The unemployed fishing families were quick to take advantage of their new opportunities as providers of tourist attractions. Dr Russell's patients needed somewhere to stay so lodgings houses were provided for them in a suitably named street - Russell Street. When the doctor first arrived in Brighton, the town only had six main streets with a population of about 2,000 residents, but a town with new residences and facilities for tourists was about to develop. Balls were held in the Assembly Rooms, new entertainments and sporting events were arranged. The Brighthelmston Plate race, for a prize of £50, was run at Lewes Race Course from 1774 and informal challenge races were run on White Hawk Down - later to become Brighton Race Course. When you read that Coasters was the first fun pub in Brighton, don't you believe it. People were drinking and having fun in Brighton long before the early 1980s.
Sadly, Dr Richard Russell did not live to see the full influence he had on the town's development and return to prosperity. He died on a visit to London in 1759, over sixty years before the Royal Pavilion was completed.