Brighton’s Peace Banquet

by Philip Morgan

If you’d been around in Brighton in May 1814 you would have heard a massive collective sigh of relief. The treaty of Paris was signed and Napoleon exiled to Elba. The eleven years war with France was effectively over. That summer would become known as the Summer of Peace as peace banquets were held all over the country. Brighton decided to hold its on the 12th August, the Prince Regent’s birthday on his cricket ground at the Level.

During the war Brighton had been reckoned to be the prime spot for a French invasion so thousands of troops were stationed in and around the city. There were barracks in Windsor Street, Church Street, Blatchington and Southwick. And while the soldiers particularly the officers brought money, they also brought a constant reminder of the threat of attack. So, the news of peace and a banquet to celebrate it was “met with general delight.” Especially if you were classified as one of the “poor and labouring people” because it was intended specifically for you and for you it was free. And boy did you need a party. You’d been hammered by a decade of war which had brought economic collapse, massive unemployment and widespread malnutrition and you probably lived somewhere like Pimlico or Orange Row.

Orange Row was three minutes’ walk from the luxury of the Royal Pavilion. It was “19 houses in a court 12 feet wide.” There were 6 toilets and two wells for the 150 people who lived there. The houses were tiny 8 feet wide by 8 feet deep except for one which was 30 feet wide but still only 8 feet deep. If we accept the figure of 150 inhabitants and that the houses were three storied this gives a total of 25 square feet of living and sleeping space for each person; just about enough room to lie down in. So, if that was where you lived you would have been delighted to get a ticket to the first ever Brighton Festival.

Looks like you would have been on table set no 2. There were sixty-five double rows of tables each double row designed to take one hundred and twenty-two people which according to my calculations means they were expecting to feed 7930 people. Instructions were clear: you had to bring your own Plate, Knife, Fork and drinking Mug, be cleanly apparelled, not rise from the table during dinner and be in your place “a quarter before Two o’clock.”

The Morning Post, 13 August 1814,– Yesterday being the birth-day of our illustrious benefactor the Prince Regent, and the day appointed for the general entertainment of the poor of this place, the morn was ushered in with the ringing of bells,– As early as ten o’clock, waggons, carts, and caravans, crowded with live stock, men, women, and children, from adjacent parts, poured into the town in all direction, dressed in all their holiday fineries, to witness the promised festivities, and to share in the inviting hilarities of the day.”

Chaos! However, each double row of tables had a President and six assistants with table numbers attached to them. So, by the time you fought your way through the 30,000 or so people who had turned up to gawp and got into the roped off enclosure it would have been easy to find your place. At two o’clock “everything being in complete order for the general attack with knives and forks, a bugle was sounded from the no 1 table” and the meal began: three quarters of a pound of roast beef and half a pound of plum pudding per person, washed down with ale and brown stout (men a quart, women a pint and children a half pint) and all paid for by “the spirited inhabitants of the town”.

The general pandemonium was increased as “in addition to the immediate guests at their tables, hundreds of well dressed spectators pressed respectfully forwards and solicited a taste of the viands which had been so bountifully provided, and in which all were gratified.”

If you could see through the waiters and scroungers, you might have seen Mr Colbatch a well-known property developer who would go on to build the Royal Albion distribute “gifts such as snuff boxes of japanned tin, pocket knives, rings, &c to the ladies on the table,” and heard Mr Thomas Trotter the manager of the Theatre Royal make the gallery and pit of his theatre free of charge for that evening. You might if you were lucky have glimpsed special guest Phoebe Hessel who at 99, was the oldest inhabitant of Brighton and had served as a private soldier for seven years in the 5th regiment of foot reputedly to be with her lover and was only discovered to be a woman when she was stripped in order to be lashed.

And when in the middle of the bedlam you heard a second bugle being sounded and saw the Vicar stand to say grace you would have realised that the meal was over. However, with any luck you would have grabbed some extra beer and been able to join in the increasingly boisterous toasts. And then, when they were over, well fed and well lubricated you would have been ready to make the most of the rest of the night. You would have watched three hot air balloons rise into the sky and burst into flames and then joined in with the rest of the party in the Steine.

Where if you had the stamina, you could take part in square dancing, blind man’s buff, kiss in the ring, sack racing, general silliness and finally a giant conga, before staggering back home to Orange Row.

“As the day came to a close, the happy throng, joined hands and formed long chains to ‘thread the tailor’s needle’ to Castle Square where, after singing God Save the King, the houses of the Prince Regent’s tradespeople were illuminated; good order and the symptoms of hilarity went hand in hand throughout the night; and the recollections of yesterday are among the happiest rewards of to-day.” As long as you could cope with your hangover and the six toilets for 150 people!