Hone, in The Year Book, date, Sept. 22, 1821, says, “I saw this woman to-day in her bed, to which she is confined from having lost the use of her limbs. She has even now, old and withered as she is, a fine character of countenance, and I should judge, from her present appearance, must have had a fine though perhaps masculine style of head when young. I have seen many a woman, at the age of sixty or seventy look older than she does under the load of 106 years of human life. Her checks are round, and seem firm, though ploughed with many a small wrinkle. Her eyes, though the sight is gone, are large and well formed. As soon as it was announced that somebody had come to see her, she broke the silence of her solitary thoughts and spoke. She began in a complaining tone, as if the remains of a strong and restless spirit were impatient of the prison of a decaying and weak body. ‘Other people die and I cannot,’ she said. Upon exciting the recollection of her former days, her energy seemed roused, and she spoke with emphasis. Her voice was strong for an old person, and I could easily believe her when, upon being asked if her sex was not in danger of being discovered by her voice, she replied that she always had a strong and manly voice. She appeared to take a pride in having kept her secret, declaring that she told it to no man, woman, or child, during the time she was in the army; ‘for you know, Sir, a drunken man and a child always tell the truth. But I told my secret to the ground. I dug a hole that would hold a gallon, and whispered it there.’ While I was with her the flies annoyed her extremely: she drove them away with a fan, and said they seemed to smell her out as one that was going to the grave. She showed me a wound she had received in her elbow by a bayonet. She lamented the error of her former ways, but excused it by saying, ‘when you are at Rome, you must do as Rome does.’ When she could not distinctly hear what was said, she raised herself in the bed and thrust her head forward with impatient energy. She said, when the King, George IV,—saw her, he called her ‘a jolly old fellow.’ Though blind, she could discern a glimmering light, and I was told would frequently state the time of day by the effect of light.”
Phœbe had nine children, but none of them attained any age except the eldest son, who was a sailor, but she had neither seen nor heard of him for many years prior to her decease.
On the 12th of August, 1814, at the festival which took place at the Royal Cricket Ground, to commemorate the peace on Napoleon Buonaparte retiring to Elba, Phœbe, as the “Oldest Inhabitant,” sat on the left of the Vicar, the Rev. Robert Carr, and was an interesting object, then 99 years of age, and many presents in silver and one pound notes found their way to her from the opulent and enquiring part of the crowd. On the celebration of the Coronation of George IV., Phœbe, at the age of 107, and totally blind, took part in the ceremonies, and was present on the Level in a carriage with the Rev. B. Carr, (Vicar), and cheerfully joined in the National Anthem. This incident brought her into great notoriety; and several ladies being struck with her appearance, and pleased with the respectable character she bore, raised a subscription, each subscriber being presented with Phœbe’s likeness, beneath which was inscribed, “An Industrious Woman living at Brighton, with very slender means of Support, which she can only earn by selling the contents of her basket, for whose assistance this Etching is sold.”
For some few years previous to her decease, which took place on the 12th of December, 1821, she was allowed half-a-guinea a-week by the King. It is related that His Majesty offered her a guinea a-week, but she refused it, saying that half that sum was enough to maintain her.
Phœbe, in support of a good old Sussex custom, regularly, on St. Thomas’s Day, 21st of December, went out “Gooding,” visiting well-to-do parishioners, to gossip upon the past, over hot elderberry wine and plum cake, and to receive doles, either in money or materials, to furnish home comforts for the celebration of the festivities of Christmas. One of her places of call was the residence of Mr. Robert Ackerson, where the author of this book has many a time and oft heard the old female warrior tell of her deeds of arms. She made a prediction that the wife of Mr. Ackerson would live to a good old age; and so it came to pass, as, on Friday, the 2nd of February, 1855, she expired, being then in her 97th year. [181] On the St. Thomas’s Day previous to her decease, not one of her pensioners, as she termed them, paid her a visit, they having all died off, gone as she said, after Old Phœbe, and she felt assured that she then should soon follow.
Mr. Hyam Lewis, father of Mr. Benjamin Lewis, silversmith and jeweller, Ship Street, erected the tombstone in the Old Churchyard, which marks the spot where the remains of Phœbe are deposited.
Chapter XXIII.
THE STEINE AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.
No part of Brighton has undergone so many changes during the last century as the Steine, which was at first the drying-ground for fishermen’s nets and the “laying-up” place for such boats as were not in use at particular fishing seasons of the year. The term Steine is of Flemish origin, and is derived from Ein, Stein, or Steen, a rock, as at the time when the town received its Flemish colony, the southern extremity of the valley in which Brighton lay was edged and protected from the sea by a ledge of chalk rocks, and from these the name Steine, or rocky, was given to the field or meadow, which was called the Steine Field. The word is generally, but erroneously written Steine, in conformity with the old corrupt spelling of the Normans and Normanized English in this country. “The final e,” says Paul Dunvan, “which our ancestors borrowed from the French language, was apposite to the genius and usage of the Saxon and Teutonic: and in the modern English language, the use of it is admissible in words of Saxon origin, only to denote the elongation of the preceding vowel, or the liquidity of the letter g. The obvious power, therefore, of the dipthong ei makes the attendance of this Norman lackey after the Teutonic noun, Stein, or Steen, totally unnecessary.” The addition of the final e is a modern innovation, as on the Court Rolls of a Court Baron, held for the Manor of Brighthelmston-Lewes, is the following entry:—“March (27 Elizabeth) it is ordered, that no hog go unringed on the Stein, where nets lie, under a penalty of eight-pence toties quoties.”
In 1779, according to a map of that date, the only building on the east side of the Steine, was Thomas’s Library; just to the north-west of which, on the grass, was a slight erection much after the style of the judge’s stand at races. This structure was the orchestra, in which the town band, of three performers, discoursed their music under their leader, Mr. Anthony Crook, whose instrument was the trombone. The side of the hill whereon St. James’s Street, Edward Street, and the numerous streets which swell the town to the east and north-east now stand, was, “a delightful and rich tract of down, arable and pasture:” and in an old print of Brighthelmston, in 1765, reapers are represented employed in cutting and teams of oxen in carrying the crops on the ground now occupied by the Marine Parade, Grand Parade, &c. Thomas’s Library was the building now modernized and in the occupation of the Electric Telegraph Company. The Steine at that period was of much larger dimensions than at present. In Godwin’s rental mention is made of “the common pound of Brighthelston manor, together with a cottage and garden adjoining the said pound, situate on the Steine on the west side of East Street;” and in the same rental a bowling-green on the Steine is occasionally mentioned.
In tempestuous weather and during the winter, the boats of the fishermen were hauled up for safety on the Steine. A Diarist, dating his memorandum, Wednesday, September 8th, 1778, says, “An old well is half open among the boats; a little child has just now waddled off the Steyne towards it. I ran to prevent mischief, and succeeded.—Have remonstrated against this dangerous neglect in vain. There are one dry and two wet wells open thereabouts. When a child of fortune or two shall have been lost therein, the wells may be boarded over.—The Commissioners by the Act have sufficient powers, and collect money enough to answer its purposes; yet the Cliff-side is all along covered with rubbish, offensive to the sight and smell. Indeed, there is no occasion to search much for nuisances, obstructions, and inconveniences, in this place.—Mem.—Since the above complaint, some loose boards have been laid across one of the wet wells.”