The first man ever to die in a car crash came from Brighton, proving that the place leads in death as in life.

Author Rose Collis says in a new book on death in Brighton that there are many other examples over the years.

The first Allied soldier to fire shots in the First World War was from Brighton, while the man who sent the telegram to end the conflict was from Hove.

Until recently Brighton and Hove was the suicide capital of England and Wales. It still comes high in the league table of drug deaths.

As for murders, there were so many notorious ones that Brighton was known as the Queen of Slaughtering Places.

They range from the gruesome trunk murders in the 1930s to the sad deaths of children like Keith Lyon, son of a bandleader, whose killers were never found.

Aleister Crowley, dubbed the wickedest man in the world, died in Hastings but the council would not allow him to be cremated there.

Rumours flew around that the ashes were to be scattered at Devil’s Dyke, but they were given to an American follower and buried under a tree.

The Great Omani, otherwise known as Ron Cunningham, was also cremated in Brighton. He was 92 and one of Britain’s best escapologists.

He left a poem which was read out after his death.

They put Omani in a box,

Using chains instead of locks.

But at his funeral don’t despair,

The chances are he won’t be there.

Omani was taken to Woodvale crematorium in a horse-drawn carriage. Similar transport was used for drag artist Phil Starr, whose funeral was attended by hundreds of mourners.

His body entered the church to his recording of To All The Boys I Loved Before and there was an enormous picture of him in stage costume.

Former Brighton councillor Nimrod Ping arrived at his funeral service in Rottingdean in a coffin decorated with a painting of a steam train.

Ping’s memorial stone says, “Architect, musician and troublemaker. Arrived late; left much too early.”

Not far from his grave is a headstone bearing the politically incorrect inscription, “The last curtain call for GH Elliott, The Chocolate Coloured Coon.”

Elliott, who died in 1962, was a music hall star who blacked up for shows and was persistently popular. He retired to Rottingdean aged 78 having made more than 100 discs.

Cabaret legend Douglas Byng, a Kemp Town homosexual who lived to be 94, has no grave but, like Omani, he did compose his epitaph:

So here you are, old Douglas, a derelict at last.

Before your eyes what visions rise of your vermilion past?

Mad revelry beneath the stars, hot clasping by the lake.

You need not sigh, you can’t deny you’ve had your piece of cake.

Collis, who wrote The New Encyclopaedia Of Brighton, knows a lot about the city and has a good sense of humour – essential when you are dealing with death.

  • Death And The City: The Nation’s Experience Told Through Brighton’s History by Rose Collis is published by Hanover Press, priced £12.