William Ewart Gladstone - Bow Road, London, UK
N 51° 31.706 W 000° 01.073
30U E 706847 N 5712807
This statue of British Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, stands at the west end of the island where Bow Road separates to pass Bow Church that is also on the island.
Waymark Code: WMPKJ4
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 09/14/2015
Views: 1
The PMSA website tells us about the larger than life-size statue:
Gladstone standing orating. Pillar on which he is leaning has three books on it, the middle of which says Dante, bottom one, Juventus (Nune?). Gladstone's right hand is outstretched, thumb and fingers splayed.
Erected during Gladstone's lifetime and paid for by Theodore Bryant of the Bryant and May match factory, who was a staunch admirer of the Liberal Prime Minister. W.E. Gladstone.
On rear base of granite pillar, incised lettering:
THIS STATUE IS THE GIFT
TO THE EAST OF LONDON
OF
THEODORE H. BRYANT,
AND WAS UNVEILED AUGST 9TH 1882
BY
RT HONBLE LORD CARLINGFORD
Rear base of statue, incised lettering:
ALBERT . BRUCE . JOY . SC . 1881.
The bronze statue stands 274.5cm high and is atop a polished red granite pedestal that is 366cm high.
The observant may have noticed that the statue has red hands. The Angela Stapleford blog explains a plausible possibility:
In 1882 a statue to the prime minister, William Gladstone was unveiled at Bow Road. The statue was raised by Theodore Bryant, an industrialist and prominent Liberal. Bryant was Director of the Bryant and May Factory at nearby Fairfield Road whose employees went on strike for three weeks during the “Match Girl” strike of 1888.
Although many of the East End’s Irish population were fond of Gladstone because of his Irish policies and attended the unveiling in support, employees of Bryant and May were angered at the statue’s unveiling.
They claimed that the statue had been paid for by deductions from their wages. The women workers, some as young as 13 were low paid and worked long hours. Some of the workers, “went to the unveiling with stones and bricks in their pockets… later on they surrounded the statue – ‘we paid for it’, they cried savagely – shouting and yelling, and a gruesome story is told that some cut their arms and let their blood trickle on the marble, paid for, in truth, by their blood.”
This account was told to Annie Besant at the time of the Match Girl strike six years later. The women who took part in the protest in 1882 were possibly older sisters, mothers or friends of the young women who went on strike later. The story formed part of their collective memory.
At an unknown date since the hands of the Gladstone statue have been painted red.