SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



now the fashion to have deal dressers with shelves over for puter &c. Their tables and 

 chests of drawers of Norway oak called wainscot. With the higher sort walnuttree venering 

 was most in vogue and esteemed for its beauty above anything else (mahoggany was not 

 yet come to be in use). The best chairs were turn'd ash died, or stuff'd, with Turkey or 



other rich covers 



Spinning of household linnen was in use in most families, also making their own bread 

 and likewise their own household physick. No tea, but much industry and good cheer. 

 The bacon racks were loaded with bacon, for little pork was made in these times. The 

 farmers wifes and daughters were plain in dress and made no such gay figures in our market 

 as nowadays. At Christmas the whole constellation of patty pans which adorned their 

 chimny fronts were taken down. The spit, the pot, the oven, were all in use together. 287 

 The evenings spent in jollity, and their glass guns smoking top'd the tumbler with the froth 

 of good October till most of them were slain or wounded, and the Prince of Orange and 

 Queen's Ann's Marlborough could no longer be resounded. 



The accuracy of these descriptions is abundantly proved by the interesting 

 series of diaries and journals of Sussex worthies, covering the period from 

 1665 to 1815, published in the Sussex Archaeological Collections from which 

 numerous examples of both the brighter and darker sides of life at this time 

 might easily be taken if there were space to give them. 



Something of the simplicity of life in the early years of the nineteenth 

 century may be gathered from the statement made by the first Lord Dudley 

 in 181 1. 



In Brighton (he wrote), which, when it is full, contains twelve or fourteen thousand 

 people, there is no police at all. There is neither Mayor, Bailiff, nor Headborough, nor, in 

 short, any vestige of municipal government. The nearest justice of the peace lives at 

 Lewes, nine miles off. Yet there is no place so quiet, and so completely free from crimes. 

 The doors are all left unbarred, and yet I never heard of anything being stolen. 289 



The comment is a curious illustration of the suddenness of Brighton's rise to 

 importance. Little more than thirty years before Dr. Burton had described 

 it as 



Not indeed contemptible as to size, for it is thronged with people, though the inhabitants are 

 mostly very needy and wretched in their mode of living, occupied in the employment 

 of fishing, robust in their bodies, laborious, skilled in all nautical crafts, and, it is said, terrible 

 cheats of the custom house officers. The village near the shore seemed to me very miserable 

 many houses here and there deserted, and traces of overthrown walls. 290 



The place, however, had already acquired a certain amount of fame, 

 for Dr. Richard Russell, a specialist in glandular diseases, who died in 1757, 

 had brought it into notice by his tracts on the value of sea bathing, and had 

 had baths and lodging houses built there. 291 In 1761 Dr. Relhan published 

 a Short History of Brighthelmston, with Remarks on its Air, and an Analysis of 

 its Waters, and in 1768 appeared John Awister's Thoughts on Brighthelmston, 

 concerning Sea-bathing and Drinking Sea-water. But the fortune of the town 

 was made when George Prince of Wales paid his first visit in 1782, and 

 was so much delighted with the place that he began two years later to erect 

 the building now known as the Pavilion. 



The idea of a salt-water cure was quickly taken up by the world 

 of fashion. In 1784 Hastings was described as 'a favourite place for 



* 87 Cf. Account of Christmas dinners in 1706 ; Slut. Arch. Call, i, 153. 



188 Journal of Rev. Giles Moore, 1655-79 (i, 65-127) ; Diary ofRlc. Stapley, 1682-1724 (ii, 102-182) ; 

 Journal of Timothy Burrell, 1683-1714 (iii, 117-172); Diaries of Stapley Family, 1642-1736 (xxiii, 36-72) ; 

 Diary of Thomas Marchant, 1714-1728 (xxv, 163-203); Diary of If alter Gale, 1750-59 (ix, 183-207); 

 Journal of John Burgess, 1785-1815 (xl, 131-161). 



189 Letters to 'Ivy,' by the first Lord Dudley, 147, quoted in Webb, Engl. Local Govt. i, 55, note. 

 " Suss. Arch. Coll. viii, 263. WI M. A. Lower, Hist, of Sussex, 77 et seq. 



203 



