His Mother now is left to mourn
The loss of her beloved Son.
Though sighs and tears will prove in vain,
She hopes in Heaven to meet again.
The name of a modern public-house in the town, the “Kicking Donkey,” near St. Clement’s Church, would appear to have derived from this, although the pictorial sign represents the quite different scene of a seaside holiday-maker trying to keep his seat on the back of a restive jackass.
The second unusual epitaph is to a smuggler:
- This Stone
- Sacred to the memory of
- Joseph Swain, Fisherman
- was erected at the expence of
- the members of the friendly
- Society of Hastings
- in commiseration of his cruel and
- untimely death and as a record of
- the public indignation at the needless
- and sanguinary violence of
- which he was the unoffending Victim
- He was shot by Geo. England, one
- of the Sailors employ’d in the Coast-blockade
- service in open day on the
- 13th March 1821 and almost instantly
- expir’d, in the twenty ninth Year of
- his age leaving a Widow and five
- small children to lament his loss.
The third immortal is Edward Alldridge, “who was Maliciously shot, April 23rd, 1806. Aged 41 years.” It is curious that his son Edward was, according to the same stone, “accidentally shot, May 13th, 1810. Aged 15 years.”
ALL SAINTS’.