Billy Waters: The Man Behind Brighton’s Porcelain Figure

In Brighton & Hove Museums’ collection is a small porcelain figure of a Black man playing a violin. He wears a bright yellow costume, a feathered hat and a wooden leg. Made around 1825, it presents him as a colourful Regency character. Yet the man behind the figure had lived a far harder and more important life.

His name was William “Billy” Waters. He was a sailor, a disabled veteran, a husband, a father and one of the best-known Black performers in Regency Britain.

Billy is usually associated with London, where he played his violin, sang and danced outside theatres. No firm evidence has yet been found that he visited or performed in Brighton. His connection to the city comes through the porcelain figure now held by Brighton & Hove Museums and through the work of local researchers who are asking how objects such as this should be understood today.

The figure gives Brighton a reason to look beyond the costume and recover the person it was made to represent.

From New York to the Royal Navy

Much of Billy’s early life remains uncertain.

Recent research by Mary L. Shannon has shown that naval records identify him as having been born in New York around the time of the American Revolution. He was probably born during the 1770s, when slavery remained part of life in New York. However, the surviving evidence does not allow us to say exactly when he was born or to reconstruct his childhood with certainty.

Older accounts have sometimes given Georgia as his birthplace or stated as fact that he was born enslaved. The more recent archival evidence points instead to New York. It remains likely that slavery shaped his early life, but the records do not tell us enough to state his exact circumstances with confidence.

What can be traced more clearly is his service in the Royal Navy.

Billy served aboard HMS Ganymede and rose to a position of responsibility. He has been described as a petty officer, while other records identify him as a quarter gunner, a role connected with the care and use of the ship’s guns.

In 1812, Billy fell from the ship’s rigging. His injuries were severe and one of his legs was amputated. The accident ended his working life at sea.

He left the Navy with a pension, but it was not enough to support him and his family. Like many disabled veterans, he returned from service to find that the country he had served offered little protection from poverty.

Making a living on London’s streets

Billy found another way to earn money.

He became a street performer in London’s West End, playing his violin, singing and dancing for people outside theatres. His wooden leg became part of a carefully shaped stage presence. He wore a military-style coat, a decorated hat and other clothes that made him immediately recognisable in a busy street.

It would be easy to see this only as a curious form of entertainment. That would miss Billy’s skill and the pressure under which he worked.

He was supporting his wife, Elizabeth, and their children. Busking was not simply an act. It was his livelihood.

Street performance also placed him in danger. Buskers could be treated as beggars and arrested. Billy had to keep attracting an audience while staying on the right side of laws that made the lives of poor people increasingly difficult.

Despite those limits, he became famous. His name and appearance were known far beyond the streets where he performed. He appeared in prints, songs, books and on the stage. Yale University Press describes him as London’s most famous street performer of the period.

When Billy became a character

Billy’s fame brought him attention, but it did not give him control over how others represented him.

In 1821, a fictional version of Billy appeared in William Moncrieff’s popular stage production Tom and Jerry, or Life in London. The play was based on Pierce Egan’s successful book about the adventures of two young men exploring fashionable and disreputable parts of London.

Billy did not play himself. An actor appeared as a theatrical version of him.

This distinction matters. Audiences were not meeting Billy Waters. They were watching a character built from his appearance, his disability, his poverty and his race.

Artists also used his image. George and Robert Cruikshank placed him in crowded scenes of London life. Some pictures made his features exaggerated and turned him into a racial caricature. His body, clothes and wooden leg became material for entertainment.

The real Billy was gradually covered by versions created by other people.

That process continued after his death. He became a stock character in popular entertainment, appearing in prints, cheap publications and even puppet shows. People recognised the costume long after they had forgotten the man who first wore it.

The figure in Brighton’s collection

The porcelain figure held by Brighton & Hove Museums was made around 1825, about two years after Billy’s death. It entered the museum through the collection of Henry Willett, who donated it in 1903.

Billy is shown playing his violin in a yellow jacket and trousers. He wears a feathered hat, and his wooden leg is made clearly visible. The figure is not currently on public display.

At first glance it may seem cheerful. Seen in the context of Billy’s life, it becomes more troubling.

It reduces a Black disabled sailor and working musician to a decorative object. His costume is bright, his pose is lively and his difference is made part of the amusement. Brighton & Hove Museums describes figures of this kind as racist and ableist, noting that they presented Billy through the prejudices of the period.

The object is still historically valuable. Removing it from the story would not remove the racism behind it. The more useful question is how it should be interpreted.

Who was being represented? Who made money from the image? What did the object encourage people to laugh at? And what parts of Billy’s life did it leave out?

These questions allow the figure to tell a wider story about race, disability, entertainment and collecting in nineteenth-century Britain.

A Black disabled veteran

Billy’s disability was often treated as part of his comic appearance. His wooden leg was exaggerated in prints and pottery, while his movements were described for the amusement of audiences.

There is another way to read the evidence.

Billy adapted after an injury that ended his naval career. He turned musical and performance skills into paid work. He learned how to hold the attention of a changing crowd and created an image that people remembered.

This does not mean that he overcame every barrier placed in front of him. His story should not be turned into a simple tale of individual triumph. Racism, poverty and discrimination remained part of his daily life.

His fame also offered little security. The public could enjoy his performance while leaving him without the means to live safely when he became ill.

Billy’s life therefore sits within several connected histories: Black presence in Regency Britain, the experiences of disabled veterans, street music, popular theatre and the struggle of poor families to survive.

He belongs in all of them.

Fame without security

Billy became one of the most recognisable street performers of his time, but recognition did not protect him.

Towards the end of his life, illness left him unable to perform. He pawned his violin and entered St Giles Workhouse in London. He died there in 1823.

Shortly before his death, he was reportedly chosen as the “King of the Beggars”. The name has followed him ever since. It is memorable, but it can also draw attention away from the failures that surrounded him.

Billy had served in the Royal Navy. He had supported a family through his own work. He had contributed to the music and popular culture of Regency London. Yet when he could no longer earn money, he died in poverty.

The society that celebrated his image did not protect the man.

Looking again from Brighton

Brighton has an important place in the history of the Regency. The Royal Pavilion, with its royal connections and lavish decoration, is one of the clearest reminders of that period.

But Regency history is not only a story of kings, fashionable visitors and grand buildings.

It is also the history of sailors, servants, musicians, migrants, disabled people and those who worked on the streets. Their lives were part of the same Britain, even when they were kept outside its comfortable rooms.

Brighton & Hove Museums has begun placing Billy’s figure within that fuller account. In 2024, inclusion researcher Suchitra Chatterjee of Brighton and Hove Black History gave a Royal Pavilion talk exploring the lives of Billy Waters, pianist Tom Wiggins and suffragette Princess Sophia Duleep Singh. Her research asked how the lives of disabled people of colour connected with the Pavilion and its collections could be presented with greater care.

That local work matters. Museums inherit objects, but they also inherit the descriptions and assumptions once attached to them. Looking again does not change the past. It changes what is allowed to remain hidden within it.

Remembering the person

The porcelain figure in Brighton’s collection cannot tell us what Billy thought about his fame. It cannot tell us how he felt when strangers copied his clothes, exaggerated his body or turned his identity into a stage character.

It can, however, lead us back to the surviving evidence.

That evidence reveals a man who crossed the Atlantic, served at sea, survived a disabling injury and built a new life as a musician. It shows someone trying to support those close to him while working under the constant threat of poverty and arrest.

Billy Waters was not simply the cheerful figure produced for the mantelpiece. Nor was he only the “King of the Beggars”.

He was a Black sailor, a disabled veteran, a working performer and a father whose image became famous while much of his real life was pushed aside.

The small figure held in Brighton gives us the opportunity to look again. This time, the costume should not be allowed to hide the man.



Sources

Brighton & Hove Museums, “Three Extraordinary Lives”, published 28 January 2025.

Mary L. Shannon, Billy Waters is Dancing: Or, How a Black Sailor Found Fame in Regency Britain, Yale University Press, 2024.

Mary L. Shannon, “Black in New York City: The Story of Billy Waters”, Yale University Press, 25 June 2024.

Royal Museums Greenwich, collection record for Billy Waters, object ZBA2427.

Royal Museums Greenwich, collection records relating to Billy Waters and HMS Ganymede.

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Billy_Waters%2C_a_one-legged_busker._Coloured_engraving_by_T.L_Wellcome_V0007298.jpg