George Budgen (1826-1893) – Brighton publican

George in the 1891 census

George Budgen (1826-1893), Anne Maria Baker (1826-1873) and Margaret Cole (1835-1903)
My 3rd great-grand uncle and aunts.

Baptised on 28 January 1827 in Worth, Sussex, George was the son of agricultural labourer William Budgen and Sarah Rice. In 1841 George was living with his parents at Standing Hall Farm in the village and also working as a farm labourer.

He married Anne Maria Baker, who was baptised in April 1826 at Stepney in East London, at St Nicholas’s Church, Brighton, on 1 December 1850. The census a year later showed them living in Patcham to the north of Brighton, with George working as a coachman and groom and where several of their children were born. But by 1861 George was landlord of the Horse and Groom on Islingword Road in Brighton. He remained at the pub for several years, and not without incident.

The Brighton Gazette of 5 September 1867 reported a gruesome tragedy involving a 37-year-old workman, Charles Oakes, who’d been contracted to dig a cesspool at the back of the pub. The inquest, held on the premises, heard from his fellow workman Peter Gibbs. He said that they’d resumed work after being given a drink by the landlord and Oakes, who was sober, had gone down into one of the pits. He then “began to roll about” so they lowered a rope to him, but he was unable to grab it.

Witness Edward Grimes said he assisted Gibbs and another man into the hole to help Oakes. As the paper reported: “When he first got there, deceased was lying with half his body in the heading and his leg on a bar of iron, which went across the middle of the hole. He fell from this position to the bottom of the hole before Gibbs went down.” A medical student, John Harris Ross, was summoned and found Oakes dead. He smelt strongly of sulphuretted hydrogen, the inhalation of which had, he believed, caused death. Gibbs also appeared to be suffering from it. This is the smell we know today as rotten eggs. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

The Brighton Gazette of 20 February 1862 reported a somewhat less exciting event: “A most impudent and daring robbery took place last week at the Horse and Groom Inn, Islingword Road. Mr G Budgen, the landlord, gave a ball to his friends and customers, and a bedroom adjacent to the ballroom was used a washing room. In the course of the evening two young men were seen loitering suspiciously in the room, and on the following morning the landlord discovered that the lock of a drawer, containing money, had been picked, and £20 had been abstracted and carried off.”

George’s wife Ann died young in 1873. Various Brighton street directories list George at the Horse and Groom from the late 1850s to 1874 but there are gaps in the books available both before and after those years. The 1876 Page’s Directory lists George Budgen (jun) at the Horse and Groom, suggesting that one of his sons took over as landlord. Today it’s a cafe-bar known as Village.

George senior moved on to become hotel keeper at the Crown and Anchor in Preston Park but in the 1891 census he was living at 154 Elm Grove and was working as a jobbing gardener. He died on 12 July 1893.

George and Ann Maria’s children were:

  • Ann Maria Budgen (1852-1892). Baptised at St Peter’s in Preston, Sussex, Annie married Brighton-born engineer Arthur Every in Wandsworth, now South London, in 1870. They had a child but both of the parents died young – Arthur in 1882.
  • George Budgen (1854-????). Born in Patcham, Sussex, George was recorded as a carpenter in 1871 and married young widow Margaret Cole (nee Jones) in 1876 – by which time he was a publican. I’ve not traced them after this.
  • Elizabeth Budgen (1857-1885). Elizabeth married publican Frank James Morton (sometimes Moreton) in Rochester Row, Westminster. He became the landlord of the Morton’s Hotel at Queens Street, Brighton (now called the Hope and Ruin). Elizabeth died young and Frank remarried, living until 1938.
  • William Henry Budgen (1859-1902). Born in Brighton, Sussex, William married widow Jane Greenhalgh (nee Battersby) there in 1883. In 1891 he was landlord of the Drovers Inn in Openshaw, Manchester. They had a son but both parents died in 1902.
  • Alice Budgen (1863-????). I’ve traced Alice to the 1891 census, when she was a housekeeper in London, but no further.
  • Henry Richard Budgen (1865-1929). Born in Brighton, Henry became a solicitor’s clerk and married Marion Dunk in 1889. They raised a family together in the Brighton area but she died in Brighton Asylum in 1907. A year later he married Emily Caroline Gore and the 1911 census recorded the family in Ilford, Essex. Henry died in Essex in 1929. Emily lived until 1965.
  • Arthur Stanley Budgen (1867-1916). Also born in Brighton, Arthur followed his brother William to Manchester. He married Margaret Chadwick (probably born Wood) in 1900 and became a publican. She died in 1915, Arthur a year later.

Sources: BMDs and census records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and the British Newspaper Archive (titles mentioned in the text). Sussex Family History Group.

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