The Punch and Judy tradition

Punch and Judy arrived on Brighton Beach during the great 19th-century seaside boom and quickly became part of the town’s visual identity. The glove-puppet act that Samuel Pepys first recorded in his diary in 1662 had, by the 1840s, settled into the striped booth familiar from Brighton’s early tourist prints. Local collections hold mid-Victorian puppets explicitly labelled as part of a ‘Brighton Beach’ tradition, and by the Edwardian years a Punch and Judy booth pitched on the shingle with Palace Pier behind it was one of the resort’s standard postcard subjects.

Brighton’s own performers helped weld Mr Punch to the shoreline. A Punch and Judy was once performed by royal command for Queen Victoria at the Royal Pavilion. The West Pier and the promenade around it became the recognised pitch: oral histories, home movies and postcards consistently show a little theatre set up between the West Pier and the bandstand, children in the front row and parents watching from deckchairs. Well into the 20th century a Punch and Judy booth was as dependable a seafront sight as donkeys, kiosks or deckchairs.

Glyn Edwards (see this YouTube recording) became the modern custodian. First captivated by a show under the West Pier in the 1940s, he began performing his own Brighton show in the late 1950s and spent more than half a century working the front. His ‘Original World Famous Brighton Punch and Judy’ effectively made Brighton one of the tradition’s national centres; for decades his striped booth was a summer constant between the piers and later outside the West Pier Centre. Edwards gradually stepped back in the 2010s, giving only occasional performances for heritage events before retiring fully. He died in 2022.

Beginning in 1974, Mike Stone (often known as ‘Sergeant Stone’) operated a classic booth on the beach for around 25-30 seasons - see  My Brighton and Hove). Although he overlapped with Edwards, their roles were different: Edwards was considered the tradition’s public champion, museum/heritage presence, national advocate, long-term ‘brand’ figure. Stone, however, was the day-to-day beach showman, delivering regular summer performances to holiday crowds throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Today the active public-facing Brighton Punch and Judy presence is carried by newer performers, notably Professor Dill, who presents traditional shows under the Brighton Punch and Judy name and keeps the craft visible on the seafront during events and summer bookings. Alongside him, the Brighton Fishing Museum maintains a permanent Punch and Judy display in the old fishing quarter, while the West Pier Trust continues to use Mr Punch as a lively ambassador for seafront heritage through exhibitions and occasional performances. The shows themselves are brisker and a shade gentler than their Victorian forebears, but the essentials - the swazzled voice, slapstick, crocodile and baby - still float out over the shingle.

See also: Brighton Toy and Model Museum; The Guardian; Mary Evans Picture Library; The Regency Society (b&w pic); West Pier Trust; Wikipedia.