The 1830s marked an important transition in Britain's transport system from slow boats on canals to railway engines. George Stevenson had demonstrated what could be achieved through the opening of the Stockton to Darlington Railway in 1825. The Liverpool to Manchester railway opened in 1830, the year that King William IV succeeded his brother King George IV.
King William IV only ruled for seven years. His reign saw a little social reform in the 1832 Poor Law Reform Act, which gave the vote to men living in poverty, but not to women.
On his death in 1837, the same year that Maria Fitzherbert died, King William was succeeded by the young Queen Victoria. Early in her reign Queen Victoria enjoyed some visits to the Royal Pavilion. She married Prince Albert in 1840 and between 1840 and 1845 they made visits to Brighton together. The Queen especially liked the Music Room of the Royal Pavilion and arrangements were made for Victoria, Albert and their young family to be accommodated on the same floor as her favourite room.
The family stopped visiting the Royal Pavilion in 1845 because it no longer offered them enough privacy.
One of the main reasons for this was the opening of the London to Brighton Railway (completed in September 1840 at a cost of two million pounds) in 1841. Before the opening of the railway, any Londoner wanting to travel to Brighton would have had to pay over £1 for an uncomfortable 6 hour stagecoach journey. The new railway offered London to Brighton return trips taking 2 hours each way for approximately 15 pence. In 1837, at the end of King William IV's reign, an annual total of 50,000 people made the journey from London to Brighton by stagecoach, but by 1860 Brighton was attracting five times as many people (a quarter of a million!) by train. Queen Victoria was probably very wise to take her family for less public holidays to the Isle of Wight, where she stayed at Osborne House.
After Queen Victoria deserted the Royal Pavilion in 1845, the building quickly fell into disrepair. By 1850, many of the good things had been removed from the Royal Pavilion and the shell of the building was threatened with demolition.
In 1850, the Brighton Town Commissioners (the body who were elected to govern the town) had the good sense to buy the Royal Pavilion from the Royal Family. Parts of the building were still in good enough repair to be used for flower shows, concerts, official functions and exhibitions. By this time, Brighton had a large number of day-trippers and visitors from London and was becoming London-by-the-Sea. The town accommodated both very rich and very poor people. It was not surprising that during the 1850s there were 500 public places where you could drink alcohol. Brighton is still a city with a very high density of pubs and restaurants. Also by the end of the 1850s, there were known to be at least 600 prostitutes and 100 brothels in Brighton. The town began to gain a reputation as a place where you could have an extra-marital affair or "a dirty weekend". There is a novel (that has been made into a bad film) entitled "Dirty Weekend", which reflects the feminist backlash against macho characters based in Brighton.
The early years of Queen Victoria's reign were marked by by hardship for many and excitement for a few. There were also some reforms. In 1842, an Act of Parliament made it illegal for women of any age or boys younger than 10 to work in Coal Mines. Coal was providing the excitement, since this was the time when steam was being used to power ships as well as trains.
The 1845-49 Potato famine hit Ireland very hard and the 1854-56 Crimean War was responsible for more deaths. Sanitation in towns was very poor and disease did not always distinguish between rich or poor. Prince Albert died in 1861 after helping Queen Victoria to produce 9 children and carrying out many of her royal duties during her pregnancies.
As Queen Victoria's reign progressed, Brighton gained new sports facilities. In 1872, Sussex County Cricket Ground opened in Hove, to provide proper facilities for a sport that used to be played on Brunswick Lawns. In 1877, Queen Victoria became Empress of India, which provided England with new cricket opponents! Football in Brighton did not become established until 1898.
By 1899, new technology began to appear in Brighton in the form of the motor car and the town's magistrates did not really welcome these dangerous machines. A 1899 issue of the magazine "Autocar" reports a case where a Brighton judge found a motorist guilty of driving at the unreasonable speed of 12 miles per hour. When asked what a reasonable speed would be, the judge suggested 4 miles per hour. Given today's statistics for deaths and serious injuries from Road Traffic Accidents (which we would never tolerate if they occurred on the railways or the airlines), perhaps the Victorians had a better sense of what is reasonable than we do in the 21st century. Today children are delivered to schools and collected from leisure centres by family cars (mothers or fathers are summoned by mobile phones) because many parents do not deem it safe for children to walk or cycle within our towns and cities. I was born in an age where schools and factories had cycle-sheds rather than car parks. Brighton's bus-lanes are now improving public transport, but our pavements and cycle-tracks run far too near busy roads. To achieve the separation of people and bicycles from heavy traffic that can be seen in Holland and Belgium in Brighton, it will be necessary to take away rights which both the motorist and the car lobby in the UK have grown accustomed to. There is too much money to be made by the professions which base their livelihood on Road Traffic Acccidents, including the legal and insurance professions. Bring back Victorian judges who make reasonable laws!
Queen Victoria died in 1901 and was succeeded by Victoria's first son, King Edward VII, who reigned until 1910.
George V [1910-1936] oversaw the First World War from 1914 until 11th November 1918. During this horrible war, which people welcomed at first (as illustrated in the Musical and film Oh What a Lovely War where Brighton is featured), there were many Zeppelin air raids on London. Brighton escaped the worst of the bombing and The Royal Pavilion was used as a hospital for the many injured soldiers who were lucky enough to return from the battle front. War was brutal for all the countries involved. Many people regard the first half of the 20th century as a time when Europe "tried to commit suicide". Needless to say, the Royal Pavilion fell into further neglect. Some restoration began in the 1920s, when there was a revival of interest in the Regency period. However, the Second World War [1939-1945] put renewed pressure on Britain's economic resources.
George V was succeeded very briefly by Edward VIII in 1936. Edward VIII was never crowned. In the early 1930s, he had fallen in love with a woman who had already lost one husband and was about to divorce a second one. On her divorce, Edward was determined to marry her. Marriage to a divorced woman could not be reconciled with the monarch's role as Head of the Church of England, where "marriage means for life!"
Edward VIII therefore abdicated, leaving his brother George VI to reign from 1936-1952 and to oversee the Second World War.
In 1938, the writer Graham Greene had a best-selling novel published entitled Brighton Rock. The novel contains a description of the gang warfare and protection rackets that were operating in Brighton during the 1920s. Much of the crime surrounded the racecourse. There was also a spate of murders in what are now quiet, safe, residential streets, quite close to where I live. (It wasn't me!).
After World War II, the Pavilion was in such disrepair that there was a proposal to demolish it, which was very narrowly defeated (the rumour I have heard is that the Royal Pavilion was saved by one Council vote!).
In 1975, the Royal Pavilion suffered unexpected damage when a fire bomb was thrown into the music room. A big effort was made to restore the Music Room to its former glory. The clergyman at Saint Peter's Church was so alarmed by this act of vandalism that he set up an all-night vigil to ensure that Brighton's monument to Regency Britain did not come under further attack.
A full programme of restoration of the Royal Pavilion began in 1982 and Brighton's people had to view their monument buried under scaffolding and protective sheeting for several years. The restoration of the Royal Pavilion's structure, alone, cost in excess of £9 - a heavy burden for Brighton's 160,000 rate-payers, who had already contributed towards the ill-fated project of Brighton Marina (where land was reclaimed from the sea at tremendous cost to house a supermarket! - Sorry, Brighton Marina. We love you really and you are looking quite picturesque now!).
Picture from a leaflet issued to every rate-payer in Brighton to explain what was going on!
In October 1987, not long after the structural restoration was completed, Brighton's big storm (known to some as The Great hurricane, which tore down trees and caravans across the south east of England,) knocked one of the large domes through the roof into the music room, damaging it once more. Some Regency ghost does not like music as much as the Prince Regent and Queen Victoria did.
The Music Room has now been lovingly restored and the present Royal Family [Queen Elizabeth II 1952-] has donated generously to the furniture and ornaments now on display. It is some display. It is not the role of this web site to describe it. I hope learners of English and other visitors who come to Brighton will go and see it. It's also worth stopping at the Souvenir Shop in Pavilion Buildings by the South Gate, where there are a vast number of books on British (especially Regency) history, postcards showing everything I have not been able to display (the interior!), posters, key-rings, china and other memorabilia, mostly reasonably priced. They even have a January Sale!