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Gscene Magazine - September 2020 | 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’. He died the next day. That, for me, sums up what death brings: sadness, tragedy, irony and, occasionally, gallows humour.
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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 clergy, chosen hymns and secular music, picked out coffins, selected crematoria, collected ashes, given eulogies and even sang solo at a funeral. 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. 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. 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.
The graves of "The Babes in The Woods" Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows
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’. 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’.
TAY The AIDS memorial created by Romany Mark Bruce
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 to attack, vilify and stigmatise a so-called ‘minority’ section of society. And a very effective weapon it was, too – engendering bigotry and hatred, and leading to unnecessary deaths from lack of state provision for treatment, research and social care. Instead, the government spent £20 million on a 1987 TV and leaflet campaign –the famous ‘tombstone’ image that did much to engender panic, and little to educate and prevent. By 1992, 5% of deaths from infectious diseases in the 25-44 age group were caused by Aids; 93% of those who died were under 50. By 1984, there were 2,500 recorded cases in the UK. But, trust me, as I watched a seemingly never-ending procession of gay male friends, colleagues and acquaintances succumb to the ravages of the virus in that era, those figures felt much higher. And there has evolved, for me, a sense of déjà vu in the current pandemic – that it is those who have either contracted it, or known people who have, who are the most concerned about it. If they haven’t – nah, not so much: it’s just an inconvenient hindrance to shopping and social habits.
To date, four people I know have contracted it: none of them in care homes, and three under 60. Only two have lived to tell the tale – one of those who did not was our own dear David Harvey.
Rose Collis with the late David Harvey
And, almost inevitably, it was in Brighton & Hove that the only public memorial in the UK to those lost to Covid-19 has appeared: the tribute made out of stones which appeared on Hove Lawns in July which spelled out ‘44,602’ – the number of our fellow citizens in the UK lost by that date. Spain had nine days of official mourning for its Covid fatalities. I am not holding my breath for this country to do the same. But I will not forget them.
MORE INFO
Death And The City by Rose Collis is available as a POD paperback and Kindle book from www.amazon.co.uk D For more info about Rose, visit:
