Judy Middleton 2002 (revised 2018)
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copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum,
Brighton & Hove
The Encampment at
Brighton by Francis
Wheatley (1788)
This painting depicts a scene at the Brighton military camp. In the foreground a peasant family are selling chickens to officers mounted on horseback. In 1793 Jane Austen's brother Henry was there with the Oxfordshire militia: she refers to the camp in her novel Pride and Prejudice. |
Bottom was the old Sussex name for a valley –
hence Goldstone Bottom. The term is still in use to this day locally
with Cockroost Bottom (north of Mile Oak), plus Whitelot Bottom and
Hazelholt Bottom (both north of Southwick Hill). However, the
designation Goldstone Bottom has dropped out of use, the area being
transformed into the more elegant-sounding Hove Park, surrounded by
housing and roads. The Goldstone itself is still to be seen in Hove
Park (see Ancient Hove).
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| copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum,
Brighton & Hove This early 1900s photograph of the Goldstone in Hove Park shows the path leading down towards Goldstone Bottom. |
A Tragic Accident
On 24 July 1771 Charles Western, together with his
wife Frances and their four-year old son Charles Callis Western, were
riding in a carriage along the road by Goldstone Bottom (now Old
Shoreham Road) when the horse stumbled. The jolt to the carriage was
so severe that the occupants were thrown out and Mr Western was
killed outright. Fortunately, the child’s fall was cushioned by
falling into a furze bush. Soon afterwards, the widowed Mrs Western
and her children left Sussex for good.
Mr Western owned a large amount of land at Hove
and Preston, which eventually became known as the Stanford Estate.
Highway Robbery
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| copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum, Brighton & Hove Phoebe Hessel, the inscription below her name states:- ‘Who says she was born in the year 1715, An industrious woman living at Brighton, with slender means of support which she can only earn by selling the contents of her basket, for whose assistance this etching is sold. Price 3/6. Published for her May 1 1814’. |
The Sussex
Weekly Advertiser gives
the day in question as 1 November while Erredge in his History
of Brighthelmstone (1862)
plumbs for 30 October. The former source states that Rooke was around
22 years of age with Howell being 27, whereas Erredge states Rooke
was around 24 and Howell aged 40.
Erredge also
records the story that the two men were arrested because of
information provided by Phoebe Hessell, the celebrated female who
posed as a man in order to join her lover as a soldier in the Army
and fought at the Battle of Fontenoy. Hessell was in the Red
Lion at Shoreham when
Rooke came in and ordered a beer. From the ensuing conversation about
the mail robbery, she concluded that Rooke had a part in it, and she
told the parish constable. The constable knew Rooke who lived in a
cottage nearby with his mother.
Rooke and Howell
were tried at the March Assizes 1793 held at East Grinstead. The post
boy, although only aged 12, was a credible witness. The Sussex
Weekly Advertiser stated
‘his evidence proved so strong, clear and convincing that the jury
had no difficulty informing their verdict.’ Rooke and Howell were
found guilty and sentenced to death.
It seems Rooke had ‘form’ when it came to
criminal acts. At the same Assizes Rooke was accused of horse
stealing but as he had already been handed a death sentence, there
was no need to go through with another trial. It was alleged that on
31 October 1792 he stole a large brown gelding with a sprig tail and
a large miller’s pad on his back – the property of John Boyle,
the elder, of New Shoreham. Howell confessed to having set fire to a
pub in Jevington that burned down some time previously, and he also
appeared to have some knowledge concerning the robbery of a Mr
Willard.
Rooke and Howell were condemned to be executed at
Horsham and afterwards their bodies were to be taken to a spot near
to where the mail robbery had taken place and there placed in chains.
The night before the execution took place Revd M.
R. Capper spent three hours with Howell in his cell, and administered
the sacrament. Howell entrusted to him a gold ring to give to Miss
Pettit, his former sweetheart. But Rooke refused to take the
sacrament, and in a fit of despair spent the night pulling his
bedding to pieces and scrabbling at the cell walls. By morning Rooke
was in a calmer state of mind, and took the sacrament in company with
Howell ‘against whom he had before seemed to harbour resentment’.
On 6 April 1793 at around 1 a.m. Rooke and Howell
were taken by post-chaise to the gallows erected on ‘an eminence a
few rods from Peter Dean Lane’. There the two men spent 1½ hours
in prayer assisted by Revd Jameson, the prison chaplain, and half an
hour by themselves. When asked if they were now ready, they left the
chaise and got into a cart. From this cart Howell addressed the
considerable crowd saying how sorry he was to have dragged Rooke into
committing the crime, and how he had petitioned the judge on Rooke’s
behalf. Howell then ‘betook himself to prayer while Rooke stood in
a state of insensibility, till the cart moved from under him, and
launched him into eternity’.
The Sussex
Weekly Advertiser seemed
surprised at the great number of people who attended the execution,
and stated with regret that ‘sorry are we to say, to the disgrace
of the female sex, that among the spectators were between one and two
thousand women, and some of them of fashionable appearance.’
The bodies of Rooke and Howell were taken to Hove,
to a spot west of present-day Holmes Avenue, south of Elm Drive, and
on the east side of a large, old chalk pit. According to J. Edwards,
who was writing in 1801 when the 25-ft gibbet was still standing,
Rooke was hung on the east arm and Howell was suspended from the west
arm. The bodies had been dipped in tar for preservation before being
hung in chains as a grim warning to all passers-by. The eventual
disintegration of the bodies was helped along by the attention of
local youths who made a sport of pelting them with stones.
There was a certain morbid fascination about
hanged and gibbeted corpses, and bones became valued relics. Henry
Martin, a respectable resident of Brighton, was not ashamed to state
that he possessed a tobacco stopper made from one of Rooke’s finger
bones – Rooke being described as a fine, well-made young fellow.
There were said to be many relics in the possession of people living
in Shoreham and Hove.
There is a heart-rending story concerning Rooke’s
aged mother who made frequent visits to the gibbet under cover of
darkness to collect the bones of her son as they fell to the ground.
When her task was complete, she placed the bones in a chest, which
she buried at dead of night in the hallowed ground of the churchyard
at Old Shoreham.
This story came
to the attention of the celebrated poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who
was so moved by it that he wrote a poem entitled Rizpah.
The name Rizpah comes
from the 2nd
Book of Samuel in the Old Testament. Rizpah stayed by the bodies of
her hanged sons, night and day, chasing off scavenging animals.
Eventually King David heard about her devotion and arranged for a
decent burial for her sons.
Military Camps
In 1792 the
French Revolution broke out and by the following year Britain and
France were at war. This placed the Sussex coast virtually in the
front line and the first military camp was set up in August 1793 at
the Belle Vue Field, Brighton (now occupied by Regency Square). The
Prince of Wales, together with a detachment of the 10th
Light Dragoons, arrived on 5 August 1793. The prince’s tent was
‘pitched on a small eminence near the ruins of Hove church, whence
he could command a view of the whole encampment’.
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| copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum,
Brighton & Hove The ruins of St Andrew's Old Church, Hove |
His pavilion tent was a novelty, consisting of of three very large compartments to which a spacious kitchen was added, the structure being described as ‘one of the most elegant things of the kind ever made use of in this country’.
The 10th
Light Dragoons picked some ground to the right of the intended grand
camp, and before erecting their tents, they removed a number of
flints lying about. Unfortunately, this action disturbed a veritable
army of earwigs that invaded almost every tent.
The Prince of Wales took command of the picket
guard, and apparently remained on duty all night. The camp broke up
28 October 1793, and the last regiment marched out on 7 October.
 |
| copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum,
Brighton & Hove The Environs of Brighthemstone by Thomas Yeakell c1800 (Goldstone Bottom is shown north of Hove) |
In 1794 the military camp was set up at Goldstone
Bottom. The camp started off with around 7,000 men, and swelled to
15,000 later on when the militia arrived. Since the majority of
militia recruits were agricultural labourers, military manoeuvres had
to wait until the harvest was safely gathered in. There was another
military camp at Goldstone Bottom in 1795. It is interesting to note
that the military camps were not an exclusively male preserve because
wives and children sometimes accompanied the men.
The mortality rate seemed somewhat excessive
because 56 soldiers, three wives and six children died. In 1794 and
1795 burial parties were kept busy going to and from the churchyard of St Andrew’s Old Church. Presumably, most of the deaths were
caused by disease, although one man, a surgeon’s mate, drowned in
the sea, and his body was washed up at Rottingdean. The Dorsetshire
Militia was badly hit with nineteen deaths, while Herefordshire
Militia suffered eight losses. Most of the casualties were other
ranks, but there were also:
Sergeant John White, Sussex Militia
Quartermaster John Holmes, Lancashire Fencibles
Sergeant Samuel Coe, West Essex Militia
There was a brighter side too with the baptism of
five infants from the camp. It is because of these entries in the
parish records of St Andrew’s Old Church that we know which
regiments or companies were camped at Goldstone Bottom. The last
military burial took place on 20 October 1795.
Parish Registers 1794-95
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| copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum,
Brighton & Hove A 1933 aerial view of St Andrew's north churchyard, the location of military burials, before it was destroyed and obliterated in the late 1970s by the building of a Tesco's car park and school playing fields. |
Cheshire Militia
Mary, daughter of Private John Poole, buried on 5
July 1795
Private Edward Ellis buried on 12 August 1795
Private Hugh Billington buried on 21 August 1795
Margaret, daughter of Private Joseph Morris and
his wife Sarah, baptised 30 August 1795
Private William Woolmer buried 3 September 1795
Private John Turner buried 22 September 1795
Private James Barber buried 20 October 1795
Denbigh Militia
Nelly, daughter of Private David Bayless and his
wife Alice, baptised 7 July 1795
Dorsetshire Militia
Private William Ballsom buried 5 July 1794
Private Jonathan Whiting buried 2 August 1794
Susannah, daughter of Private William Squib and
his wife Sarah, buried 15 September 1794
Private Robert Helyer buried 16 September 1794
Private John Read buried 22 October 1794
Private James Hiscock buried 22 October 1794
Private Robert Rideout buried 29 June 1795
Private George Woodcock buried 29 June 1795
Private John Galpine buried July 1795
Mary, daughter of Private Robert and his wife
Mary, buried 5 July 1795
Private Thomas Woolfreys buried 6 August 1795
Private John Sanger buried 14 August 1795
Private William Trip buried 21 August 1795
Private Richard Harwood buried 3 September 1795
Private George Baker buried 6 September 1795
Private Aaron Kent buried 7 September 1795
Diana, wife of Private Samuel Drake, buried 7
September 1795
Private Robert Bridle buried 15 September 1795
Private James Hunt buried 15 September 1795
Herefordshire Militia
Private John Walder buried 6 July 1795
Private William Powell buried 25 July 1795
Elizabeth, daughter of John Blackwell, drummer,
and his wife Mary, baptised 26 July 1795
Private John Price buried 27 July 1795
Private William Bevan buried 27 July 1795
Private Thomas Prichard buried 1 August 1795
Private John Evan buried 11 August 1795
Private John Stevenson buried 15 August 1795
Thomas, son of Private Evans Bourne and his wife
Prudence, baptised 17 August 1795
Private Edward Clarke buried 15 August 1795
Lancashire Fencibles
Quartermaster John Holmes buried 1 September 1794
Lancashire Militia
John, son of Private Stubbs and his wife Agnes,
buried 29 September 1794
Private John Robinson buried 10 October 1794
North Hampshire Militia
Thomas, son of Private Thomas Maynard and his wife
Mary, buried 6 July 1794
Private Thomas Ventham buried 17 August 1794
Private George Campbell buried 19 October 1794
Rutlandshire Fencibles
Private Johnson buried 18 October 1794
Suffolk Militia
Private Richard Morley buried 26 September 1794
Private (no name recorded) buried 26 October 1794
Sussex Militia
Private William Winton buried July 1794
Private Elija Badcock buried 4 September 1794
Sergeant John White, aged 39, buried 9 September
1794
Private William Silby buried 12 September 1794
Private William Toulett buried 12 October 1794
Private Thomas Tipping buried 7 November 1794
Warwickshire Militia
Mary, wife of Sergeant Wall, buried 18 June 1794
Private William Kenman buried 23 September 1794
Private Francis Hinckinson buried 17 October 1794
Private Timothy Vaughan buried October 1794
Private John Towe buried 17 October 1794
Wiltshire Militia
Private Caleb Curtis buried 1 June 1795
Private Richard Clark buried 5 June 1795
Private Andrew Jones buried 9 June 1795
Private (no name recorded) buried 11 June 1795
Regular Army
10th
Light Dragoons
Private Jonathan Chapman buried 15 September 1794
Private Charles Reeves buried 21 September 1794
Private Henry Turner buried 27 October 1794
Sarah, daughter of Private John Skeldon and his
wife Sarah, baptised 11 October 1795
20th
Light Dragoons
Private Thomas Kyte buried 11 September 1794
Royal Artillery
Rose, daughter of Private George Asprey, buried 8
October 1794
Private William Hudson buried 12 October 1794
West Suffolk Regiment
Dorothy, wife of Private James Richwood buried 25
October 1794
*******
See also Execution at Goldstone Bottom
Sources
Middleton J, Encyclopaedia of Hove and Portslade
Erredge,
J. A. A
History of Brighthelmstone (1862)
Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
St Andrew’s Church Records of Baptisms and
Burials
Sussex
Weekly Advertiser (1792
/ 1793)
Copyright © J.Middleton 2018
page layout by D. Sharp