Henry Solomon

Chief Constable Henry Solomon (1794 – 14 March 1844) was a police officer who became the first Chief Constable of Brighton Borough Police in East Sussex, England.

Originally a London watchmaker, Solomon was appointed as Chief Constable – the highest rank in the force – on 18 May 1838, which was a notable appointment in that period as he was a Jewish man. He became the superior officer to two superintendents, three inspectors, twenty-four constables and a night constable – a total of thirty-one officers for a population of around 47,000.

While interviewing a prisoner – 23-year-old John Lawrence, for theft of a roll of carpet – on 13 March 1844, Solomon was bludgeoned by Lawrence with a poker, causing a head injury from which he later died. An appeal to which Queen Victoria gave £50 raised a large sum for the welfare of his widow and nine children. His ghost reputedly haunts the basement of the building, now a town hall. where he has been considered to be the 'celebrity' grave. In 2004, his was one of several local names to be chosen to appear on the front of a new fleet of buses in Brighton.

The inscription on Solomon's gravestone reads: 15 years chief officer of police / of the town of Brighton / who was brutally murdered / while in the public discharge / of the duties of his office / on the 14th day of March 1844 / in the fiftieth year of his age.