File:Phoebe Hessel's Grave, St Nicholas's Churchyard - geograph.org.uk - 1118069.jpg

English: Phoebe Hessel's Grave, St Nicholas's Churchyard Phoebe Hessel was born in Limehouse in 1713 and died in Brighton in 1821 at the age of 108. Hessel is famous for serving as a soldier from 1728-45 initially disguising herself as a man to accompany her soldier lover when he was posted to the West Indies and continued in service until she was wounded at the Battle of Fountenay in 1745 when she had to reveal her true sex to the company surgeon. She was discharged along with her lover whom she married and settled in Plymouth until his death in 1769 when she relocated to Brighton and married a fisherman. Her second husband died in 1792 and Hessel made a living hawking her wares around the local villages until illness in 1800 resulted in a spell in the workhouse. She was discharged in 1806 and from 1808 was granted a pension of half a guinea a week by the Prince Regent, future George IV. She survived for another 13 years going blind in her last years before dying on 21 December 1821. The building toward the rear of the churchyard is St Nicholas's lodge opened in 1990 on the site of the former Sussex Ear and Throat Hospital constructed in 1897 and closed in 1986 having been replaced by a new unit at the Royal Sussex County Hospital.