadness, tragedy, irony and, occasionally, gallows humour. Ten years ago, it occurred to me that, while I had only attended four weddings in my life, I had been to a disproportionately high number of funerals and memorials – the first when I was just seven. And since my early 30s, I’ve been involved with almost everything to do with funerals: written obituaries, registered deaths, collected hospital paperwork (in the UK and abroad), chosen and liaised with undertakers and
You doubt me? Well… The first person ever to die in a car crash was from Brighton: in 1898, 42-year-old Henry Lindfield. Until recently, Brighton & Hove had the highest number of suicides in England and Wales.
And some of this might sound a tad familiar: the National Union of Teachers, the Crusader Insurance Company and the National Union of Journalists all cancelled their conferences in Brighton. Local football and rugby fixtures were also cancelled. A Brighton printing company had an order of 3,000 programmes for a boxing tournament at the Albert Hall cancelled at proof stage. Funeral directors refused to handle the bodies of the smallpox fatalities; a café in Chichester put up a sign saying ‘Visitors from Brighton not welcome’ and staff on trains from Victoria shouted ‘All aboard the Plague Special’. The first cases of HIV/Aids in Brighton were diagnosed in 1982, and the first reported death (the 45th in the UK) came two years later. In the next 25 years, 482 people in the town died from the condition, the majority of them gay men. Aids is particularly significant in our history because it was the first time in Britain that a disease was used as a weapon with which
“A café in Chichester put up a sign saying ‘Visitors from Brighton not welcome’ and staff on trains from Victoria shouted ‘All aboard the Plague Special’”
