Brighton at Work: People and Industries Through the Years by Kevin Newman
Brighton may be known for pleasure, promenading and seaside escapism, but behind all that fun, generations of people had to make the place work. In Brighton at Work, local historian Kevin Newman explores the people, trades, professions and industries that built, fed, educated, entertained, transported and defended the city. From fishermen, hoteliers and publicans to clergymen, teachers, engineers, politicians and some altogether more unusual occupations, it is less a conventional history of employment than a history of Brighton told through the people who earned their living there.
There are some history books you read to learn, and others you read for the sheer pleasure of the stories they tell. Brighton at Work manages to do both. Its purpose is surely to educate, inform and entertain, and it does all three with apparent ease.
A history with personality
Newman writes in an easy, conversational style, sewn through with a subtle, cheeky humour. He is hugely knowledgeable, yet there is nothing pompous or overly academic about his writing. The language is accessible without ever feeling dumbed down and, despite the extraordinary amount of information packed into these pages, the book is remarkably easy to read. In fact, Newman writes rather as you imagine he might talk. By the end, you feel he is someone you would very happily invite to dinner or, perhaps more appropriately, settle down with in a Brighton pub and allow him to regale you with stories for the evening.
The opening chapter, Living from La Mer, sets the tone. We travel from the world’s deepest and now almost forgotten hand-dug well to the construction of the aquarium and the engineering of the Chain Pier with remarkable dexterity. Subjects that could be desperately dry simply never feel so. One minute we are in the fish markets, bargaining over cod and eels; the next we are hunkering down against great storms and attacks by the French, before sailing aboard the Surprise with the wonderfully cheeky Nicholas Tattersall.
And that is really the joy of this book. Story by story and occupation by occupation, another layer is added until a wonderfully rich and complex picture of Brighton begins to emerge.
Mischief amongst the history
Newman has an excellent eye for the mischievous detail and an equally good instinct for when to deploy a throwaway line. In Living for the Lord, we meet a particularly vitriolic member of the clergy. Newman’s verdict, “he must be so much fun at christenings”, made me laugh out loud. Moments later we have moved on to ladies of the night and the thrashing of a cheeky young boy.
Education gets similarly lively treatment. Amid histories of institutions including Brighton College and Roedean are mysterious rowing clubs, beer drinking and bed sharing or the lack of it. We encounter Mrs Fort and her views on a woman’s place, alongside a one-legged Hollywood movie-star swimming teacher and headmaster Mick O’Byrne. These are not simply amusing diversions. Newman is particularly good at finding the tiny details and individual characters that conventional histories can overlook. His elegantly acerbic little vignettes bring people to life while, almost incidentally, delivering a considerable amount of social history.
Even Brighton’s great Victorian innovations are not safe from his eye for the absurd. Ludicrous and Left Field Livings gives us beadles and cushions, clock winders and “corpulent Aldermen”, including the glorious tale of Volk’s pioneering electric railway apparently being unable to pull the weight of one particularly substantial alderman. So much for modernisation.
Humour, but also humanity
It would be wrong, however, to give the impression that brighton at work by kevin newman
is simply a collection of entertaining historical curiosities. Laudable Livings and Wonderful Workers provides a poignant counterbalance. It begins with the extraordinary Phoebe Hessel, who disguised herself as a male soldier to serve alongside the man she loved and lived to the remarkable age of 108.
We encounter Sake Dean Mahomed, the “Royal Shampooing Surgeon”, but also the shocking treatment of naturalised Germans during the First World War, including Metropole waiter Frederick Wesche, and the tragic story of Alfred Vanderbilt.
Newman moves between Brighton’s busy hotels and restaurants and its wartime hospitals, revealing defences disguised as everyday buildings, including a pillbox masquerading as a newsagent’s. Then he brings us forward to more recent achievements associated with the city, including the development of the defibrillator. That ability to alter the register (from absurdity to tragedy, eccentricity to genuine achievement) gives the book substance.
Brighton in all its glorious variety
Perhaps the greatest pleasure is the sheer breadth of the Brighton that emerges. Livings in Leisure takes us into the city’s hotels, pubs and entertainment. There is the wonderful detail that a perfume was commissioned for the opening of the Metropole and another for the Clock Tower, which, Newman observes, “presumably… didn’t smell of oily machinery”.
We join publicans George and Jessie Thomas for their extraordinary golden wedding anniversary, dally with the Flat Earth Club at The Globe and career through the city’s pubs, films and festivals. Elsewhere there are potty politicians, loony lawyers, admirable architects and terrible town planners; commerce; buildings that might have transformed Brighton’s skyline but were never built; and the revolutions brought by trains, bicycles, the Emancipation Run, cars and planes.
What becomes apparent is that “work” is not a restriction on Newman’s subject but his way into it. Through the people who worked here, he explores how Brighton became Brighton. The plentiful historic photographs and images add another dimension, giving faces and form to the stories while providing welcome breathing space amongst the almost astonishing density of information.
And there is a lot of information. Some chapters are inevitably more substantial than others and there were moments when I would have welcomed a little more time to linger over one subject before being whisked on to the next. But that is also a consequence of Newman’s extraordinary breadth of research and perhaps a clue as to how best to enjoy the book.
A book to keep dipping into
The chapters stand independently, making Brighton at Work particularly well suited to browsing. You can certainly read it from beginning to end, but equally you can pick it up, follow whichever subject takes your fancy and invariably emerge with several facts you didn’t know before.
Perhaps that is ultimately what Newman does best. Sentence by sentence, anecdote by anecdote and occupation by occupation, he builds Brighton in layers. For anyone just dipping a toe into Brighton’s history, the book provides an immensely accessible way in. For those who think they already know the city, the sheer quantity of minute, forgotten and unexpected detail is likely to prove them wrong.
Brighton at Work is informative without being heavy, funny without trying too hard and knowledgeable without ever becoming showy. Most importantly, it makes you want to know more. This is not simply a book to read once and put back on the shelf. It is one to keep within reach, because you will almost certainly find yourself returning to it time and again.
You can buy a copy here: Brighton at Work
About Kevin Newman
Kevin Newman is a Sussex-born author, historian, teacher and tour guide whose work explores the rich history and character of Sussex and beyond. A regular contributor to history publications, newspapers and magazines, he is best known for his Sussex & Surrey Miscellany column and his engaging talks across the South East. Kevin has written numerous books, including the bestselling The Little History of Sussex, as well as local history titles, novels and national publications. Alongside his writing, he runs the Sussex-based consultancy All-Inclusive History, presents talks and events, and continues to work in education. He lives beneath the South Downs with his family and remains passionate about uncovering and sharing the stories that make Sussex unique.
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