Great Brummies lost to progress

DEAR Editor, It is excellent to read that Birmingham Civic Society, as part of its centenary programme, intends to conserve the statue of Queen Victoria ( Post, November 16). Yet this also reminds us of the sad fate of many of Birmingham’s other statues erected in the final decades of the 19th century.

In July 1950 the city council accepted a proposal from the public works committee that the statues of George Dawson, John Skirrow Wright and Sir Josiah Mason be removed from their locations in the heart of Birmingham. This plan was deemed to be in accord with the spirit of the forthcoming Festival of Britain. Once gone, the statues would be replaced by containers of flowers.

It was stated that the statue of George Dawson would be moved to Calthorpe Park, but in fact it seems to have been destroyed.

Busts were made of the heads of Skirrow Wright and Mason and these survive, but the actual statues do not. It is incredible that the statue of Dawson admired by Victorian Brums – as they called themselves – no longer exists. Dawson was a preacher of huge influence – it was he who set out the civic gospel that transformed Birmingham into the greatest city in Victorian Britain.

However, all is not lost. In storage is another statue of Dawson. This is, admittedly, the statue that local people rejected on the grounds that it did not portray Dawson as effectively as it might have. But it is all we have