Brighton & Hove On This Day: History, Facts & Figures from Every Day of the Year

Reverb.

JANUARY

WEDNESDAY 1st JANUARY 1908

Sir Jack Hobbs made his Test debut for England. The Surrey right-hander is widely regarded as cricket’s greatest opening batsman and holds world records in first-class cricket for scoring the most runs (61,237 or 61,760 depending on the source) and centuries (197 or 199). He passed away in Hove in 1963, aged 81. A good innings.

WEDNESDAY 2nd JANUARY 2002

The renowned Hanover Band – widely regarded as the finest orchestra playing period instruments in the world – faced a financial crisis. The Hove-based group needed to find £150,000 by the middle of the month to survive. Chief executive of the group, Stephen Neiman, said; It has taken 22 years to build the orchestra, which has played more than 1,500 concerts spanning three continents. We have made 160 recordings and it would be a tragedy if it were to disband.

SATURDAY 3rd JANUARY 2000

Brighton-born striker Darren Freeman scored the first goal of the new Millennium in English professional football. The 26-year-old netted after just two minutes in Brighton & Hove Albion’s 4-2 Third Division home victory over Exeter City at Withdean Stadium in front of 5,746 fans.

MONDAY 4th JANUARY 1999

Shelagh Diplock, from Hove, was recognised in the New Year’s Honours and received the OBE for services to women’s rights. She became a director of The Fawcett Society, the first women’s suffrage organisation, in 1993 and her work helped to achieve wage parity between the sexes and coincided with an increase in the number of women MPs. It’s great that an award has been made for my work with the group as women’s rights have always been seen as something slightly off-beam, said the mother of two in The Argus.

WEDNESDAY 5th JANUARY 1831

There were no flashing blue lights when the Brighton Fire Establishment was founded. In the early years of the 19th century, individual fire insurance companies employed groups of fire-fighters to attend only blazes on premises insured by that company.

SATURDAY 6th JANUARY 1973

Maria Colwell was killed by her evil stepfather, William Kepple. Born in 1965, the young girl was fostered at an early age and was a happy child. This changed when she returned to live with her biological mother, Pauline, in Whitehawk, who was no longer co-habiting with Maria’s father. She had a new partner, Kepple, who had children of his own, who he clearly favoured. Caring neighbours and teachers communicated concerns to various agencies and, even though she appeared to be ‘almost a walking skeleton’, she was allowed to remain with Kepple and her step-siblings. She was wheeled in a pram to the Royal Sussex County Hospital on this day with severe internal injuries, including brain damage, and died shortly after arrival. The case resulted in a 41-day public inquiry and on November 2nd 1974 a ‘Maria Day’ rally was held in Trafalgar Square, London. The thousand people in attendance called for reforms in the law. The result was the passing of the 1975 Children Act, and reforms to social services departments.

FRIDAY 6th JANUARY 2012

Brighton & Hove City Council leader Bill Randall cut the ribbon to mark the official opening of the refurbished Brighton Centre. The improvements included a new front, doors, and foyer, plus a re-design of the restaurant. The redevelopment continued with the replacement of over 4,000 seats and the modernisation of interiors and meeting facilities.

MONDAY 7th JANUARY 1946

The UK release date of Pink String and Sealing Wax. The film, set in Victorian Brighton, explored the clash between two very different worlds: the privileged household of a respected chemist Edward Sutton, who rules his family with self-righteous cruelty, and the seedy underworld occupied by a pub landlord’s wife, Pearl, her brutal, alcoholic husband, Joe, and her lover, minor villain Dan. A tale of murder, unrequited love, intrigue, ambition and deceit. EastEnders it ain’t.

THURSDAY 7th JANUARY 1960

Earmarked for considerable redevelopment, the permanent Open Market’s 42 stalls welcomed shoppers for the first time. Prior to this, the area had been home to an unorganised selection of barrows, mainly owned by ex-servicemen.

THURSDAY 8th JANUARY 1948

The hotly anticipated world premiere of Brighton Rock, the original film of Graham Greene’s novel, was held at midnight at the Savoy Cinema in East Street, Brighton.

SUNDAY 9th JANUARY 1966

Fire swept through Hove Town Hall, destroying the Great Hall, the council chamber, and the banqueting hall. The magistrates’ court room – which was temporarily housed in the new police building in Holland Road – was unusable, civic records were lost, and the clock tower was badly damaged. A passer-by raised the alarm just past 3am and firemen discovered the Great Hall alight. Just a few hours earlier, 500 revellers were dancing the night away. The three-storey building, constructed in 1882, saw flames shooting 150 feet into the dark night sky. Two hundred firemen rescued a family from a top-floor flat while the mayor’s secretary ran into the building and saved the mayor’s chain.

WEDNESDAY 10th JANUARY 2001

Hundreds attended a funeral service for former Hove mayor Leslie Hamilton. The congregation at All Saints Church in Hove included Brighton and Hove mayor Andy Durr, the city’s three MPs and dozens of councillors – and many ordinary people the 82-year-old had helped as a councillor. His son said in The Argus; He was an ordinary man who left school at 14 for economic reasons but he made an extraordinary mark on public life. Hamilton requested that Jerusalem should be played at his funeral and that there should be no tears. The first request was granted.

SATURDAY 11th JANUARY 1851

The first telegraphic message from Brighton to London was sent by the Electric and International Telegraph Company from Brighton Station. Less than a month later, they opened the first telegraph office at the Royal York Hotel and a rival service was also offered by the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway Company with a system which linked their stations. By 1880 there were 11 telegraph offices in Brighton, plus the railway stations, and nearly half a million messages were handled. Other branch offices opened at Western Road, Hove, in June 1885, College Road in August 1888, and Cannon Place in June 1891, replacing the West Pier office.

AN ODE TO BRIGHTON

I’ve seen a six-foot-four transvestite driving a bus

Her passengers smile, make no fuss,

I’ve seen cyclists, thousands, with their bits hanging free

Dancing on the pebbles, with Fatboy, no fee.

I’ve seen marches; no fox hunting, no war, I want to wear a dress

Save the Albion, the whale, our beloved NHS,

I’ve seen stags, hens, lads, and cads

West Street at closing, and the ubiquity of fads.

I’ve seen flares swing and skinny jeans chafe

Winklepickers clop and platforms, unsafe,

I’ve seen glow sticks, white gloves, freaky dancing

The goths, mods, chavs and whatever’s in.

I’ve seen record shops depart, and hairdressers arrive

Nightclubs close, and students skive,

I’ve seen beer, and house, prices skyrocket

Weekenders invade, leaving happily out of pocket.

I’ve seen gays and lesbians liberated in the park

Countless walks of shame long after dark,

I’ve seen our town, not city, a cultural icon

Forever in my heart, I love you Brighton.

SATURDAY 12th JANUARY 1583

A number of spectators died when a stand collapsed during a bear-baiting event at the Paris Gardens, London. The relevance to Brighton and Hove is that The Bear public house, on the corner of Lewes Road and Bear Road, used to host the barbaric blood sport before its UK ban in 1835.

SATURDAY 12th JANUARY 1963

The biggest freeze of the 20th century played havoc with the football fixture list. Director Harold Paris borrowed a tarmacadam melting machine from the Brighton Corporation to help thaw the Goldstone Ground pitch. Crystal Palace were the visitors for what was one of only four games in the country to survive. The pitch was a quagmire and a goal from Peter Donnelly was not enough to prevent a 2-1 defeat.

FRIDAY 13th JANUARY 1871

By 1870, Brighton’s population had risen to 90,000. Just before 1860, the town council decided that all of the town’s wastewater should be drained into the sea as the current arrangement of filling cesspools and using the back of dwellings wasn’t ideal, or particularly kind on the nostrils. Following detailed surveys, work began in 1865 to improve the situation. About 44 miles of sewers were laid ranging from 30cm diameter salt-glazed ware pipes to 2.4m circular brick tunnels. Inhabitants were not content and in 1869 public pressure grew for an intercepting sewer – a main trunk sewer into which others would drain. An Act of Parliament was obtained in 1870 forming a body called the Brighton Intercepting and Outfall Sewers Board. Work began on the new sewer around this time but it stopped in May when the contractors could not cope with the volume of water encountered. Thirteen pumps of 51 centimetres in diameter were then driven by nine engines to pump an estimated 68 million litres every 24 hours. The resulting intercepting sewer is circular, made of brickwork, is 1.5m in diameter and runs from Hove Street to East Street, and 2.1m thereafter, to Portobello at Telscombe – a total of 7.25 miles. As the Brighton and Hove urban area has expanded so has the sewer system; there are now 300 miles of main sewers running beneath the city. Since the early 1960s, tours of the magnificent Victorian masterpiece have been held from May to September.

THURSDAY 14th JANUARY 1999

Brighton was officially unveiled as the coldest place in the entire universe! A sample of gas inside a glass cell in a corner of a physics laboratory at the University of Sussex had been cooled so that its temperature was only a few hundred billionths of a degree above so-called absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature. Very, very cold!

THURSDAY 14th JANUARY 1999

The Argus reported that the distinctive white cliffs of Beachy Head may turn green. Thousands of tonnes of chalk fell 500ft onto the beach over the previous weekend – one of the biggest losses of British coastline in living memory – spilling 200ft out into the sea. Homes in nearby Birling Gap wanted defences to protect them from additional damage but efforts to stop further falls would change the area’s famous white cliffs forever. A spokesman for the Environment Agency said; Beachy Head is white because it erodes and exposes fresh chalk. If defences were put in you would have a similar situation to Dover, where works for the Channel Tunnel meant the cliffs are now going green with vegetation.

WEDNESDAY 15th JANUARY 2003

Dean George helped England beat Scotland 7-2 in the final of the Home Countries Quadrangular badminton tournament at Cardiff. The 15-year-old from Brighton also collected another gold medal, winning the boys’ doubles.

SATURDAY 16th JANUARY 1982

Preston from the Ordinary Boys was born in Worthing. Famous for living in Hove and marrying a ‘fake’ celebrity, the singer’s last solo single, in 2009, peaked at 168 in the UK chart. His ex was last seen in a relationship with cagefighter Alex Reid, who was once married to another Brightonian, Katie Price.

MONDAY 17th JANUARY 1859

Situated in a room off the Royal Pavilion kitchen, provided by the Town Council, the Brighton School of Art opened its doors to more than 50 pupils. New premises for Brighton School of Science and Art were purpose-built in Grand Parade in 1877.

SATURDAY 18th JANUARY 1936

Rudyard Kipling died of a perforated duodenal ulcer at Middlesex Hospital. A purveyor of short-stories, poetry and novels, he is remembered for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, celebrating British imperialism, and children’s stories. Kipling received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, declined British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions turned down a knighthood. Revered works include The Jungle Book, Kim and Gunga Din. He lived in Rottingdean from 1897 to 1903 and has a junior school named after him up the road in Woodingdean.

TUESDAY 19th JANUARY 1999

Boy racers turned the Halfords and B&Q car park along Lewes Road into a temporary ‘cruise’ venue. More than 200 drivers in around 50 cars gathered after the police closed their regular monthly racing spot on Madeira Drive.

FRIDAY 20th JANUARY 1888

The Clock Tower – ‘the only permanent memorial that Brighton has of Her Majesty’s Jubilee’ wrote the Brighton Gazette – was unveiled. Its main feature was the ‘time ball’, designed by Magnus Volks, and controlled by a landline from Greenwich Observatory, which rose hydraulically up the mast and fell on the hour.

SATURDAY 21st JANUARY 1882

Although not validated, Brighton can probably claim to have the oldest continuous public electricity supply in the world. In 1881, Robert Hammond was employed by shopkeepers to light premises along Queen’s Road and Western Road. The Hammond Electric Light and Power Company started supplying power from a generator at the Regent Iron Foundry in North Road, now the Royal Mail sorting office.

MONDAY 21st JANUARY 1980

The Athina B beached to the east of the Palace Pier (see 11/12/1979).

SATURDAY 22nd JANUARY 1966

Filmed two years earlier in and around Brighton, Smokescreen was shown on East German TV for the first time. The film starts when a blazing car goes over the cliff at Beachy Head. An insurance investigator is sent to the coast to find out more. The driver had recently taken out life insurance and suspicions mount when no body can be found. The wife who would benefit from the policy, the business partner who has financial troubles, and the person who sold the policy and fancies the wife, are all in the frame.

FRIDAY 22nd JANUARY 1999

After three days of labour, Paula Cooper finally gave birth to Harry Ewens at the Royal Sussex County Hospital; thought to be one of the heaviest babies to ever be born in Sussex. Weighing in at 12lb 1oz, the boy’s father, Derek, had to rush out to buy some new clothes. The proud parent said; After he was born the doctors couldn’t believe how big he was. The word soon spread round the hospital and Paula had lots of doctors and nurses just coming to get a look at Harry. The doctors have said he is the biggest baby they have ever seen at the hospital. He certainly caused a bit of a stir. Canadian giantess Anna Bates (1846–88), 7ft 5.5 ins., gave birth to a boy weighing 23lb 12oz at her home in Seville, Ohio, USA on January 19th 1879, but he died 11 hours later.

SUNDAY 23rd JANUARY 2000

Robbie Williams made a surprise appearance in a Brighton pantomime performance of Aladdin. The 25-year-old stole the show at the Theatre Royal by singing She’s The One to the audience of just under 1,000. Half an hour into the play the stage fell into darkness before a single spotlight suddenly revealed the former Take That member. We are a 951-seater auditorium. Robbie is more used to playing upwards of 50,000 so it was a very personal performance. He got a standing ovation, enthused stage-door manager, Bill Tinsley.

THURSDAY 24th JANUARY 1935

Brighton Town Council passed a resolution that, subject to the approval of the Minister of Transport, the 30mph speed limit should be enforced throughout the whole of the borough. The Times explained; "This will mean that the regulations which the Minister proposes to bring into operation in March will be enforced on 10½ miles of roadway which do not come within the ‘built up area’ definition. Mr T Morris said that last year 16 people were killed and 461 injured in the streets of Brighton… We do not want speed-mad motorists in town, said Mr Morris. We do not want people to come here to fly through the town at 40 miles an hour. Even animals have the right of protection from this class of