Revd Richard Blake Brown was an eccentric, dandified, openly gay clergyman who served as chaplain at Horfield Prison for 16 years in the 1950s and 1960s. He mixed with many prominent gay men of the day, including Sir Norman Hartnell, dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth II, but died after a fire at his Clifton flat and is buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery in Brislington.
Blake Brown was born in 1902 in Melrose, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and moved to England soon after, where his father was working on his own invention for developing a system of electric signalling for the London Underground. Blake Brown graduated from Cambridge in 1923 and trained as an actor at the London Old Vic. Afterwards he joined the Old Vic company as a student actor. He later gave up acting to train for the ministry and was ordained in 1927.
That same year, aged 26, he openly discussed his homosexuality with his father. Between 1931 and 1959 he published 14 novels. In a review of his first novel in 1931 he was noted for his “exceptional good looks”. He served as a curate in Hampshire before resigning from the priesthood in 1929 due to his feelings on the decline of the Church’s influence on people, but returned to the ministry in 1933.
In March 1941 he joined the Royal Naval Reserve and became chaplain of HMS Renown when it was commissioned to search for the German battleship Bismarck. Blake Brown had a fanatical devotion to Queen Mary and kept a portrait of her in his lavatory. During the Second World War he preached at Badminton House when Queen Mary was staying there, but his sermon was so outrageous that he was not invited to take a glass of sherry with her afterwards.
From 1947 to 1951 he served as chaplain at a Hampshire college and then at a hospital in Windsor, before becoming chaplain of Horfield Prison in 1952. There he was well liked among staff and inmates, becoming known as “The Prisoner’s Friend”. Homosexual acts between consenting adults over 21 were only legalised in the UK in 1967, a year before Blake Brown’s death, but throughout his life he was candidly open about his sexuality.
Camp, erudite, and upper class, he favoured canary-yellow gloves and smoked Turkish cigarettes from a long holder. Boyishly good-looking, ostentatious, with a great sense of humour and a somewhat quirky religiosity, he was popular and widely liked. In December 1963 he baptised and confirmed 23-year-old murderer Russell Pascoe in his death cell—the last man to be hanged in Bristol.
On one occasion at an Oxford garden party Blake Brown dressed in drag, posing as a diplomat’s wife, and on another he once served gin at a Communion service. He was a lifelong friend of fellow homosexual Sir Norman Hartnell and a second cousin of actor William Hartnell, the first “Dr Who”. Other friends included the gay writer Rupert Croft‑Cooke, who had been at school with Blake Brown; writer Denton Welch (also gay); and novelist Graham Greene.
In the 1950s and 1960s Blake Brown was a regular attendee at the gay sex parties held at Trewyn House, St Ives, Cornwall, the home of gay sculptor John Milne from 1956 to 1978. Milne had been a pupil and assistant to sculptor Barbara Hepworth. Other regular guests included actor and playwright Noël Coward, artist Francis Bacon and his boyfriend and muse, the petty criminal George Dyer; Tony Warren, creator of Coronation Street; and actor Richard Wattis, a familiar face on film and television in the 1950s to 1970s.
In 1956 Blake Brown, aged 54, met Julian Nixon, then 21, described as a “flamboyant young gay layabout” and “a camp little queen who lived in a delusional world”, surviving by living off older gay men and elderly well‑to‑do ladies. Blake Brown remained devoted to Nixon despite severe provocation. In 1954 Nixon was one of 15 men who stood trial for gross indecency at Taunton Assizes. He spent a year in a psychiatric hospital and, on his release, met and took up with Blake Brown, accompanying him to Milne’s parties in St Ives.
The pair shared a passion for Wagner, and Nixon was sometimes referred to as Blake Brown’s “godson”. Nixon broke up with Blake Brown around 1965 and spent time in the USA, later serving in the relatively gay‑tolerant UK Merchant Navy. In 1970 Nixon, aged 35, and a 19‑year‑old accountant were left bound, gagged, and naked while burglars ransacked Nixon’s home, Brook House, Hambrook, Gloucestershire, stealing jewellery, silver, and money. Nixon later became a chef and restaurateur and died around 2006, aged 71.
In the early 1960s Blake Brown began a relationship with “Hutch” (Leslie Hutchinson), the bisexual Grenada‑born singer and pianist who had been one of the most popular cabaret stars of the 1920s and 1930s and one of the earliest Black entertainment celebrities. Hutch had affairs with Cole Porter, Ivor Novello, Merle Oberon, Tallulah Bankhead, and Lady Edwina Mountbatten, wife of Lord Louis Mountbatten and third cousin of King Charles.
By his own admission Hutch was “the most well‑endowed man in the world”, a claim corroborated by many, including actor John Mills. Hutch appeared in cabaret at Arnos Court County Club (now Arnos Manor Hotel), Brislington, in November 1962 and gave a performance for prisoners at Horfield Prison, where he met Blake Brown. The two began a friendship which, as one former inmate later recalled, was “not platonic”.
Hutch returned regularly to Horfield Prison to give concerts and met up with Blake Brown frequently in Bristol until Blake Brown’s death. The pair often lunched (and drank heavily) at Arnos Court County Club, the Grand Spa Hotel, Clifton (now the Avon Gorge Hotel), and other gourmet restaurants in the Bristol area. They also corresponded regularly. On 1 April 1964 Blake Brown wrote to Hutch from Horfield Prison, inviting him to “lunch with me at the Grand Spa and entertain my mischievous flock”.
Hutch sent Blake Brown signed photographs, and Blake Brown sent Hutch obscene poems written in a florid hand using red and black ink on embossed Horfield Prison writing paper, sometimes signing them “Irrepressible Richard”.
In later life Blake Brown suffered from Ménière’s disease, drank heavily, and retired as prison chaplain in June 1968. On 3 November 1968 he was found unconscious in his smoke‑filled flat at 10 Carter’s Buildings, Portland Street, Clifton. A fire had started in the bedroom after an electric heater fell over. He was taken to Bristol Royal Infirmary, where he died of asphyxia aged 66.
His death made the front page of the Western Daily Press the following day with the headline “The Prisoner’s Friend Dies”. Blake Brown was buried in an unmarked grave at St Mary Redcliffe Cemetery, Bath Road, Brislington, only yards from Arnos Court, where he had often lunched with Hutch, who died the following year.
The funeral was conducted by the Right Revd Oliver Tomkins, Bishop of Bristol. The eulogy was read by the Bishop of Southwark, the Right Revd Mervyn Stockwood, a close friend of Blake Brown, former curate and later vicar of St Matthew, Moorfields, Bristol (1936–1955), and a closeted, celibate homosexual. Stockwood and Blake Brown had been at Cambridge together, and Blake Brown had served as Stockwood’s curate at St Matthew’s, Moorfields, from 1951 to 1952.
Bishop Stockwood recalled the incident of Blake Brown serving gin at a Communion service and concluded: “It was impossible not to like him. He made me laugh more than anyone in my life.”
Jonathan Rowe, 2026
Brislington Community News 