The Middy 100 years ago

It consisted of an imaginary conversation between a shopper and a copper in Western Road Brighton, written like radio script.

Lady: I say policeman, isn’t Stafford’s open yet? It’s past 9 o' clock.

Policeman: Staffords have moved madam.

Lady: But they were here last night.

Policeman: Well, you will have to go further along the road madam, to where Bon Marche used to be in business. All the staff worked voluntarily last night like a lot of busy bees.” And so it went on.

Squeezed at the bottom of the front the Burgess Hill National Savings Committee reported selling more than £7,000 worth of certificates.

Juvenile is a word not used much nowadays, but the paper said 188 juvenile members of the Keymer Agency of the Tunbridge Wells Equitable Society were entertained by senior members at Keymer’s Parish Room

Fred Godsmark of Shaftsbury Cottages in Freaks Lane, Burgess Hill was prosecuted for having too many people in his house, nine living in four rooms. He was given time to, in the words of the court, : “get rid of his tenants”.

The death was reported of the retired head of Hurst College for 20 years, Cannon Coombes, who was also a lay preacher.

An exhibition of work by local blind home workers was held at Hurstpierpoint Parish Room. It included baskets, wicker chairs, stools and brushes.

The English had a different sense of humour to the Americans, Dr C W Kimmins told an audience of the Cuckfield Literacy Society at Queens Hall Cuckfield. While chief inspector of London schools he sought funny stories from children. Expecting about 3,000, he received more than 10,000. Comparing them with 9,000 gathered in New York he concluded that humour was very different between the two countries. He told the meeting that some Americans though the English had no sense of humour and many English people thought the same of the Americans.

John Hearsey, 78, a Twineham man living in a barn, died after being hit by a motor-cycle soon after leaving the Hickstead Castle Hotel, an inquest heard.

“Brilliant weather, a great crowd and an exciting and clean game” was the verdict on the Montgomery Cup replay between home side Ardingly FC and Haywards Heath. They drew 1-1 and had to play a third match.

A robbery and murder at what is now known as Wivelsfield featured in a talk about vanishing Sussex at the Adastra hut in Keymer. It recalled how Jacob Harris robbed the till at the Royal Oak Inn on Ditchling Common after murdering the innkeeper and his wife and mortally wounding a servant girl. He was caught hiding in a chimney at the Cat Inn at West Hoathly, tried at Horsham, executed and his body left to rot in a gibbet opposite the pub. Somewhat spookily, old people tore splinters from the gibbet support pole, believing it cured nerve pain and rheumatism.

In a discussion of roads, it was said they were so bad that outside hackney carriage drivers asked for extra money for driving in Sussex. Reporting a meal for old people the Middy even listed every single carver at the St John’s Institute, now known as the Park Centre.

Charlie Chaplin was drawing packed houses in the Gold Rush film at the Regent in Brighton. The Middy billed him the “greatest of all”. A public inquiry thrashed out an application for £8,338 by Burgess Hill Urban District Council to improve its inadequate and unsatisfactory sewage system.

In a letter that would probably provoke outrage now, a woman letter writer signing herself A MATRON got in a flap about flappers wasting their spare time in dance halls. She said girls should concentrate less on dancing and more on learning how to run a home and added: “In my days they also fitted themselves to make good housewives, but how many of the flappers know anything about housework.”

This article was recorded on 19 February 2026 for listeners of the Yews Talking News service for blind people and those with impaired vision in the Mid Sussex area.

By Philip Dennett