28 Brunswick Street West (formerly the boot-makers)

 A boot-maker’s shop is recorded at what is now 28 Brunswick Street West for almost a century from 1846 until 1939; the last known boot-maker died in 1943 and may have continued trading until his death.

28 Brunswick Street West in 2020

The first boot-maker was Henry Whale, whose name appears in the street directories from 1846 to 1880. Henry was born in Hove in 1810 and his wife Eliza was born in Shropshire in 1815. They had at least five sons, Henry, born 1837; Edward born in 1847 according to the 1851 Census or 1851 according to the 1861 Census; Alfred, born 1851 and Joseph, 1853 and William, born 1860.  The discrepancy in Edward’s date of birth may indicate the loss of a child and naming the new baby after him.  Unlike his younger brothers, all born in Hove, Henry junior was born in Marylebone, London, which may suggest that his parents met there: perhaps both had gone there to find work.

A Victorian shoemaker

The 1851 Census describes 14-year-old Henry as a scholar: education was not compulsory until 1870, when the school leaving age was 12.  As Brunswick Street West was a service street, lined with dung pits for the horses stabled there, and the boot-maker’s was opposite a livery stable and next to the rear entrance of a pub, it is unlikely to have been patronised by the rich, probably relying on low value, high volume transactions with the working class residents of the street.

The dung pits around Brunswick Street West

A later boot maker is described in the 1911 Census as a “boot maker and repairer, mostly repairs”, suggesting a steady but modest income. So, it is interesting that the Whale family could not only manage without the money Henry junior could have earned, but could also pay his school fees.  In 1858, Henry junior married a woman named Mary Stace or Mary Juniper in Brighton and sadly died in 1860.

Another of Henry and Eliza’s sons , Joseph, was a boot-maker like his father and was living in Battersea in 1881, 1891 and 1901. The elder Henry Whale died in 1879 and is buried in St Andrew’s Old Church on Church Road.

Henry’s successor in the shop in Brunswick Street West was Isaac Christmas, whose name appears in the directories from 1881 to 1904. Isaac was born in Brighton in 1862 and his father,John, was also a boot-maker. He was only 19 when he took over the shop and the 1881 Census records him as living with his parents in Brighton.

 It’s not known why Isaac took over rather than Henry’s boot-maker son, Joseph, although as Joseph lived in London, he may not have wanted to return. Although Isaac ran the boot-maker’s shop, he seems not to have lived on the premises. In 1891 he lived in Church Road, with his wife Sarah, his parents John and Eliza. In 1901, the family was still living in Church Road. Eliza was now a widow of 82 and a domestic nurse was employed, presumably to look after her. Isaac and Sarah had five  children, Gordon, born 1892; Beulah, born 1894: John, born 1898; Lillian, born 1900; and Violet, born 1903. By 1911, Gordon had left home and Beulah was working as a shop assistant in a confectioner’s.

Pikes 1917 Directory showing Albert Tomsett, bootmaker

In 1904 the boot maker’s shop passed to Frank Pelling, whose wife Ellen was a member of the Munger family which ran the grocery shop next door. Frank’s name appears in the street directories until 1917, but from 1908 Albert Tomsett is listed alongside him and it is Albert who runs the shop until 1939, or possibly until his death in 1943.

Although Albert is not listed in the street directories until 1908 and not as a sole trader before 1918, he was living at the boot maker’s shop with his wife and family at the time of the 1901 Census. His occupation is given as boot maker; at 27 he was probably not an apprentice but a junior employee.   Albert was born in Lewes in 1873 and his wife Sarah, née Sowter, was born in Blatchington in 1872. They had three children Albert James, born 1895; Ernest Clement, born 1900 ; and Lilian Nellie, born 1903: all were born in Hove.

In 1915, 20-year-old Albert junior joined the army and served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and the Labour Corps until 1919. His younger brother Ernest joined the Lancashire Fusiliers in 1918 and was killed in action on 10^th August 1918, aged 18. His body was never found and he is commemorated on panels 5 and 6 of the Vis-en-Artois memorial in France, which honours those World War I combatants who have no known grave.  One can only wonder how Ernest’s family greeted the armistice three months after their son’s death.

The bootmaker’s and greengrocer’s shops were converted to residential dwellings in the 1940s.

Impression of the shops (now 28 and 30 Brunswick Street West) before conversion

Albert junior was luckier than his brother, surviving the carnage and living until 1969. Their mother died in 1940 and their father in 1943. The youngest of the family, Lilian is recoded as living with her parents in the 1939 Register; she had married and worked as a hotel housekeeper. She died in 1992.

Research by Susan Wright, 2023

Return to Brunswick Street West page.