Dyke Road: St Nicholas Rest Garden

Sir Richard Phillips (1767 – 1840)

This substantial tomb with its somewhat wordy inscription is that of Sir Richard Phillips. It can be found (in fact is hard to miss) immediately to the left of the gates of St Nicholas Rest Garden on the western side of Dyke Road, opposite St Nicholas Church.

This is the man himself – larger than life, which he was.

Sir Richard Phillips. Portrait by James Saxon. © The National Portrait Gallery

Phillips came to Brighton in 1823 to retire. At least, that was the plan although, as will become clear, it did not happen.

A man of energy, commitment and deep humanity, and very much a radical, he was a campaigner for vegetarianism and prison reform, enduring a spell in prison himself for selling copies of Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man. He was also a successful entrepreneur, celebrity, master of spin and zealous self-publicist. Juicy stories about him abound in the media of the time. Undoubtedly he was a complex character - a vegetarian, yes, but still addicted to gravy over his potatoes!

He had been a conjurer, schoolmaster, hosiery retailer and had speculated in canal building. In 1807, he was appointed a Sheriff of London, for which he was knighted. But it was as a writer and publisher that Phillips spotted a gap in the market for teaching materials. Using a range of insightful marketing techniques, he created a hitherto unrecognised need for a package of printed products to support teaching and learning, based on what he called the Interrogative System. These he promoted as must-haves for every tutor and governess.

The principal innovative feature of the Interrogative System was the ‘copy book’ of questions. Each question had lines below for the individual pupil's answers. The pupil was required to refer to the text book to answer each question in his or her own words. The Questions were arranged in a random order to help readers gain a comprehensive grasp of the text. By this means, learning was effectively tested whilst simultaneously facilitating handwriting practice.  A register book enabled the tutor to record each pupil's progress and there was also a separate tutor's key.  As these publications were considered ‘consumables’, demand was perpetuated.

© The British Library

Phillips employed additional tactics to ensure his own name and that of the Interrogative System stayed in the public eye, notably by oblique advertising in his own publications. In Rev David Blair's English Grammar, for example, the pupil is asked to correct the punctuation of sentences such as these:

Richard Phillip's book.

Dr. MAVOR  has just published an Universal History, and Dr. Gregory has  just finished an useful Cyclopedia

Both Dr Mavor and Dr Gregory did indeed write text books for Phillips. However, the putative author of ‘English Grammar’, Rev David Blair, did not exist, being one of Phillips’s several pseudonyms.

The authors Phillips did commission were not always so grateful either since, as a measure of control, they were often forced to write under fictitious names themselves, which obviously did nothing for their reputations as scholars or writers. One children’s author, a Dr Wolcot, saw red and was moved to write:

"The scoundrel shall never have another line of mine. . . he will suck the knowledge out of authors' skulls and fling the carcasses on the dunghill afterwards!"

Even so, and despite having been declared bankrupt at one point, the school books were Phillips’s main source of income over the last 25 years of his life. In fact, his educational product range gradually extended to more and more academic subjects, underpinning his publishing empire.  The books were published in other English-speaking countries and translated into several different languages.

It’s perhaps hardly surprising that, in his sixties, Phillips described himself as “a burnt out volcano”. In 1823, in pursuit of a less hectic life, he left London for Brighton, establishing a new home at 23 Devonshire Place.  Once here, however, the sparks of ambition swiftly reignited.  “Of making of books there is no end” as he put it!

Among many other publications of these latter years is this 48 page pamphlet of 1835:

Here is a small sample of Phillips's recommendations:

That all Children, from six to-eleven, shall be educated at Schools endowed by the State, either free or by fixed moderate payments.

That the whole shall be governed, in their districts, by a local  Committee of five or seven, in accordance with the taste, usages and pursuits of the vicinity. 

That annual returns shall be made, and laid before Parliament, by a public Secretary for the purpose.

For sure, religious groups – both Anglican and nonconformist – were already busily establishing elementary schools for poorer children.  But, despite the background of the 1832 Reform Act (a mere three years previously), Phillips’s proposals were still radical for their time, at least in this country.  Basic schooling subsidised, if not fully funded, by the State with local control only gained sufficient momentum 35 years later in the UK with the implementation of the 1870 Education Act.  

Infirmity slowed Phillps down in the end and he died in his 72nd year. Characteristically, he had prepared for the event by composing a lengthy self-adulatory epitaph to embellish his tomb:

Here rest the remains of Sir RICHARD PHILLIPS, Knt., Born December 13, 1767, Died April 27, 1840 and lived through an age of memorable events and changes and was an active and anxious contemporary. He was Sheriff of London and Middlesex in 1807 – 1808 and an effective ameliorator of a stern and uncharitable criminal code, he was in 1789 the inventor and promulgator of the Interrogative system of education by which new impulses were given to the intelligence of society. He also placed natural philosophy on the basis of common sense and developed the laws of nature on immutable principles which will always be co-extensive with the respect of mankind and for truth in the promotion of these objects and a multitude of others. He wrote and published more original works than any of his contemporaries and in all of them advocated Civil Liberty, General —– ascendancy of justice and the improvement of the Human Race. As a husband, father and friend he was also an example for imitation leaving a mourning family little to inherit besides this good name. He died in the enjoyment of that peace which the sweet truth of the Christian Religion and the world can never give nor take away.

Although originally positioned in the north west corner of the main St Nicholas churchyard, it was moved in the 1850s to its prominent position in the Rest Garden. It would be interesting to know quite how this came about, particularly as the main churchyard was cleared at this time for substantial restoration work on the church when most of the headstones and skeletons were thrown down a disused well; also because no new burials were permitted within the town by this time.  But, as Phillips was such a vigorous self-publicist and master of spin during his lifetime, one should not be surprised that he was capable of extending his visibility into the hereafter.