Famous places within 5 minutes walk of my house Number 3 - the Gladstone statue
William Gladstone (1809-1898) was a very popular Victorian Liberal Prime Minister (think Tony Blair 1997). So popular that in 1882 match magnate Theodore Bryant commissioned a bronze statue of the great man to stand in the middle of Bow Road near the church. Local papers reported that 'the whole of the East End turned out to witness the ceremony.' Gladstone's popularity waned somewhat over the next six years (think Tony Blair 2003), by which time the striking match girls now talked of the statue as if it had been paid for in their blood. Here's how campaigning journalist Annie Besant reported the issue in her ground-breaking article White Slavery in London:
Gladstone now stands forlorn in the middle of the A11, guarding the approach to the Bow flyover, overseeing a pedestrian crossing and some disused public toilets. The granite pedestal below the statue is still stained by red paint, daubed there in the early 1990s in protest over the conversion of the old match factory to luxury apartments. They still believe in symbolic bloody protest round here. (Further photos of Gladstone's statue here, here and here)
Famous places within 5 minutes walk of my house
William Gladstone (1809-1898) was a very popular Victorian Liberal Prime Minister (think Tony Blair 1997). So popular that in 1882 match magnate Theodore Bryant commissioned a bronze statue of the great man to stand in the middle of Bow Road near the church. Local papers reported that 'the whole of the East End turned out to witness the ceremony.' Gladstone's popularity waned somewhat over the next six years (think Tony Blair 2003), by which time the striking match girls now talked of the statue as if it had been paid for in their blood. Here's how campaigning journalist Annie Besant reported the issue in her ground-breaking article White Slavery in London:
