We used to be taught that cities were founded on a particular industry: steel, fish-smoking, boots, ale, learning, railways, pottery, garrisons, market gardening, small arms, worship, shipbuilding, etc. Helpfully educative illustrated maps would show trawlers alongside Lowestoft, maltings at Burton, cotton mills in Manchester, refineries on the Solent. Brighton was always omitted. The illustrations would have been unsuitable for tender eyes since they would have depicted a seedy private detective photographing a couple in flagrante delicto or a raffish bar peopled by ginny former Gaiety Girls, remittance men and bogus majors or a louche “general dealer” charming an elderly widow while stitching her up.
It is, of course, improbable that Brighton was ever actually more wicked than any other English city. That, however, is beside