The humour of Ridgewell

Here is Brighton Beach a century ago as seen by William Leigh Ridgewell, a Brighton-born cartoonist and illustrator. The cartoon was published in The Strand Magazine in 1925, part of an article called The Humour of Ridgewell. Many of Ridgewell’s cartoons and illustrations appeared in Punch and can be said to define a vivid strand of early 20th-century visual humour. 

Ridgewell was born in Brighton in 1881, the son of a commercial traveller and talented amateur illustrator. He demonstrated an early aptitude for art and later honed his skills at the Brighton School of Art, an institution known for producing commercially successful illustrators during the Edwardian era. His career took a distinctive turn during the First World War. While serving in India, he applied his artistic talents to wartime propaganda, designing posters to support the Indian War Loan campaign. His contributions extended to local publications such as The Looker-On and Indian Ink, which featured his humorous takes on colonial life. It’s easy to imagine these early experiences shaped the gently satirical tone for which he would become well known.

Following the war, Ridgewell returned to England and began contributing to a range of popular periodicals. His work appeared in Tit-Bits, Bystander, and The Passing Show, but it was his regular contributions to Punch magazine from 1920 until his death in 1937 that cemented his reputation. Punch, at that time a leading authority in British satire and comic illustration, offered Ridgewell a platform to develop his signature style - wry observations of middle-class life, often presented with understated but precise wit.

Ridgewell’s cartoons typically captured the peculiarities of British domesticity, drawing on familiar suburban settings and characters. The humour in his illustrations was more observational than exaggerated, presenting a subtly critical yet affectionate portrait of interwar England. Ridgewell’s line work was considered clean and expressive, his compositions economical but rich with social commentary.

In addition to editorial work, Ridgewell was also active in commercial illustration. He produced advertisements for well-known brands such as Stone’s Ginger Wine and Pratt’s Petrol. These pieces, while promotional in intent, maintained his recognisable style and wit, bridging the worlds of commercial and editorial cartooning in an era before this crossover was commonplace. He remained active in his profession until his death in 1937.

The full article - The Humour of Ridgewell - with several more cartoons can be viewed in The Strand Magazine, issue 69 (1925), available online at Internet Archive.

Dusty miller - friend or foe?

Found on Brighton Beach: silver ragwort (Jacobaea maritima), sometimes known as Dusty Miller, but is it friend or foe? This is a bushy, evergreen subshrub (a type of plant that combines features of both herbaceous and woody plants) recognised for its striking silvery-white foliage. The leaves are finely divided, deeply lobed, and covered with dense, felt-like, woolly hairs, which give the plant its characteristic silvery or grey-white appearance. The shrub is remarkably tolerant of salt spray, strong winds, and poor soils, making it well adapted for shingle beach environments.

Typically grown as an annual or biennial, Jacobaea maritima can sometimes behave as a short-lived perennial in milder climates. It begins from seed, germinating in well-drained soil, and quickly establishes its signature silvery foliage. In its first year, the plant focuses on vegetative growth, creating a dense, bushy form. The following year, it sends up tall flower stalks adorned with bright yellow, daisy-like flowers, blooming from summer to autumn. After flowering, it produces seeds, completing its life cycle.

The distinctive white, felt-like, tomentose (densely hairy) leaves give the plant a silvery, dusty appearance, evoking an image of a person covered in dust - hence the name ‘Dusty Miller’. Historically, it has been used in traditional medicine for its anti-inflammatory properties, though modern use is limited.

On Brighton Beach, silver ragwort thrives along the vegetated shingle habitat - a rare and internationally important ecosystem composed of pebbles and stones with pockets of sand and soil. It is often found alongside other hardy coastal species such as sea kale, yellow horned-poppy, and sea thrift, all of which are similarly adapted to the harsh, nutrient-poor conditions of shingle beaches. 

The Brighton & Hove Local Biodiversity Action Plan, adopted in 2012, briefly mentions silver ragwort as a ’non-native plant species of concern along the Volks Railway’, where ‘garden escapes now form a significant component of the flora’. And while there have also been concerns that in some areas, around the Black Rock site and along the Volks Railway, for example, about it being invasive, it is also recognised that silver ragwort can help stabilise shingle and offer ground cover.

It is worth noting that in the early 2000s, the species was reclassified from Senecio cineraria to Jacobaea maritima because of advancements in molecular phylogenetics and a better understanding of the plant’s genetic relationships.

More shingle and better groynes

Brighton & Hove City Council is set to launch the next stage in an extensive sea defence initiative aiming to bolster the city’s resilience against coastal erosion and flooding. The forthcoming phase of the Brighton Marina to River Adur Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM) scheme will focus on fortifying the coastline from Kings Esplanade in Hove to Southwick Beach.​

Scheduled to commence in late September 2025, the project encompasses the construction of new timber groynes, the extension of the beach between the King Alfred Leisure Centre and Second Avenue, and the reconstruction of sea defences at Southwick Beach. These efforts, the council says, are designed to safeguard homes, businesses, and vital infrastructure, including the A259 coast road and Shoreham Port, from the increasing threats posed by climate change-induced sea-level rise and intensified storm activity.​

The council’s cabinet is due to meet tomorrow to approve an increase in funding for this phase, raising the capital contribution from £6.5 million to £11 million. This significant increase is necessary, the council says, because of inflationary pressures over the past five years and the need for additional shingle replenishment to stabilise beach bays. In a press statement, Councillor Trevor Muten emphasised the project’s significance, stating: ‘This scheme is vital for the city, to safeguard homes and businesses from coastal flooding and protect our local economy for decades to come.’

The initiative is a collaborative effort involving Brighton & Hove City Council, Adur & Worthing Councils, Shoreham Port Authority, and the Environment Agency. Each partner is responsible for financing and executing works within their respective jurisdictions, ensuring a unified approach to coastal defence across the vulnerable shoreline.​ Phase 1 of the FCERM scheme was completed in early 2024, delivered detailed designs, planning, licensing, and initial construction works near Hove Lagoon and Southwick Beach. With Phase 2, the focus shifts to constructing new groynes and replenishing shingle at Kings Esplanade, as well as rebuilding depleted sea defences at Southwick Beach.​

The construction timeline has been planned to minimise disruption, with works along Kings Esplanade slated from late September 2025 to May 2026, avoiding the peak summer season. Efforts will be made to ensure that seafront businesses remain operational during this period. Subsequent works at Southwick Beach are scheduled to begin in 2026, with completion anticipated by April 2027.​

The 24 April council meeting can be followed via a livestream, and an agenda is available here. The (rather dated) image above is from Googlemaps.

The Crimson Banner

Here is the sixth of 24 stained glass window designs on the Palace Pier which AI and I are using as inspiration for some of these BrightonBeach365 daily posts - see Stained Glass Window 1 for background. This image shows a ship, a galleon perhaps, with large white sails, a bright yellow sail at the stern, and a deep red hull. The sea is rendered in shades of turquoise, teal, and white, representing waves. The sky features soft pastel clouds in pink, purple, and blue, with a crimson pennant flying at the top of the tallest mast. The overall style is vibrant and stylised, with bold black outlines separating the coloured glass segments.

A limerick starter

A vessel once sailed through the pane,

Though how it got in, none explain.

It’s stuck there in hues,

Of purples and blues,

Forever becalmed in a frame.

The Crimson Banner (in the style of Robert Louis Stevenson)

The wind had a salt tang to it that morning, and the gulls wheeled in lazy circles over Brighton Beach. I had gone down early, before the town was fully awake, drawn by a dream that had clung to my waking mind like seaweed on a boot. In the dream, I had seen a ship - not of this age, but one from tales of treasure and peril - its sails full-bellied and a crimson banner flying high.

To my astonishment, that very vision met me on the seafront, not in the sea but in glass. Set into the round window of a crumbling bathhouse on the Esplanade was a stained-glass panel of a proud galleon with billowed sails, riding a crest of jade-green waves, the red pennant aloft as in my dream. The window caught the morning sun like a gem, and I stood spellbound.

‘You’ve seen her too,’ came a voice, old as rope and salt.

I turned. A man sat hunched on a nearby bench, his beard tangled like kelp and his eyes sharp beneath bushy brows.

‘I - I don’t know what you mean,’ I said, though my heart beat strangely.

‘She was called The Mirabel,’ he said, nodding toward the window. ‘Built when pirates still thumbed their noses at the navy. She set sail from this very coast with treasure enough to buy all Brighton. Never returned.’

‘What happened?’ I asked, stepping closer.

‘Some say storm, some say mutiny. I say she still sails - beneath the waves, mind you. Waiting for the one who remembers.’

The man rose, reaching into his coat. He drew out something wrapped in oilskin - a compass, brassy and old, its needle spinning wild until it settled true north.

‘I’ve watched that window forty years. Every spring tide, I look for the sign. And now you dream of her, lad. The sea remembers.’

I took the compass. It felt alive in my hand, pulsing with the mystery of tides and stars. I didn’t protest when he pressed it into my palm. The man tipped his cap and walked away, limping up the stony beach and vanishing into the mist that had begun to gather.

I turned back to the glass ship. The sun had risen fully now, and in its blaze, the red banner in the window glowed like fire.

That evening, drawn by the whisper of gulls and something deeper, I followed the compass along the beach. At the edge of the water, as the tide pulled back with a sigh, something gleamed beneath the surf - a coil of rope, the curve of a mast, the barest suggestion of a deck.

And the banner. Red, like a blood memory, fluttered once - and vanished.

Some say Brighton’s just a place of deckchairs and chips, but I say look deeper. The sea holds its secrets. And sometimes, just sometimes, it offers them back.

Des Marshall - urban Robinson Crusoe

‘I believe Brighton has more disturbed people in relation to the size of the population, than any other town in the country. There’s a sort of unreality about the town. It’s too frivolous. People don’t really listen to each other. They seem very excited and distracted. It is because it’s a holiday town, with too many distractions - the sea, the beach, the pier, the pretty women (there seems so many of them here), the men on the prowl for women, the buskers, the beach cafes with their coloured sunshades and ice-cream adverts, a sense of permanent holidaying atmosphere.’ This is a diary entry written exactly 30 years ago today by Des Marshall, the son of a Russian Jew and a Welsh coalminer’s daughter.

Marshall was born in 1941, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, but he suffered so badly from asthma as a child that he spent most of the first ten years of his life in an institution for sick children. He found life no less difficult as a young man in London in the 1960s, with depression rarely far away. He worked at many jobs, not least being a stand-up comedian in holiday camps; and he travelled widely, to Russia and India among other places.

The chronic depression eventually led him to Dr Peter Chadwick, a psychologist, who had suffered from schizophrenia and written very sympathetically about mental illness. Indeed, in two publications, Chadwick used Marshall as a subject of his studies. In 1994, Marshall became a Quaker, and in the same year he began to write a journal. At the time, he was living in Camden, but in February 1995 he moved to Brighton, and stayed for over two years. 

The following year, David Roberts, who runs Saxon Books, published the diary as Journal of an Urban Robinson Crusoe. ‘Dear Reader,’ Marshall says by way of introduction, ‘I want to tell you the truth about this journal. I didn’t write it. It was written by a man who called himself Urban Robinson Crusoe who, for some reason I don’t understand, happened to look very much like me.’

I came across Des Marshall and his journal while researching my book Brighton in Diaries for The History Press.  Here are several extracts from the chapter dedicated to Marshall (and two old photographs of mine, partially illustrating the ‘frivolous’ nature and ‘distractions’ mentioned by Marshall in his 21 April entry).

15 February 1995

‘I suppose I am a Brightonian now. I still wander the streets but it’s just so much more pleasant to do that here, and I see so many so-called Robinson Crusoes, who don’t realise what they have become.

Brighton is a strange town of contrasting types of people jumbled up and thrown together: the very poor, the very rich, gangsters, day-trippers, the unemployed coming down for the summer from the cities, possibly to get work for the season, students from other countries to learn English, artists, writers, street performers. Well-off show-biz people live here, and there’s a big gay scene.

Graham Greene, the writer, who lived in Brighton, called Brighton a fugitive town. There’s a sort of truth in that; people are always coming and going, just like London.

There are mad people thrown out of the asylums that they are closing down. There is a big one at Haywards Heath, half way between London and Brighton. The inmates have a choice when they leave, London or Brighton. Most opt for Brighton, for reasons I would think are obvious. Anything you want in London you can get here.’

21 April 1995

‘I believe Brighton has more disturbed people in relation to the size of the population, than any other town in the country. There’s a sort of unreality about the town. It’s too frivolous. People don’t really listen to each other. They seem very excited and distracted. It is because it’s a holiday town, with too many distractions - the sea, the beach, the pier, the pretty women (there seems so many of them here), the men on the prowl for women, the buskers, the beach cafes with their coloured sunshades and ice-cream adverts, a sense of permanent holidaying atmosphere. It distracts people, even if you live here. You get sort of sucked into the excitement and get distracted. [. . .] People wear such odd clothes that don’t really match. Could be, sort of punk, with a bit of hippy thrown in, or mohair with greatcoat, or a collar and tie man, with shorts of different colours, possibly even with a bowler hat.’

15 February 1996

‘There should be a book written on how to survive Brighton. One thing I have found out is that you don’t take it, or even the people, too seriously. That might sound like a harsh thing to say, but that is the nature of the beast. What I mean is, it’s a hello, goodbye, sort of town, tinsel town.

The people who live here, or have made their life here, probably live very varied lives, and are into all sorts of activities outside their own domesticities - things like dancing, singing, writing groups, yoga, t’ai chi, religious groups, psychology meetings, humanist groups, the state of the nation groups, psychic groups, political discussion groups, old age discussion groups, gender bender groups, gay groups, social issue groups, single people meeting groups, history of Brighton groups. [. . .]’

Easter spectacle on Brighton Beach

While Easter on Brighton Beach is remembered for the violent clashes between Mods and Rockers 60 years ago (see Saturday’s post), it should also be remembered for a much bigger and colourful spectacle - the Easter Volunteer Review. This image - The Easter Volunteers Review: A Sketch on the Brighton Beach published in the Illustrated London News on 23 April 1870 - depicts a scene from the event during Easter 155 years ago. 

The Easter Volunteer Reviews were major public military events held annually in Britain during the 19th century, particularly popular from the 1860s onwards. Originating after the formation of the Volunteer Force in 1859 - a citizen militia created in response to fears of invasion and to supplement the regular army - these reviews became a fixture of the Victorian social and military calendar.

Held most often on Easter Monday, the reviews brought together thousands of volunteer soldiers from across the country for large-scale parades, drills, and mock battles. Brighton, with its broad seafront and easy rail access, was a favoured location, frequently drawing crowds of both participants and spectators. The events were not only military exercises but also significant social occasions, attracting families, dignitaries, and local residents, as depicted in contemporary illustrations showing mingling soldiers, elegantly dressed women, and children enjoying the spectacle

The foreground of the illustration above shows volunteer soldiers in uniform, some seated and others standing, interacting with women and children dressed in typical Victorian attire. One woman holds a parasol, and several children are present, suggesting a family-friendly atmosphere. Behind, a dense crowd of spectators fills the beach and the promenade above, with people standing on steps and railings to get a better view of the event. The background includes boats and seaside structures, reinforcing the coastal setting. The overall scene is lively and crowded, reflecting the popularity of the annual military review, which was both a ceremonial occasion for the volunteer regiments and a major social event for the public.

In fact, the Illustrated London News ran two articles on the Brighton 1870 military spectacle in successive editions - both freely available to view or download at Internet Archive (issues 1590 and 1591). Here are several paragraphs from the first report (and a further illustration found in the second report): 

‘The annual Easter Monday review and sham fight of the metropolitan and home counties volunteer corps took place at Brighton, with the advantage of the finest possible weather. [. . .] As Brighton is a holiday town, where Londoners are sure to find comfortable accommodation for themselves and families, with the benefit of the sea air and sufficient opportunities of amusement, large numbers of the volunteers and their friends went down either on Saturday or Good Friday, or the previous Thursday evening, some of the corps marching by the high road from London, but most of them arriving by railway. [. . .] 

Among the officers staying at the chief hotels in the town were Lieutenant-General the Hon. Sir James Scarlett, with Lady Scarlett, and Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, who went together, on Saturday, to examine the review ground. The Esplanade, the sea-beach, the King’s-road, the Steyne, the Pavilion Garden, the old Chain Pier and the new Western Pier, at Hove, the line of terraces in Kemp Town leading to the walk over the cliffs towards Rottingdean, the Racecourse, the Downs, and the road to the Devil’s Dyke, were much frequented by visitors in uniform, with a crowd of others - men, women, and children - who took their share of pleasure in those few days. The beach opposite the town was continually thronged; and the boatmen and the keepers of refreshment-saloons made a pretty good profit of the occasion. [ . . .]

The London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, with excellent traffic management, conveyed down thousands upon thousands on Monday morning, the first arrival being at half past six. At ten o’clock, when the signal-gun was fired, they began to assemble on the Level, the ground adjoining the Steyne. in order to march thence to the Racecourse, where the inspection was to commence.’

Mods and Rockers clash in the 60s

Sixty years ago today, on 19 April 1965, groups of Mods and Rockers clashed on and around Brighton Beach. The event occurred during the Easter bank holiday weekend. Police were present in large numbers and intervened to disperse the youths gathering along the seafront and in the town centre. Several arrests were made and minor injuries were reported. Damage included broken shop windows.

The incident followed similar disturbances during the previous year’s May Day bank holiday in 1964. On that occasion, clashes between Mods and Rockers in Brighton resulted in multiple arrests, injuries, and damage to property. Police were deployed to manage the disorder, and several youths appeared before local magistrates in the days that followed.

Mods were typically associated with scooters, suits, and modernist fashion, while Rockers were known for motorcycles and leather jackets. The two groups were identified as youth subcultures with differing styles and music preferences. The 1964 clashes were widely reported in national newspapers, and later immortalised in Franc Roddam’s 1979 film Quadrophenia (based on The Who’s 1973 rock opera of the same name). It’s a gritty, stylish snapshot of subculture and adolescent angst, featuring music by The Who and early performances from actors like Phil Daniels, Sting and Ray Winstone. Above are four grainy stills from the film which itself can viewed freely at Internet Archive.  

ChatGPT provides this analysis: ‘By 1965, the fierce edge of the Mods and Rockers rivalry was already dulling. Mod fashion was moving toward psychedelia and the emergent counterculture, while Rockers began to look like a fading relic. Yet the 19 April disturbances showed the staying power of the myth. Even as the actual confrontations became more manageable, the cultural image of Brighton as a flashpoint for youth rebellion lingered. Indeed, the echoes of these bank holiday battles still resonate. They were not just scuffles between teenagers but symbolic episodes in a much larger story - of how Britain came to terms with its youth, its future, and its identity.’

Photographs and contemporary reports of the Brighton clashes in 1965 are not widely available. These two here (the one above copyrighted at Media Storehouse, the other at Alamy) are the only ones I can find actually dated to 19 April. However, earlier this year, The Argus published an excellent article, with many photographs, looking back to the 1964 clashes, and quoting from its own reports.