Houdini’s West Pier stunt

The extraordinary escapologist Harry Houdini died 99 years ago today, on 31 October 1926. He appeared several times in Brighton and, on at least one occasion, performed a spectacular stunt from the West Pier. Many years later a young Ronald Cunningham - who would become The Great Omani - came across a second-hand copy of The Secrets of Houdini which inspired him to follow in the master’s footsteps - even to the extent of repeating the same stunt from the West Pier on the fiftieth anniversary of Houdini’s death.

Born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874, Houdini rose from vaudeville beginnings to become the world’s most famous escape artist, thrilling crowds with feats of endurance and ingenuity. In December 1904 he topped the bill at the Brighton Hippodrome, and local tradition records that as part of his visit he staged a shackled leap into the Channel from the West Pier, a publicity stunt that packed the promenade with spectators. He remained underwater for close to two minutes before surfacing free of chains.

The only source I can find for this event is a memoir written by Omani. In the memoir, he says he once met a retired theatre electrician, Bert Croyle, who claimed to have worked with Houdini and seen the West Pier stunt. I’ll let Omani tell the tale (from The Crowd Roars, QueenSpark Books, 1998).

Chapter: A salute to Houdini

Once it was my privilege to meet an elderly gentleman in his late seventies, by the name of Bert Croyle. In his early days he had worked in London as head electrician in many of the big variety theatres. He had worked with many famous artists and vaudeville stars of yesterday. Me knew the Ching Ling Soo, who met an untimely death on stage when presenting the ‘catching a ballet in the mouth’ trick. He also knew and had worked with the legendary Great Houdini. He told me that Houdini was a very pleasant and polite man to work with, though conceited and at times very temperamental. But then what great artist isn’t temperamental? 

During his tour of England, it appears Houdini had visited Brighton and had appeared top of the bill at the Brighton Hippodrome. Sadly, like many other theatres, the Hippodrome is now a Bingo Hall. Only the ghosts of yesterday tread the boards to the phantom music of bygone days. One day, Bert Croyle and I were sitting down sipping a glass of wine when he suddenly said. ‘You know. I actually saw Houdini perform his famous death jump from West Pier. This was a publicity stunt to advertise his show at the Brighton Hippodrome. He was handcuffed, chained and padlocked and jumped from the pier into the sea and escaped underwater in about two minutes. The pier was packed. What a showman he was that night. As always with Houdini, the theatre was sold out. I asked Bert how long ago it was that Houdini performed on the West Pier. ‘About fifty years ago,’ he replied. ‘Right,’ I said, you’ve just given me an idea for my next stunt. I will perform Houdini’s jump from where he performed it on the West Pier, with handcuffs and chains, as he performed it fifty years ago. I will present it as a salute to the memory of the world’s all time greatest escapologist.’ 

This was a very good story and I had agreed to sell it to a well known London agency called Features International as an exclusive. The morning before the stunt was due to take place, Bert Croyle and I had an interview with one of the BBC radio stations and we discussed the forthcoming stunt. One question the interviewer asked Bert was ‘Do you think that Omani is as good as Houdini? He has done some amazing things.’ Bert hesitated, turned to me and asked what I thought. ‘Simple,’ I said, ‘Houdini was the greatest of all time. Long after our names are forgotten he will still be a legend.’ ‘You may be right,’ said Bert, ‘but Omani is the best we have got today.’ 

Several years had passed since I had performed on the West Pier. It had changed owners and now belonged to the Métropole Hotel, Brighton. The morning of the stunt arrived and Frank Durham, a director of Features International, and his camera-girl arrived to pick me up at my house. With my suitcase packed with manacles, chains and a pair of bathing trunks, I got into his car and we headed for the West Pier.

On arrival we were in for a shock. A battery of about a dozen cameramen and reporters were waiting for us. A gathering of the media such as one might expect had the rumour got around that Dolly Parton was going to appear topless!’

See also The Great Omani. Picture credits: Wikipedia, Brighton Hippodrome, and ChatGPT.

Drops and jolts

Galaxia at Brighton Palace Pier, now over 20 years old, opened in May 2004. This is a Jump & Smile style ride manufactured by the Italian firm Sartori Rides to its Techno Jump design, able to accommodate up to 42 riders per cycle. Over the years, Galaxia has become one of Brighton pier’s landmark attractions, with its rainbow-lit arms rising above the deck and blue cars spinning visitors through sudden drops and jolts while offering sea views.

Enthusiast sites and visitor blogs have described the ride as a mid-range thrill compared with the more extreme boosters on the pier, noting it as a good choice for those less keen on heights. Some riders, however, have commented on the over-shoulder harnesses being uncomfortable and the motion feeling rough compared with smoother coasters. On one fan forum it was memorably summed up as a ‘crappy coaster . . . but what a stunning location’.

In its two decades of service the ride has remained a consistent part of the pier’s fairground offer, promoted by the operators with the promise of ‘lifts, drops and spins you around at speed, so strap in, hold on and take in the views as you whizz round’. Despite the challenges of constant exposure to salt air, high winds and heavy seasonal use, Galaxia has retained its place among the pier’s most popular thrill rides, demonstrating both the durability of the Techno Jump design and its role in sustaining Brighton’s long tradition of seafront entertainment.

Other examples of Sartori’s Techno Jump model can be found at several parks and fairs worldwide, each trading under its own name. Fantasy Island in Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire, has operated a version since 2004, while Tivoli World in Benalmádena, Spain, installed one in 2005. A travelling unit owned by the Piccaluga family appeared on Clacton Pier between 2004 and 2016 before returning to the Italian fair circuit, and a larger 14-arm portable model has toured in Mexico under the name Alegre Fantasia. The same ride type is also produced by other manufacturers under titles such as Smashing Jump or Hang-Jump, but the Brighton Galaxia remains the UK’s most prominent permanent Sartori installation.

Deaf Mosaic

The arches along Brighton seafront recently hosted a striking exhibition, Deaf Mosaic, which celebrates deaf culture and the many ways deaf people contribute to society. Created by award-winning photographer Stephen Iliffe, the project brings together 35 portraits of deaf people from all walks of life, each accompanied by their story. The exhibition was on show at the Brighton Seafront Gallery, 54 Kings Road, last September, forming part of Flarewave 2025, a deaf-led arts festival supported by Arts Council England and Brighton & Hove City Council.

Iliffe, who is himself deaf, has worked to challenge stereotypes by rejecting the outdated medical view of deafness and affirming the ‘social model’ instead - that barriers come not from deafness itself but from the structures of hearing society. His work has already been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and Kings Cross.

Two of the portraits on display carry a particularly strong connection to the city’s seafront. One features TV chef Scott Garthwaite, better known as Punk Chef, who poses outside his food van with the words ‘Punk Chef’ in bold pink across the windscreen. He recalls that when he first entered the profession, ‘kitchen chefs didn’t see my abilities, only my deafness’. He has since had the last laugh, working in top restaurants and becoming an award-winning television chef. The image is set against the wide horizon of Brighton beach, with the remains of the West Pier visible in the background.

Another portrait shows long-distance swimmer Andrew Rees fresh from the water, with Brighton Palace Pier behind him. Rees, a management accountant, trains by swimming between the two piers, but he is also a Channel veteran. In 2016 he became the first deaf person to swim the 34km from Dover to Calais, enduring gale-force winds, rough seas and shoals of jellyfish. ‘Nothing great is easy’ was his motto, he explains, and after 15 hours in the water he finally made it to France.

Both portraits encapsulate the exhibition’s central message: that with the right support, deaf people can achieve anything. Brighton’s seafront, with its open vistas and historic landmarks, can be viewed as a fitting stage for these affirmations of resilience and talent.

Slow in the Wintry Morn

This day in 1806 died Charlotte Smith, the poet and novelist whose Elegiac Sonnets established her as a leading voice of early Romanticism. One of her most famous works is The Emigrants, a long poem published in 1793 and set explicitly on the cliffs to the east of Brighton, then known as Brighthelmstone. Its combination of personal melancholy, political sympathy, and local coastal imagery made it one of the most striking poetic responses to the turbulence of the French Revolution and the transformation of the Sussex seashore.

Smith was born Charlotte Turner in London in 1749, the daughter of a wealthy merchant family. Married at 15 to Benjamin Smith, she endured an unhappy union marked by financial ruin and repeated imprisonment for debt. To support her twelve children she turned to writing, publishing Elegiac Sonnets in 1784 while her husband was in the King’s Bench Prison. The book became a sensation, going through multiple editions and influencing Wordsworth and Coleridge. Over the following two decades she produced both poetry and a string of innovative novels that engaged with contemporary politics, women’s rights, and the injustices of the legal system.

Despite chronic illness and poverty, Smith continued to write until her death at Tilford, Surrey, on 28 October 1806. Among her most enduring works is The Emigrants, written during the war with revolutionary France. It is addressed to her friend William Cowper, whose own Task had inspired her, and takes as its scene the Sussex coast overlooking Brighton. In the poem’s two ‘books’ (around 80 pages in total), she meditates on the plight of French exiles driven to England, weaving their suffering into her own reflections on war, tyranny, and compassion. 

Here are the first few lines of the first ‘book’. It opens with a note - ‘Scene, on the Cliffs to the Eastward of the Town of Brighthelmstone in Sussex. Time, a Morning in November, 1792’ - and begins with a powerful evocation of the pebbled beach and troubled Channel.

The Emigrants

Slow in the Wintry Morn, the struggling light
Throws a faint gleam upon the troubled waves;
Their foaming tops, as they approach the shore
And the broad surf that never ceasing breaks
On the innumerous pebbles, catch the beams
Of the pale Sun, that with reluctance gives
To this cold northern Isle, its shorten’d day.
Alas! how few the morning wakes to joy!
How many murmur at oblivious night
For leaving them so soon; for bearing thus
Their fancied bliss (the only bliss they taste!),
On her black wings away! - Changing the dreams
That sooth’d their sorrows, for calamities
(And every day brings its own sad proportion)
For doubts, diseases, abject dread of Death,
And faithless friends, and fame and fortune lost;
Fancied or real wants; and wounded pride,
That views the day star, but to curse his beams. . .

Find the plaques on the pier

Next time you walk out along Brighton Palace Pier, don’t just look up at the rides or out to the sea. Look down. On the edge of the boards beneath your feet runs a discreet line of small brass and bronze plates. They are easy to miss, almost hidden from view, much aged and weathered, but together they form a civic and personal trail stretching the length of the pier.

Most of the plaques are private dedications. For a fee, the pier company would fix them to the decking, allowing families to commemorate loved ones, celebrate weddings, or mark birthdays and anniversaries. This scheme began in the early 2000s as part of the pier’s commercial offer, marketed through the ‘Deck-Squares’ programme. Unlike the large monuments or benches seen elsewhere on the seafront, these tributes are modest and low-lying, forming a quiet memorial gallery where the pier’s fabric becomes the canvas. Scores of them already line the walkway; given the pier’s great length - more than 1,700 feet - the potential runs into the thousands.

In recent years a second strand has joined them. Since 2021 the pier has also carried plaques for winners of the Argus Community Star & Care Awards, the long-running scheme organised by Brighton’s daily newspaper to honour volunteers, carers and community heroes. Categories have included Good Nurse, Mental Health Award, Volunteer of the Year and Local Hero. Usually winners are celebrated at a hotel gala with trophies and publicity, but in partnership with the pier company their names have also been etched into brass and screwed into the decking alongside the private dedications. However, this year, the awards for 2025 have been postponed, with the organisers noting they will advise for 2026.

The effect is curious and rather moving. A memorial to a much-loved grandmother might sit a few feet away from a dedication to a young volunteer recognised for charity work, or a nurse honoured for service in the pandemic. Family affection and civic recognition are absorbed into the same structure, pressed into the pier’s timbers, sharing the same salty air and the same tides below. Together, these plates turn Brighton’s Palace Pier into an accidental archive: part seaside attraction, part public gallery of memory. They are easy to ignore, but once you notice them, you find yourself scanning each one, piecing together fragments of lives and achievements.

Here are my top nine plaques (see also photo montage).

‘In memory of my dear sister Pat who manned the candy floss kiosk throughout the 1953 season’

‘John (Leonard) Scrace 1944 - 2022 Son of Brighton Football Legend (Whitehawk FC) xxx’

‘For our dearest Johnny John Johnny Who always loved the 2p machines and dreamt of winning big. Love you always, Samila, Mish, Miled and family xxx’

‘ADAM JUSTIN BOULTER 11/01/1970 – 03/08/2023 “Au revoir, les Félicieuses.” ’

‘Joss Baker Happy 70th Birthday Brighton Palace Pier, 13.07.25 A magical day of love, laughter and joy shared with family and friends’

‘Jemma and Steve Got engaged on this spot 17th August 2013’

‘In memory of Norman and Jean Foord who met at a dance on the Palace Pier in 1948. Married a year later and settled in Brighton, sharing 65 happy years together.’

‘Celebrating the Life of Raymond Barnard who maintained the pier with love and care’

‘In memory of our mum Elizabeth Oliver who loved Brighton’s casinos 11.01.28 - 28.01.21’

The ball’s still in the air

Here is the 18th 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. A lively soccer match is underway. In the foreground, a large black-and-white football dominates; to the right, the leg and foot of a player in blue shorts and striped socks is shown in motion, suggesting a kick. Behind the ball and player, a crowd of supporters fills the background, represented in bright blocks of colour - yellow, red, blue, green, and brown - with raised arms and cheering stances, creating the sense of excitement in a stadium atmosphere. The overall style is bold and simplified, with clear outlines and vivid colours.

A limerick starter

A striker with socks blue and white, 

Kicked a ball with incredible might. 

The crowd gave a roar, 

As it sailed to the score, 

And victory gleamed in the light.

The ball’s still in the air (with apologies to Nick Hornby) 

I was standing on Brighton Beach, staring up at this stained-glass window in one of those seafront cafés, the kind that smells of chip fat even after it’s closed. It showed a football frozen in mid-flight, with a crowd behind it looking like they’d just seen God, or at least Peter Ward in his prime. The socks on the kicker were the clincher: blue and white hoops, the Seagulls’ stripes.

And suddenly I was back there, twelve years old, thinking Brighton & Hove Albion were going to change my life. Dad took me to the Goldstone Ground and I saw Gerry Ryan run down the wing like he’d been shot out of a cannon. That was it. I was hooked for good. But football - especially Brighton football - is like the sea here: it looks glorious when the sun’s on it, but most of the time it just drags you under and leaves you coughing up salt.

On the beach that morning, you could almost hear the echoes of promotion parties and relegation heartbreak. I’d been through them all, right down to the protests when we nearly lost the club. We stood outside with banners, shouting until our throats cracked, while inside men in suits plotted how to flog the ground for a Sainsbury’s. It felt hopeless. And yet here we still are, with a stadium on the edge of town, European nights, a place at the grown-ups’ table.

Looking back at that window, I realised why it hit me so hard. The crowd in the glass isn’t celebrating a goal. They’re waiting. The ball’s still in the air, and anything could happen: joy, despair, a dodgy referee’s whistle. It’s Brighton Beach in a nutshell. You sit on the shingle, you watch the horizon, and you think: maybe today the tide turns. Or maybe it just keeps rolling in and out, same as ever.

I finished my tea, wiped the crumbs from my lap, and thought about the next game. It’s ridiculous, really, this endless faith in a team, like waiting for a miracle on a beach that’s seen more storms than summers. But if you’re a Seagull, you don’t stop flying. You can’t.

E-scooters for the seafront

Brighton Beach’s long seafront cycle lane may soon get a lot busier. Brighton & Hove City Council has agreed to apply for government approval to run an e-scooter trial, a move that could soon bring rental scooters to the city’s seafront. At a cabinet meeting on 16 October, councillors voted to seek Department for Transport consent for a scheme that would add up to 300 e-scooters to the existing Beryl bike-share programme. The cabinet report explicitly mentions that the council will ‘prioritise locations on the seafront and seek to maximise convenience for commuters with central sites near car parks, stations and bus stops.’ If successful, the trial would launch in April 2026, with a public consultation and full financial review to be completed before rollout. 

The plan is part of what transport experts call ‘micromobility’ - small, lightweight vehicles such as bikes, e-bikes and scooters designed for short urban journeys. According to the CoMoUK Annual Shared Micromobility Report, more than 40 million journeys were made on shared bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters in the UK in 2023, with around one in five scooter trips replacing a car journey. The Council argues that giving residents and visitors a regulated hire option could cut emissions, reduce traffic, and displace the use of illegal private scooters.

Under the scheme, up to 75 scooters would be introduced each week until the full fleet is in place. The operating zone would be smaller than the bike-share area, excluding the Undercliff and private land without consent. Thirty new parking bays are proposed, located along the seafront and at transport hubs, to prevent obstruction on pavements. Charges would be higher than for e-bikes, with an unlock fee and per-minute rate. Safety measures include speed caps, no-go zones, possible curfews between midnight and 5am on weekends, licence checks, helmet promotion and access audits of parking sites to protect disabled users.

The council report reminds councillors that privately owned e-scooters remain illegal to use on public roads and pavements except as part of authorised trials. The document then notes that many people are already using them around Brighton despite the ban, creating safety concerns and enforcement difficulties (see Brighton and Hove Police on Facebook). The trial is pitched as a way to provide a safe, regulated alternative, with proper insurance, speed limits, and parking controls - and to reduce demand for illegal private scooters. Moreover, the report highlights that most scooter collisions involve private machines, with hire schemes showing a far better safety record. Data from other trials suggests that e-scooters not only replace car journeys but can also complement public transport, making them an important tool for cutting congestion in busy coastal areas.

The application deadline is 21 October, with a decision expected in January 2026. A three-month mobilisation would then precede the launch. The scooters will be funded and owned by Beryl, and the Council anticipates no additional budget costs, with any surplus offsetting existing borrowing on the bike-share scheme.