Henry Solomon
‘It is sad that the memory of Henry Solomon is shown disrespect by gullible ghost hunters,’ lamented a letter to The Argus.
Henry Solomon. Chief Constable of Brighton Borough Police, 1838-1844.
The writer has a point. Henry Solomon was Chief Constable of Brighton Borough Police from 1838 until his untimely death in 1844. He was murdered next to the fireplace in his office, which is now a part of the museum.
Solomon had been questioning a 23 year-old suspect named John Lawrence concerning the theft of a carpet. Lawrence was left alone for a moment, or Solomon turned his back – accounts vary – but in either case Lawrence seized a poker from the fireplace and dealt the Chief Constable a vicious blow across the head, from which he died. Lawrence was hanged for murder.
The reputed paranormal happenings at the museum are attributed to the ghost of Henry Solomon – but I’ve not been able to establish yet why this is the case. The problem with this assumption, to which the letter in The Argus was responding, is that Solomon’s name has now become linked with spooky happenings in the Town Hall basement, eclipsing his rather more substantial achievements whilst he was alive.
Solomon was a highly popular Chief Constable – all the more notable considering that he was Jewish and rose to office at a time when anti-Semitism was not regarded as the hate crime that it is today. His tragic murder shocked the population of Brighton, who turned out in droves for his funeral. He was not a rich man and left behind a widow with nine children. A local appeal raised a large sum for their welfare, £50 of which came from Queen Victoria herself.
Solomon’s reputation has outlived him into the digital age, strongly enough to earn him his own page on Wikipedia, yet even this mentions his reputed haunting of the Town Hall basement. It begs the question: have those who haunt a location chosen to hang around after death? If so, then why would Solomon have chosen this? If not, then what did he do to earn such a fate? If nothing, then what sense does it make to assume the happenings in the Town Hall have anything to do with Solomon’s will or personality whatsoever?
Whatever is down there – if anything is – I’m willing to suppose it has nothing to do with Henry Solomon the living person. Perhaps we really should do our best not link the haunting of the museum with his more notable achievements.
