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Britain and the World

Series Editors
Martin Farr
School of History, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

Michelle D. Brock
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Britain and the World is a series of books on ‘British world’ history.

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Martin Farr (martin.farr@newcastle.ac.uk) is General Series Editor
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Guy Hinton

War Commemoration and Civic Culture

in the North East of England, 1854–
1914
1st ed. 2021
Guy Hinton
Hexham, UK

Britain and the World

ISBN 978-3-030-78592-5 e-ISBN 978-3-030-78593-2
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78593-2

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To Jo and Angus
Preface
This book stems from an interest in the impact of imperialism on
British society. War, as the dramatic and inevitable by-product of
imperialism, began to loom large in my research, giving prominence to
reactions to various conflicts and specifically how wars were portrayed
and justified by local and national leaders. My interest was particularly
piqued by the case of the Boer War, surely one of the least justifiable of
all this country’s many wars but supported (or at least tolerated) by the
major part of society. The post-war representation of this most
jingoistic of conflicts seemed particularly enlightening, occurring in a
period that to a large extent reacted against the war and the imperial
mentalities that had encouraged it. As the research incorporated earlier
conflicts and became increasingly immersed in vibrant nineteenth-and
early twentieth-century civic culture, other historiographical themes—
such as notions of identity and the influence of class—asserted
themselves.
Therefore, like most studies of war memorialisation, this book is
much more than merely an analysis of certain conflicts and their
memorials. By this I mean that it is as much to do with the social,
political and cultural contexts that motivated the memorials’ organisers
and influenced the narratives they sought to convey in the monuments
they created. While the memorials expressed the organisers’ views and
attitudes of how the recent conflict should be remembered by their
communities, I would argue that the memorials were more intent with
imposing the socio-political purview and values of the organisers and
indeed shoring up their social prestige and political primacy within
their community and endorsing the socio-economic status quo. It was
in this way that the memorials were political objects, more so than
seeking to justify Britain’s involvement in the wars or extol patriotic or
imperialistic virtues.
The book was researched and written during a period of
unparalleled political crisis and politico-cultural controversies which
often seemed to mirror its themes. Most pertinent have been debates—
both within the academy and the wider public—over the suitability of
historical public monuments in twenty-first-century society. This
includes a burgeoning disillusionment with the very memorialisation of
war (or at least the twenty-first century version of it) which some
perceive as mawkish or inherently triumphal and as tacit endorsement
of martial values and military action. More prominent in the popular
imagination has been a widespread questioning of monuments with
imperial connotations or anachronistic societal narratives, considered
questionable in diverse post-colonial societies. This has been driven by
movements such as ‘Decolonizing the Curriculum’ and the ‘Rhodes
Must Fall’ protests in this country and, in the United States, with activist
campaigns to remove statues commemorating confederate participants
in the American Civil War.
All this has given the book an unanticipated but welcome topicality;
hopefully, it will contribute to the debate by enabling a greater
understanding of how and why such historic monuments were erected.
Indeed, the statue of Edward Colston (1636–1721) in Bristol, erected in
1895 and whose forceful removal by protesters in the summer of 2020
generated widespread popular debate and reflection, shares many of
the gestational characteristics of the monuments examined here, such
as its attempted funding by popular subscription and a type of
municipal mythologising that was particularly en vogue in the late-
nineteenth century. Examining the motivations of the memorial
organisers—men from tightly knit, middle-class municipal elites—and
the narratives they chose to convey to their contemporaries (and their
descendants) provides an in-depth yet nuanced understanding of the
process behind the erection of these now often controversial
monuments.
As to retaining or removing monuments, I feel somewhat biased—at
least in regards to the monuments discussed in this book. After many
years of researching, thinking, speaking and writing about them, I have
formed quite an attachment to all of them and would miss having them
around. Consequently, my attitudes towards them are built around a
certain personal nostalgia divorced from the realities they may
represent for others. However, as the majority of nineteenth-century
monuments were erected in large part to bolster a sense of community
and identity—whether regional or national—it seems ironic and indeed
sad that retaining (at least in their current representation or location)
monuments that divide rather than unify their communities goes
against the aims and wishes of those that originally produced them. It is
worth remembering that, as the book describes, some of the memorials
attracted serious opposition when erected, indicating that controversy
around such monuments is not a new, retrospective phenomenon;
perhaps current attitudes to monuments should be more robust,
acknowledging that present-day controversy is part of a monument’s
own history and a continuation of inherited traditions that enable us to
question what it represents.
I also feel, somewhat self-defeatingly, that monuments hold less
influence than often given credit for. Removing them would have less
impact on the understanding of our history and our sense of identity
than various recent measures that are more damaging, such as the
wholesale closure of libraries and cuts to funding for museums and
historical research. A less dewy-eyed, more well-rounded
interpretation of British history—not least the Empire—in schools and
through cultural representations would ensure that such monuments
would be better-situated in their historical context in the first place.
During much of the production of the book, the Brexit referendum
of 2016 and the subsequent years of related volatility dominated the
national news-cycle and popular consciousness. The North East of
England, with which this study deals, to an extent came to embody the
anxieties and concerns that drove the ‘leave’ vote, its long-term post-
industrial decline and sense of socio-economic helplessness generating
a rejection of the political status quo. Too much can perhaps be made of
the current parlous situation and there are obviously numerous
examples of economic dynamism and social achievements within the
North East. But even cursory visits around the region reveal much
deprivation and a depleted civic infrastructure, not least in former
mining communities in County Durham and Northumberland, the
backbone of nineteenth-century carboniferous capitalism; the sense of
decline is backed up by ample statistical evidence.
As I immersed myself in the buoyant civic culture of the North East
in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the discrepancy with
the present-day condition of the region (and by extension, one could
argue, England) became apparent. Such decline is the by-product of a
range of factors, including a decades-long seepage of local and regional
political power and a failure to plan for life after the decline of staple
industries. The North East of the nineteenth and early-twentieth
centuries was a region of dynamic self-confidence, underpinned by
industrial and commercial strength and driven by municipal energy and
civic self-reliance. The region’s towns and districts possessed an innate
belief in their administrative autonomy and ability, nurtured by a
sophisticated political culture and a belief that political activity
happened everywhere throughout their communities and not just at
Westminster. Of course, this was of most benefit to the hegemonic
middle class—and the type of men (and it was overwhelmingly men)
who organised war memorials—rather than wider society; but, even so,
awareness of both the North East’s political and economic heyday and
its subsequent fate makes for sombre reflection if not a call to action.
Guy Hinton
Hexham, UK
Acknowledgements
There are many people I would like to thank for their help and
encouragement during the gestation of this book and also the
completion of my doctoral thesis, which provided the inspiration for
the book. I must firstly give special thanks to my principal doctoral
supervisor Dr Joan Allen, a constant source of inspiration whose
encouragement, advice and guidance have been invaluable, as has her
great knowledge and understanding of so many of the book’s areas and
themes. My co-supervisor Professor Jeremy Boulton has likewise given
welcome encouragement and practical assistance and generally
nurtured a sense of the possible. I feel immensely privileged to have
been the beneficiary of such intellectually rigorous and profoundly
experienced tutelage. Dr Martin Farr has been characteristically
supportive with his encouragement of publication and practical
assistance. I would also like to thank Professor Nick Mansfield for his
constructive feedback to my original thesis and further help since then.
I would like to extend thanks to others in the School of History,
Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University, especially Dr Alison
Atkinson-Phillips, Emeritus Professor David Saunders and Dr Felix
Schulz, who suggested fruitful avenues for research and orientation,
and Sandra Fletcher for her much-appreciated support. Dr James
Koranyi at Durham University kindly gave insightful help and advice at
the outset of this project. At Palgrave Macmillan and Springer, I would
like to thank Asma Azeezullah, Molly Beck, Lucy Kidwell and Joseph
Johnson for their patience and help in steering the book’s publication. I
would also like to thank staff at the various archives and libraries I have
worked in, especially Darlington Library, Tyne and Wear Archive, the
Durham Records Office and Newcastle City Library. The work of the
volunteers at the inestimable North East War Memorials Project must
also be acknowledged.
I am truly grateful and indebted to my friends and family for being a
source of sanity and succour over the years of research and writing.
Thanks in particular to David Hollingsworth who was so encouraging of
my initial return to academia and then my progress through the
doctorate and book. Above all, I would like to thank Joanna Maclean, for
her invaluable and wonderful encouragement, support, and unstinting
patience when faced with my regular progress reports—not least in the
months before completion when our son Angus was born and there
were far more important things to think about.
Contents
1 Introduction
1.​1 Memory, War and Historiographica​l Debates
1.​2 The North East, Methodology and Sources
2 Uncertain Memorials:​The Crimean War Cannon, 1857–1861
2.​1 The Domestic Impact of the Crimean War
2.​2 The Cannon Memorials and Their Historiographica​l Context
2.​3 The Memorialisation Process
2.​4 Purpose and Motivations
2.​5 Socio-Political Contexts
2.​6 Conclusion
3 Reinforcing the Moral Code:​The Memorial to General Havelock
in Sunderland
3.​1 Reactions to the Indian Rebellion and the ‘Havelock Cult’
3.​2 The Evolution of the Memorial
3.​3 Didactic Motivations and Narratives
3.​4 Civic Pride and Municipal Motivations
3.​5 The Unveiling Ceremony
3.​6 Conclusion
4 Small Wars, Big Box Office, Little Impact?​Colonial Conflicts
Between 1878 and 1885
4.​1 Social, Economic and Political Contexts
4.​2 Patriotic Imperialism
4.​3 General Graham’s Visit to Tyneside
4.​4 Conclusion
5 The Boer War and ‘an Epidemic of War Memorials’:​
Commemorating War in the Twentieth Century
 5.​1 The War at Home
5.​2 The Memorialisation Process
5.​3 Motivations
5.​4 Conclusion
6 Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography
Index
List of Figures
Fig.​2.​1 Monument to Admiral Lord Collingwood, Tynemouth (This and
all other photographs are the author’s own unless otherwise stated)

Fig.​2.​2 The Guards Memorial, Waterloo Place, London

Fig.​2.​3 Russian imperial eagle on Crimean War cannon, Middlesbrough

Fig.​2.​4 Replica of Crimean War cannon, Sunderland

Fig.​2.​5 Crimean War cannon, Berwick-upon-Tweed

Fig.​2.​6 Crimean War cannon, Darlington

Fig.​3.​1 Memorial to General Havelock, Sunderland

Fig.​3.​2 List of subscriptions to the ‘Havelock Monument’, Sunderland

Fig. 3.3 (a, b) Inscriptions on plinth of Havelock memorial, Trafalgar

Square, London

Fig.​3.​4 Inscription on plinth, Havelock memorial, Sunderland

Fig.​3.​5 Havelock memorial, Sunderland

Fig.​3.​6 Memorial to George Stephenson, Newcastle upon Tyne

Fig.​4.​1 Portrait of Sir Gerald Graham by Sir Edward John Poynter

Fig.​5.​1 Number of memorial subscribers on inscription, Boer War

memorial, Darlington

Fig.​5.​2 Inscription, Boer War memorial, Middlesbrough

Fig.​5.​3 The Dorman Memorial Museum, Middlesbrough

Fig.​5.​4 Men of Darlington Boer War memorial, Darlington

Fig.​5.​5 Boer War memorial, Durham

Fig.​5.​6 Boer War memorial, Durham

Fig.​5.​7 Northumbrian Regiments South African War memorial,

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Fig.​5.​8 Inscription, Boer War memorial, Durham

Fig. 5.9 Allegory of Fame, plaque on Boer War memorial,

Middlesbrough
Fig. 5.10 Allegory of Patriotism, plaque on Boer War memorial,
Middlesbrough

Fig.​5.​11 Boer War memorial, Middlesbrough

Fig.​5.​12 Boer War memorial (detail), Middlesbrough

Fig.​5.​13 Boer War memorial (detail), Middlesbrough

List of Tables
Table 1.​1 Numbers of deaths of British soldiers in major wars 1854–
1918 and numbers of war memorials

Table 4.​1 Britain’s colonial conflicts, 1878–1885

Table 5.​1 Reproduction of subscription list (detail), Hartlepool Boer

War memorial
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
G. Hinton, War Commemoration and Civic Culture in the North East of England, 1854–
1914, Britain and the World
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78593-2_1

1. Introduction
Guy Hinton1
(1) Hexham, UK

This book examines the memorialisation of war in the North East of

England between 1854 and 1914. It focuses on civic memorials and
commemorative practices from three distinct conflicts—the Crimean
War (1854–1856), the Indian Rebellion (1857–1858), and the Boer War
(1899–1902)—and a cluster of ‘small wars’ in the late-1870s and
1880s. There has been much historiographical debate about the
memorialisation of the First World War but relatively little research
into nineteenth-century conflicts. Encompassing a prolonged
timeframe and embracing wider socio-political contexts, the book aims
to gauge how and why war memorials changed in this period and
assess what these developments indicate about broader social
transformation—in the North East and in Britain.

1.1 Memory, War and Historiographical Debates

Memory reconstructs—or ‘selectively exploits’—the past rather than
revives it.1 How the past is remembered mirrors what people want to
remember and what they might want to forget; people’s sense of the
past may appear consensual when such apparent consensus was in fact
intensely contested. Memory can therefore be highly politicised. It can
define and bolster a nation’s sense of identity and explore how
groupings and individuals within a society have connected with large-
scale historical processes. Memory has come to signify the
representation of the past, a melding of a cultural awareness or
collective identity, over time and through various conduits, such as
museums, memorials, films, books and anniversaries. But in whose
interest is a collective past framed? Who are the individuals or groups
within civil society that assume the right and need to direct their
community in its remembrance of the past? And what is this version of
the past and why has it been chosen? Raising such questions, it is
perhaps unsurprising that the wide-ranging subject of ‘memory’ should
have risen to prominence in the study of history, overshadowing,
according to Jay Winter, the previously predominant notions of class,
race and gender.2
Historiographical concepts of memory have been much influenced
by Maurice Halbwachs’ pioneering theories of ‘collective’ or ‘social’
memory.3 Halbwachs argued that, as an individual’s memory is socially
mediated and relates to a group, a society’s character and culture is a
result of socialisation and custom: ‘memories rely on the frameworks of
social memory... we are members of society, and we do not
independently create our own memories’.4 Certain frameworks of social
memory, such as family, class and religion, were crucial to the continued
existence of societal groupings, creating a common image of the past
and a normative self-image of the group, perpetuating a clear system of
values and differentiations around which it coheres. Halbwachs
believed that the past was mainly known through symbol and ritual,
maintained, according to Jan Assmann and John Cziplicka, through
cultural formation (texts, rites, monuments) and institutional
communication (recitation, practice, observance). 5
The relationship between individual and social or collective
memory is particularly pertinent to the memorialisation of war. War
memorials are the most visible, public, form of war remembrance;
James Mayo states that, at its simplest, a war memorial is ‘a social and
physical arrangement of space and artefacts that keep alive the
memories of those who were involved in a war’.6 People feel a
psychological need and a social duty to remember those who have died
during conflicts. Societies have often used memorials to help them to
remember past events or people but it is their embodiment of
constructed, politicised collective memory that generates most
historiographical attention.7 As James Young notes, monuments are of
little values by themselves but, invested with national soul and
meaning, they are the ‘state-sponsored memory of a national past’.8
Helke Rausch argues that memorials and monuments embody
otherwise abstract concepts of the nation; in a sense working in
tandem with socially engineered symbols of everyday nationalism like
flags, war memorials act as places of memory where, ostensibly at least,
people from all strata of society can come together to create a common
past or an illusion of common memory and thereby assert common
identity.9 Commemorative activity is both social and political,
encompassing a coerced harmonisation of individual and group
memories; the outcomes may seem consensual when they are in fact
the product of processes of intense disagreement and contested
meanings. For memorialisation to possess political and social
resonance, individual memories must be subsumed by a larger unifying
narrative about the commemorative event .
War memorials are not spontaneous. They are formal, planned and
charged with meaning, situated in a special space that is both separated
from the hubbub of everyday life but at a core location within the
community. A memorial provides the wider community with a means of
rationalising the war. It can re-inscribe pre-war narratives and social
codes perhaps interrupted by the war, foster reconciliation after
acrimonious wartime divisions or prompt regenerative action in the
post-war present.10
A memorial simultaneously performs many functions and serves a
range of constituencies. Nominally, it offers consolation to the bereaved,
a means for them to express their emotions and come to terms with
their loss. However, war memorials occupy a space between the public
and the private, and historians widely view the public, political purpose
as dominant, moulding and controlling the collective memory and
retrospective representation of the war; mourning is therefore
channelled in a direction that conforms to what is considered the
national interest. 11
War memorialisation is laden with ritual and symbolism, not least
in the stylized behaviour of the unveiling ceremonies which inaugurate
many memorials. Daniel Sherman notes that the characteristics of
unveilings adhere to social scientists’ identifications of ‘formulaic
patterns of symbolic action’, that regulate situations of disorder,
indeterminacy or transition, often caused by a community facing
external risk or change; such rituals establish order and reassert
tradition. Similarly, unveilings can act like funerals, a process that
symbolically ends formal mourning and reintegrates the bereaved to
society; however, the collective aspect enshrines certain positive
communal virtues, such as civic duty and sacrifice, excluding ideas and
images that might disrupt the mourner’s reintegration and thus
promote forgetting—it also discourages the mourner from questioning
the justification for the soldier’s death.12
The commemoration of fallen soldiers is considered central to the
formation and reinforcement of national identity.13 One theory sees
war memorialisation as a cult of the young male dead, portrayed as
martyrs who died in willing sacrifice for the nation, binding the living in
moral obligation to the dead and thereby maintaining the social order;
extreme interpretations consider the ‘shared memory of blood
sacrifice’ as an alliance between military interests and national elites to
conceal the ghastly realities of war or the nation state as a deity
demanding the ritualistic sacrifice of young men on a regular basis.14 As
John Hutchinson contends, it is more reasonable to argue that it is the
ritualised and symbolic memory of war that is more effective in
strengthening social unity than aggressive blood-letting.15 Timothy
Ashplant, Graham Dawson and Michael Roper crucially place
memorialisation and notions of blood sacrifice in the framework of the
modern nation state, evoking ‘both the sacrifice that may be required
from the citizens as the cost of belonging, and the means by which the
nation-state persuades its citizens to die for it’.16
Who controls the memory of war is a fundamental element of the
historiographical debate. Invariably, as Daniel Sherman notes, the
memorial is the product of a dominant group which transmits ‘a set of
narrative explanations’ that cohere with their socio-political purview.17
Others question the hegemony of national and local elites in the
memorialisation process, pointing to their habitual disunity and
questioning their ability to determine a narrative that would achieve
widespread community support .18
 The First World War has dominated historical research into war
memorialisation since the 1980s. In France, Maurice Agulhon, Antoine
Prost and Pierre Nora placed war memorialisation in a broader
framework of post-Revolutionary notions of national democracy and
centralized authority coalescing into a powerful projection of collective,
national identity and a shared set of democratic, Republican values.19
Prost, and in a later authoritative study Daniel Sherman, examined the
production of, and motivations behind, French provincial memorials of
the First World War.20
Memory and the British experience of the First World War were
pioneered by two Americans. In his innovative The Great War and
Modern Memory, Paul Fussell explored the literary means by which the
war was remembered, offering a new perspective on mediated
representations of war.21 From the 1980s onwards, Jay Winter
produced a series of books on memorialisation of the Great War which
proved enormously influential and which opened up new ways of
thinking about the First World War.22 Prost, Sherman and Winter
endorsed moving research away from the exceptionality of national
memorials, arguing war and remembrance needed to be considered
from the perspective of small-scale and locally rooted social action. This
book follows much of the established historiographical framework
from the First World War to examine war memorials between the
1850s and the 1900s.
Historiographical perspectives of First World War memorialisation
fall broadly into two schools. The first considers memorialisation a
consolatory process steered by the need to mourn the huge loss of life
and make sense of the unprecedented emotional trauma. At the
vanguard of the consolatory approach is Winter, who argued that war
memorials

were built as places where people could mourn. And be seen to

mourn. Their ritual significance has often been obscured by
their political symbolism which, now that the moment of
mourning has long passed, is all that we can see.23

Others reasonably bemoan an over-politicisation of memory, claiming

the social and cultural aspect is underplayed, ‘transforming memory
into a “natural” corollary of political development’ .24
The second viewpoint believes memorialisation was chiefly
politically motivated, driven by propagandist justification for the war or
a desire to buttress national identity. Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict
Anderson typify the political perspective, viewing monuments and
memorials as devices for supporting and shaping national (and other
group) identities.25 Through memorials, the nation projected patriotic
narratives onto its citizens to engender, for example, a willingness in its
present and future population to die in its defence.26 George Mosse
asserted that the unparalleled number of deaths in the First World War
necessitated a greater effort to distract from the unacceptable impact of
loss; while memorials could console the bereaved, they above all served
to justify the war and the sacrifice it had forced on virtually every
family in the country.27
The difference between the two approaches seems to have
generated an unintended inter-exclusivity. It is surely more plausible to
adopt a more nuanced approach and reject the false dichotomy of
viewing either consolatory or political factors as exclusive motivation.
Much scholarship correctly attests to the complexity of the memorial
process, believing that political and psychological elements are
inevitably present, including Winter who accepts that the two motifs
—‘war as both noble and uplifting and tragic and unendurably sad’—
are present in any memorial, the proportion varying from one example
to another.28 For Catherine Moriarty, the ultimate objective of public
remembrance was to convert private grief into patriotic pride .29
The relatively limited historiographical analysis of memorialisation
before the Great War focuses primarily on the Boer War, often viewed
as merely a precursor to later developments. Examining the
commemorative activities that followed the Crimean War, the Indian
Rebellion and the ‘small wars’ of the 1870s and 1880s, as well as the
Boer War, enables longer-term memorial development to be effectively
charted. In acknowledging the presence of both consolatory and
political characteristics in war memorials produced between 1854 and
1910, this study seeks to understand the motivations, political and
consolatory, that drove this earlier memorialisation.
 The First World War was profoundly different to previous wars.
Twice as many British soldiers died in action or of their wounds in the
First World War as were killed in all major wars between 1790 and
1914, a new level of death and trauma that required extraordinary
efforts to ‘mask and transcend death in war’.30 In their wide-ranging
survey of memorials, Jane Furlong, Lorraine Knight and Simon
Slocombe identified over 38,000 First World War memorials in the
United Kingdom, which includes sports pavilions, font covers,
tapestries, hospitals and lychgates (Table 1.1).31 They estimated over
8000 of these are figurative and non-figurative memorials, such as
cross, cenotaph and statue—the types of memorial associated with
civic, public monuments. There are significantly fewer nineteenth-
century memorials. The survey estimates 1416 Boer War memorials, of
which nearly 200 were figurative or non-figurative monuments. It gives
no equivalent numbers for previous wars but the up-to-date Imperial
War Museum online database redresses this, as well as giving higher
estimates for the number of Boer War and First World War memorials
(Table 1.1).32

Table 1.1 Numbers of deaths of British soldiers in major wars 1854–1918 and
numbers of war memorials

Deaths War memorials(Furlong, War memorials(IWM

Knight, Slocombe)a online register)b
Crimean 20,813c n/a 445
War
Indian 11,000d n/a 218
Rebellion
Boer War 22,000e 1416 2337

First World 722,000– 38,000 55 ,000

War 772,000f

a
This column is based on results in Jane Furlong, Lorraine Knight and
Simon Slocombe. ‘They Shall Grow Not Old’: An Analysis of Trends in
Memorialisation Based on Information Held by the UK National
Inventory of War Memorials’, Cultural Trends, 12:45 (2002), 7
b
This column is based on results in the Imperial War Museum Online
War Memorials Register: www.​iwm.​org.​uk/​memorials (accessed 1
December 2020)
c
Orlando Figes, Crimea: The Last Crusade. London: Penguin, 2011, 467
d
Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the
Imagining of Masculinity. London: Routledge, 1994, 95
e
Peter Donaldson. Remembering the South African War: Britain and the
Memory of the Anglo-Boer War, from 1899 to the Present. Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 2013, 3
f
Dan Todman. The Great War: Myth and Memory. London: Hambledon,
2005, 44
Reflecting the unprecedented nature of the First World War, a
canonical view suggests that, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, its
memorials were fundamentally different from previous types of war
memorials—in form, function, process and the narratives they
conveyed—although some correctly recognise significant continuity
from earlier conflicts.33 This study provides deeper analysis of the
similarities and differences between nineteenth- and twentieth-century
memorials—as well as between memorials of the different wars of the
nineteenth century. It questions why fewer memorials were
constructed after the earlier wars. Although the Crimean War and the
Indian Rebellion were the most significant conflicts between the
Napoleonic and Boer Wars, the number of fatalities in both wars was
relatively low (Table 1.1). There were memorials to individuals, usually
officers or non-commissioned officers, in churches and graveyards, as
there had been in wars of the eighteenth century onwards. However,
neither conflict’s aftermath featured the type of public, civic memorials
that would be such a prominent feature in cities, towns and villages in
the aftermath of the First World War (and, to a lesser extent, the Boer
War). Was the lack of memorials attributable to the straightforward
reason of fewer participants involved and, more importantly, the lower
death rates? Or did the relative lack of memorials reflect a profoundly
undemocratic or uncaring society? As Nigel Hunt argued,

there was little regard for the ordinary person, so if several

hundred or several thousand men die, then it is of little concern
 for the ruling classes or those who could afford memorials.34
The book begins by looking at a comparatively neglected
phenomenon of the Crimean War—the post-war mounting of around
300 captured Russian cannons in towns throughout the country and
specifically those installed in nine towns in the North East. Sharing
some elements of later civic war memorials, such as the social and
political backgrounds of their organisers, they were nonetheless
profoundly different: they tended to be privately funded and were not
ostensibly dedicated to the fallen; instead the narratives they conveyed
were mixed and often uncertain and their recent past as Russian
ordnance, captured by the victorious allies, undermined any
consolatory aspect and instead projected a somewhat triumphal and
bellicose nature.
Chapter 3 looks at the production and unveiling of a memorial to
General Havelock in Sunderland which occurred around the same time
as the Crimean War cannons. Havelock was the national hero of the
Indian Rebellion, whose death during a dramatic, daring campaign
inspired a massive outpouring of grief and commemorative activity.
Interestingly, though contemporaneous to the Crimean cannons, the
Havelock memorial was markedly different—in its organisational
procedure and fundraising and also its narratives, which rarely
mentioned the Rebellion and instead focused mainly on middle-class
notions of respectable conduct, which Havelock was shown to
exemplify.
Numerous colonial conflicts occurred in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, with the period between 1879 and 1885 an
especially intense period of ‘small wars’. Emblematic of that period’s
heightened imperialism, they took place in exotic and remote locations,
most notably in north and south Africa, and Afghanistan. They tended
to be short with fairly small numbers of British soldiers fighting
alongside indigenous auxiliaries. British losses were low and memorial
activities again revolved around individual soldiers and occasional
regimental commemorations. A long weekend of events to celebrate
General Graham (surviving hero of the recent Sudan campaign) was
held on Tyneside in 1884 and provides a snapshot of the
commemorative impulse in a period that sits between the larger wars
of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and whose
dynamics and narratives have a foot in both earlier and later eras.
The climax of the period of ‘New Imperialism’ was the second Boer
War. This was an altogether different conflict to the small wars of the
1880s. Up to 450,000 British and imperial troops were sent to South
Africa and over 22,000 died. Over half of all Boer War memorials were
dedicated to individuals, over 20 per cent were regimental memorials
but nearly 20 per cent (circa 190) commemorated the dead based on
their civil community and geographical location, an unprecedented
manifestation of civic pride and grief that symbolised fundamental
social changes.35 Chapter 5 examines nine public Boer War memorials
in the North East.
That a civic emphasis generally negated a militaristic or triumphally
patriotic narrative is often considered characteristic of a powerful
democratic element to First World War memorials. This can be
perceived in the shift from a professional army commemorated by
regiment to a citizen army remembered by a local community, and from
a hierarchy of grief ordered by military rank to commemoration of the
dead in which all were equal. The naming of all ranks who died, not just
officers, is frequently cited as both evidence of the democratisation of
memorialisation after the First World War and the primacy of
emotional imperatives.36 Arguments over the use of names exemplifies
the complex interplay of factors and motivations underpinning war
memorialisation, not least the commingling of political and consolatory
elements.37
This research brings forward and expands notions of
democratisation to earlier war memorials. A key thread in memorial
development from 1854 to 1914 is a shift in focus, from the heroic
commander to the ordinary soldier. In the first half of the century,
memorials idealised individual commanders from the Napoleonic Wars
and ignored the vast majority of men who served and died. Such
memorials represented a highly patriotic and heroic account of modern
British history, termed the ‘Nelson Cult’ by John Hutchinson.38 The
Crimean War is sometimes seen as a turning point in the history of war
memorialisation, mainly due to the primacy attributed to the Guards
Memorial in London.39 With its brass representations of three
Guardsmen and the acknowledgement by its inscription of the death of
all ranks, not just officers, this was a bold departure from previous
memorials and seemed to embody the intense wartime concern and
admiration for the ordinary soldiers at the siege of Sebastopol—as well
as lingering anti-aristocratic resentment .
However, the sense of the Crimean War as a ‘democratic’ turning
point would seem to be undermined by the installation of Russian
cannons; these were after all, captured ordnance that seemed to glorify
war rather than acknowledge the ordinary men who fought it. Similarly,
the memorial to Sir Henry Havelock erected in Sunderland after the
Indian Rebellion might be presumed to be retrogressive, harking back
to the hero-commanders of the Nelson Cult. Conversely, after the Boer
War, more equitable memorials were erected, sometimes featuring
statues of individual private soldiers. By the aftermath of the Boer War,
it was also increasingly common for public memorials to list the names
of all those that had died—and sometimes that had served and
returned. This would clearly seem to suggest a shift away from the
lionisation of commanders in favour of a more democratic focus, an
acknowledgement of the ordinary soldiers that had fought and died.
This book assesses whether this was a straightforward democratising
arc in the development of war memorialisation, which reflected
simultaneous social change. It asks how genuine this ‘levelling’
democratisation was and whether new democratic elements—the
listing of the names of all ranks or the increasing focus on ordinary
soldiers, for example—were a veneer used by a dominant group as a
placatory sop to a more volatile, less acquiescent community.
An advantage of looking at longer-term development in war
memorialisation is the ability to gauge any increase in consolatory
features over the period: even the triumphal ‘war trophies’ of the
Crimean War—or more precisely, their unveilings—sometimes referred
to the war dead; after the Boer War, the design, inscriptions and
emphases of memorials acknowledged the community’s loss of men, as
did addresses at unveilings (even if grief was often re-channelled
through political narratives that reinforced a range of civic or patriotic
sentiments). All the same, the rise of consolatory motivations could be
considered as further evidence of growing democratisation and a
changed emphasis, a notion underplayed in the historiography .
 As ‘political’ acts and objects, memorials are widely thought to
foster and crystallise notions of national identity.40 If this was the case
with pre–First World War memorials, what were the narratives being
used to channel patriotic intent? In reality, there was a complex
interplay between the disparate narratives, motivations and functions
of the memorials. Conceptions of civic duty and citizenly sacrifice can
be seen as a patriotic element, at odds with, say, jingoistic or
expansionist ideals but what is such a ‘patriotic’ narrative actually
articulating? Historians have emphasised the importance of European,
particularly French, ‘statumania’ and memorials to the Franco-Prussian
War (1870–1871) and their political narratives in the late-nineteenth-
century formulation and nurturing of bourgeois national and
republican identity.41 Memorials to the American Civil War (1861–
1865) are also seen as promoting a sense of national identity and unity
after the divisions of the war and of encouraging positive attitudes to
national political institutions.42 This study asks how far the North
East’s contemporaneous memorials similarly attempted to foster a
sense of national identity and, indeed, other forms of identity.
Debate has also centred on the forms of First World War memorials,
whether these embraced a traditionalist (and therefore comforting) or
modernist (and therefore a challenging) aesthetic, reflecting wider
arguments on the role and nature of the memorials. Alan Borg refers to
their general conformity in following four basic forms—cross,
cenotaph, obelisk or column; these had been post-war commemorative
symbols for thousands of years, except the cross, employed as it
seemed to better convey widespread notions of sacrifice after the
unprecedented trauma.43 Others note the number of utilitarian
memorials, such as hall, sports field, clock tower or hospital, and
identify a strand of popular rejection of traditional symbols in favour of
more democratic, practical forms of memorial.44 While disagreements
during the planning stages about traditional versus utilitarian forms
reveal significant differences in prioritisation based on class and
political identities, the number of utilitarian memorials was low, largely
as most people, not least civic leaders, rejected them in favour of
allegorical memorials.45
 There were radical differences in the forms of the war memorials.
The captured cannon trophies of the Crimean War and the memorial to
General Havelock after the Indian Rebellion seem profoundly different
to First World War memorials; the Boer War memorials were, to an
extent, remarkably similar. The celebrative receptions for General
Graham in 1884 featured elements that looked back to previous wars
and forward to the Boer War. What explains these differences and can
their development towards the relative uniformity of First World War
memorials indicate trends of development ?
Jon Davies notes how popular, spontaneous and prolonged the
demand for appropriate war remembrance was after 1918.46 This
appropriateness was enhanced by their installation in key civic spaces,
not only nurturing a memorial’s tangible connection to the community
but projecting a sombre, existential purpose that generally rejected
manifestations of anger or disillusion.47 The book determines whether
there was popular demand for the memorials between the 1850s and
1900s, and if so, how genuine and widespread the demand was. It
gauges the memorials’ ‘appropriateness’ and to what extent they were
following precedent rather than pioneering new ways of
commemorating.
Following the admonishments of Prost, Sherman and Winter,
subsequent historians of First World War memorialisation continued to
emphasise the primacy of the locality. The spontaneous and universal
local demand for memorials after the First World War was wholly
unanticipated; there may have been nationwide uniformity—a desire to
conform to national stereotypes—but the memorial process was above
all an initiative by individual localities, emphasising the part played by
local communities and the local men killed.48 This study similarly
places earlier memorials within their local communities, investigating
local wartime and post-war political landscapes, including debates in
support of and against the wars, and assessing their influence on post-
war commemoration; it questions whether wartime narratives were
replicated, or jettisoned in favour of more neutral, acceptable messages
that sought to restore order and unify communities after potentially
traumatic, disruptive or acrimonious periods.
Civic pride was an integral element of First World War memorials.
This research argues that civic pride was also a prominent, consistent
feature in all nineteenth-century memorials; indeed, it assumed more
importance, given the relative absence of consolatory elements and the
more rudimentary stage of development of the towns. The emphasis on
the locality was a key thread that linked all phases of memorialisation
but the application changed: with the monuments of the ‘Nelson Cult’,
this was tied into municipal embellishment and endorsement of the
local elites that organised them and this was duplicated in the
memorials of the 1850s and 1860s, as well as the events for General
Graham and in Boer War memorials. After the Boer War, however,
acknowledgements of the wartime participation of the wider
community, most explicitly the local men who had fought and died, had
joined more traditional notions of civic self-esteem and infrastructural
improvement. Alex King argues that, after the First World War, appeals
to civic duty and pride were more than merely a means to incite public
interest; they

formed part of a collection of linked ideas which involved social

unity, loyalty to one’s locality, and disinterested service to the
community and were part of a distinctively urban political
strategy to cope with the problems of urban society outside the
party-political system.49

This study aims to expand on this fundamentally perceptive point

for its examination of earlier memorials .
The memorialisation process, and who participated in it, is a crucial
strand of analysis. According to King, the meanings ascribed to
memorials ‘depended to a very large extent on the procedures available
to facilitate and control the conduct of it, and on the ulterior aims of
those who participated in it’.50 Catherine Moriarty argued that the act of
communal creation was valued above any specific ideas the memorial
conveyed: without the perception of public participation and communal
ownership, they would have been impotent.51 The production of a
memorial was itself a symbolic act with moral significance,
demonstrating communal consensus and the sacrifice of time and
resources by individuals; it signified that the appropriate actions had
been undertaken and that a wide cross section of the local population
had been involved. Analysing who was involved in the memorialisation
processes can also help in identifying democratic characteristics which
may not be apparent in a memorial’s visible form; for example, does the
voluntary, public fundraising that underpinned the Havelock memorial
testify to popular pan-society support for the memorial that might not
be apparent in considering only its seemingly traditional, figurative
celebration of the hero-commander ?
Historians who have examined the production of public Boer War
memorials remark on the uniformity of the gestations and the socio-
economic backgrounds of the protagonists.52 Funds were generally
raised by voluntary, public subscription, a process that portrayed
communal ownership, approval and cooperation.53 There was no
expectation that the government or local authority would fund the cost
of memorials. The memorial process built on the voluntary activity of
wartime philanthropic infrastructure, though it also followed
precedents and practice from a plethora of local activities and national
commemorative events that had mushroomed over the previous
decades, such as coronations and jubilees. This study places the
memorials between the 1850s and the 1900s within the extensive
framework of public voluntary fundraising that stemmed back to the
first half of the century; the systems of organisation and fundraising are
analysed in order to ascertain what similarities and differences indicate
about each war’s memorials and the repercussions these had on their
effectiveness and reception.
Like the system of organisation and funding, memorial committees
were intended to be representative of the entire community. However,
after the First World War, committees invariably reflected the
hierarchical characteristics of the communities and comprised the
pillars of the local middle class—local council representatives,
prosperous tradesmen, churchmen, MPs, gentry, professionals and
eminent retirees—who assumed they were best-qualified to administer
and steer the memorial process.54 Although Boer War memorial
committees were keen to at least project broad social composition and
the apolitical nature of their activities, they were, as Peter Donaldson
notes, effectively ‘self-forming and self-perpetuating cliques which
made little or no attempt to seek genuine public affirmation’.55
Studies of First World War memorials indicate people outside this
sphere were mostly not consulted. In contrast with France, the
involvement of ex-servicemen in a memorial’s gestation was rare,
although they were ostentatiously present at unveiling ceremonies.56
The bereaved, unless from the above middle-class milieu, had little
say.57 Although women served on some committees, usually as an
adjunct to a husband, brother or son, their role was generally centred
on raising money door-to-door. The organisers’ backgrounds
reaffirmed the values of the community and thereby endorsed the
socio-economic, masculinist status quo.58 The production of earlier
memorials will be examined in detail, not least the composition of the
memorial committees and their supporters, gauging how far the
memorials were the product of a dominant group whose members
imposed their own narratives and representations of the war onto the
wider community; did people from beyond the stratum of civic
leadership participate, ensuring the memorials were meaningfully
representative of the wider community ?
The production of a Great War memorial culminated in an unveiling
ceremony, a significant public event in the community. Unveilings,
especially in larger towns, were usually highly choreographed and
hierarchical, attempting to represent the community as a whole. They
possessed an aura of respect verging on reverence and, with the
memorial acting as grave and the ceremony as funeral service,
unveilings possessed strong funerary elements, acting as a rite of
passage that carried those present from the sadness of mourning over
to a reintegration into post-war, everyday life.59 The ceremonies were,
to an extent, more prescriptive than the memorial itself, whose
qualities and symbolism could be contemplated alone over time. They
were invariably dominated by those who had directed the memorial’s
creation, their speeches ensuring that it was they who had the last
word on the ceremony’s meaning and purpose. As such, unveiling
ceremonies are a crucial component of the memorialisation process .
Reflecting their troubled gestations, only a handful of the Crimean
cannons were unveiled in public ceremonies. The inauguration of the
Havelock memorial, conversely, was a huge event that attracted crowds
to Sunderland from across the region. Large numbers of people
thronged the various venues of General Graham’s tour of Tyneside, the
tone and narratives of which replicate aspects of both earlier and later
ceremonies, reflecting its chronological position between the 1850s
and 1900s. All of the Boer War memorials were ceremoniously
inaugurated though not to the same scale as earlier civic ceremonies for
municipal monuments—or indeed the unveiling of the Havelock
memorial. The inaugurations will be examined in order to understand
what they reveal about the motivations and narratives, who led the
process and what the popular and press reaction was.
This book contributes new elements to the historiographical debate
on war memorialisation by focusing on broader contexts that give a
more rounded explanation for the memorials and the narratives they
transmitted. In so doing, analysis will move beyond the memorials’
representation of the wars and incorporate wider socio-political
contexts. For example, notions of class run through every chapter,
questioning if and how class tensions and pressures, whether from
above or below, influenced the memorialisation process and how this
differed as the century progressed. This is particularly relevant for
understanding who led the memorialisation process and what the
narratives they sought to convey; were the narratives concerned with
buttressing the socio-economic and political status quo as much as
commemorating the contribution of local heroes, for example? As Jon
Davies asks, ‘were they built by the hegemonic class in order to
manipulate the lower classes?’60
Increased emphasis on the ordinary soldier needs to be considered
in the light of changing attitudes to soldiers and the army which saw
the military and its values endorsed and assimilated by civil society, in
contrast to more negative attitudes in the first half of the century.61 But
such changes in attitudes must also be considered in the particular
context of the North East and its deep-seated Liberalism and religious
nonconformity, whose anti-militarist tenets might have affected not
only attitudes to war but also the character of its memorialisation. An
interesting and wholly characteristic link between the civilian and
military populations was the Volunteer Force. To a large extent the
Force epitomised Liberal and middle-class suspicions of a professional
(though depraved), aristocratic-dominated army, providing a bulwark
against militarism: the involvement of Volunteers throughout the
commemorative process is a thread that links all phases of
memorialisation throughout the period.
 Apart from the Crimean War, these were all imperial wars. The span
of the Crimean War to the Boer War, with numerous colonial campaigns
in between, allows for new insights into attitudes to war and
imperialism at a time of heightened militarism and imperialism.
Historians have argued that Britain was increasingly in thrall to a
patriotic-militaristic-imperial nexus in the final quarter of the
century.62 Engaging with the vast historiography of the British Empire,
and specifically its popularity and impact on British society, questions
are asked about the memorials’ imperialistic character and whether
they were an additional tool in the dissemination of imperial ideology.
A key feature in the development of civil society in the period is the
shift to a mass-consumption society, facilitated by profound
technological advances, improvements in production and the increased
purchasing power of the middle classes, and linked to population
growth.63 Typical were rapid developments in retailing, marketing,
advertising, and the increase in leisure opportunities, such as
entertainment, tourism and sport. While wars and combat had long
been a theme of cultural entertainments, the modernisation of the
leisure sector enabled more cultural representations of
contemporaneous war to be seen more often by greater numbers of
people. The study encompasses various cultural entertainments in the
North East and assesses their influence in shaping opinions and, by
extension, memorial narratives.
The memorials and, in the case of General Graham, commemorative
activities, were produced by civilians and show a civil response to the
war, revealing the lessons that society—or a specific stratum within it
—desired to draw from the war and convey to others. They were
intended to be representative of whole communities. The activities
undertaken were complex and socially significant, indicative of patterns
and relations of power in civil society. As such, civic memorials allow a
particular insight into social change.

1.2 The North East, Methodology and Sources

In the context of this book, the North East is considered to run east of
the Pennines from the River Tweed in the north to the Tees in the
south; this includes the historic counties of Northumberland and
Durham (including the urban centres along the Tyne) and the northern
fringe of North Yorkshire along the south bank of the Tees, where the
rapid growth of Middlesbrough had a significant impact on the region.
A region that has claimed to be ‘England’s most distinctive’ with the
strongest local identity, its regional consciousness and coherence was
arguably at its highest in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
underpinned by shared economic activities and infrastructure .64
Chiefly, this was what Bill Lancaster termed ‘carboniferous
capitalism’, the extraction of coal which comprised nearly twenty per
cent of all employment in Northumberland and thirty per cent in
County Durham by 1911, sustaining a raft of related services, such as
banking, law, building, recreation and retail.65 The local abundance of
cheap coal encouraged the development of other significant industries
within the region, including chemical manufacture, glass-making and
paper-making.66 The heavy industries of iron production and
shipbuilding were increasingly important as the century progressed.
The economic inter-penetration (and sense of regional identity) was
enabled by the extensive transport links of the locally managed North
East Railway. The region’s commercial affairs were overseen by a
relatively narrow coterie of (often related and inter-married)
businessmen and entrepreneurs.67 Regional communality was also
enhanced by the strength of the Liberal Party (if waning by the end of
the century) and the linked, well-established seam of nonconformity
that ran through the area.
The region’s intensive commercial expansion transformed its socio-
economic and topographical make-up, from scattered, mostly small
agricultural communities to an industrialised and urbanised society. It
also caused rapid, large demographic increases. For example, the
population of Northumberland nearly doubled between 1851 and
1901, from 304,000 to 603,119, while Durham’s population rose from
391,000 to 1,194,590; the consequential social problems were
particularly acute in an area (and period) which had insufficient
administrative infrastructure .68
A number of contextual factors make the North East a fertile area
for research. Its rapid, profound industrial development and social
change are representative of wider nineteenth-century trends.
Moreover, the disorientating novelty of change intensified the incentive
for the type of municipal embellishment and nurturing of civic identity
that memorials could provide. This was especially the case in the new
and rapidly expanding industrial towns; but an advantage of the North
East is its variety of urban and rural environments that enable a pan-
society representation: memorials were located in pit villages, cities,
traditional county hubs, ports, one-industry-dominated towns.
Questions of war and peace loomed large in the region. The heavy
industries of iron and steel and shipbuilding, as well as coal extraction,
might reasonably be considered enablers of imperial expansion and the
ability to wage modern war. Their owners might be assumed to look
favourably on the period’s wars, as might their employees who could
see an aggressive foreign policy as a guarantor of employment.
However, proactive support for war because of its assumed economic
benefits was not especially marked, though the 1900 ‘khaki election’
was an exception. Perhaps more surprisingly, the opposite viewpoint
was strongly represented in the region by a significant and often
vociferous anti-war lobby, made up of disparate groupings and
individuals, such as the Peace Society, radicals and ex-Chartists, and
nonconformists, most notably the Society of Friends or Quakers. This
study questions the impact of peace advocates on war memorialisation,
assessing if their arguments undermined triumphalism and encouraged
a more temperate standpoint.
Ambivalence if not opposition to war might be explained by Liberal
dominance of the region; that the North East was a Liberal stronghold
is another reason for it as a suitable arena for research—both as it
means the North East is representative of the powerful nineteenth-
century strand of urban Liberalism (the infiltration of the Liberal Party
by the middle-class, industrial bourgeoisie occurred quickly in the
North East) and it further suggests a region that would have
dichotomous attitudes to war. Liberals of all stripes in the region were
against wars although most dissembled in their reactions to war and
imperialism—with notable exceptions.
Indeed, much political opposition to wars hailed from a more
radical, democratic political fringe which to an extent undermined
Liberal hegemony: in the early part of the period, from radicals and
former physical force Chartists who comprised a significant presence in
the region, strengthened and encouraged by Joseph Cowen’s Newcastle
Daily Chronicle (and its weekly version, edited by ex-Chartist W. E.
Adams) and Joseph Storey’s Sunderland Echo and it was radical ex-
Chartists (and nonconformists) who strenuously opposed the
installation of the Crimean cannon in Sunderland in 1857. Despite some
in-roads at the council level and among trade unions from the final
decade of the century onwards, especially outside the traditional Lib-
Lab mining heartlands, working-class activists, particularly from the
Independent Labour Party, remained relatively weak in the region,
though their impact on influencing attitudes amongst the working class
is borne in mind when considering the narratives of the Boer War
memorials—and attempts by memorial organisers to gain popular
support.69 Indeed, local and national political contexts in the aftermath
of all the wars are explored to consider their effect, including Tory as
well as more radical influences, on the gestation of the memorials and
the narratives transmitted.
To an extent, the North East possessed similar characteristics to
elsewhere in the north of England, particularly its industrial areas.
Deep-seated traditions of Liberalism and religious nonconformity—and
from the latter decades of the nineteenth century onwards, emerging
labour politics and trade unionism, stronger than their counterparts in
the North East—were found throughout Yorkshire and Lancashire,
fuelling profound criticism of Britain’s wars. Indeed, Yorkshire and the
North East were among the most consistent sources of opposition to
wars in the country throughout the period.70 However, unlike
elsewhere, disapproval of war in the North East was at times converted
into vehement opposition to a war’s memorials; and if not outright
obstruction, many of the region’s war memorials were produced with
an awareness that such objects had the potential for displaying
triumphal or martial elements, antipathetic to indigenous political and
religious sensibilities. The study examines why the North East was both
exceptional and representative of the wider experience of war
memorialisation.
Though the memorials themselves offer compelling evidence of
developments in notions of memorialisation, newspapers comprise the
prime source of information, almost by necessity but certainly by
choice.71 As the principal conduit for the dissemination of the civic
message, press reports offer detailed and comprehensive accounts of
much of the memorialisation process: from the numerous memorial
committee and council meetings to the grand public spectacle of the
unveiling ceremonies, what happened and, most importantly, what was
said, was reported in exhaustive detail. Newspapers are also, of
themselves, intrinsically interesting and informative due to their
cultural centrality within nineteenth-century society—as Mark
Hampton asserts, ‘part of the normal furniture of life for all classes in
the second half of the century’.72 Benefiting from the removal of taxes
and wide-scale technological improvements in production and
transportation, newspapers grew in influence and quantity, in tandem
with a larger population and—after the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884–
1885—electorate.73 The press came to mobilise and represent public
opinion in a new and distinctive way, particularly potent in expanding
industrial towns, and contributed to a perception of shared national
and regional identity.74 It had a mutually sustaining interaction with
urban, liberal bourgeois society, whose civic monumentalism,
associational life and social events (and their inevitable barrage of
speeches) offered newspapers endless opportunities to fill their pages
.75
Wars were also reported in detail. This was especially so in the era
of New Imperialism when the inter-relationship between war and the
press seemed mutually beneficial.76 The style of reporting changed, the
‘New Journalism’ of the last decades of the century espousing
sensationalism and melodrama, more sport (and war), less politics—
more appealing in an era of increased mass consumption and leisure
opportunities.77 Changes in the nature of press discourse from wartime
to its aftermath are also explored to gain a better understanding of
post-war memorialisation, questioning whether wartime narratives
were replicated in the memorials or jettisoned.
The North East possessed a particularly vibrant press in the period
with some of its newspapers and journalists of national prominence,
especially the Newcastle Daily Chronicle and the Northern Echo . The
Chronicle (with its offshoot the Weekly Chronicle) was taken over by
Newcastle radical Joseph Cowen in 1859, whose programme of political
campaigning leavened by sport and local gossip, combined with
innovative production and distribution technology, was hugely
influential throughout the region, its readership growing from 28,359
in 1871 to 120,000 in 1893.78 The Northern Echo was established in
Darlington in 1870 at the behest of Quaker industrialists who sought a
counter to local Tory publications.79 A strong supporter of Gladstone
and radical Liberalism, it achieved national notoriety under its young
editor W. T. Stead (1871–1881) with its coverage of the brutal Ottoman
suppression of the 1876 Bulgarian uprising.
These newspapers reflected Liberal dominance of the North East
and a strong radical presence, which was replicated in numerous
smaller publications. North and South Shields had two strong Liberal
titles, the North and South Shields Gazette (later the North and South
Shields Daily Gazette and the Shields Daily Gazette) and the Shields Daily
News. Samuel Storey, mayor (1876, 1877 and 1880) and later Liberal
MP for Sunderland (1881–1895) disseminated a radical programme
from the mid-1880s in his two influential titles the Sunderland Daily
Echo and Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail .80
There were also a number of well-established Tory newspapers
throughout the North East whose numbers increased from the 1880s
onwards; by the beginning of the twentieth century there was more or
less parity between Liberal and Tory newspapers, symptomatic of
Liberal decline and Tory revival.81 Some were in the old county and
agricultural towns, like the Morpeth Herald and Hexham Courant; others
fought against their Liberal counterparts in the industrialising areas,
including the Newcastle Journal, the Sunderland Post and Durham
County Advertiser.
Mark Hampton notes that, until at least the 1880s, newspapers
provided a highly partisan interpretation of political questions in the
presumption that readers would access newspapers of different
political affiliations each day.82 An obvious danger for the researcher is
the lack of neutral objectivity in these disseminators of (local and
national) political perspectives. Aware of the potential politicised
pitfalls that await the ingenuous, newspapers have been consulted with
a critical filter and their political backgrounds taken into account;
moreover, in the spirit of the age, newspapers of all political persuasion
were consulted, meaning, for example, for every account of the
problematic gestation of Sunderland’s Crimean cannon by the North
and South Shields Gazette, an alternative viewpoint was provided by the
Sunderland Herald (and indeed many others). The various viewpoints
demonstrate attitudes across the political spectrum, ‘contested ground
in wars of cultural meaning’ .83
Correspondence pages in newspapers provided a forum for
individuals to express their opinions on a range of themes, including
their reaction to local memorials and aspects of their production. These
offer relatively rare insights into the views of people outside official
channels, with the qualification that they usually reflect the
newspaper’s political inclinations and are more engaged and less
apathetic than most people. Newspapers reviewed local cultural
activities and entertainments, such as visiting art exhibitions or theatre
performances. As the century wore on, cultural activities increasingly
featured representations of war or military themes, and reviews often
indicated the tenor of such activities as well as their popular reception.
The advertisements for these activities (and also for products that
latched onto wartime themes) showed how cultural entrepreneurs
wanted them to be perceived by the public—and what they thought the
public would find appealing, useful for gauging popular reactions to
specific wars.
The nineteenth century is often considered the golden age of the
private diary.84 This study makes use of manuscript diaries written by
three local inhabitants: Richard Lowry, Nathaniel Edwards Robson and
Frances Kelly. Lowry was an employee at the North Eastern Railway
who wrote a personal diary from 1834 to his death in 1899,
encompassing a spectrum of international, national and local events.
Born in modest circumstances in 1811, Lowry remained a bachelor and
by 1881 was a multiple-property owner and N.E.R. manager.85 Little is
known about Robson except that he was a miller from West Herrington
in County Durham who at some point became a weighman at
Herrington pit. His diaries cover the years 1859 to 1898.86 Kelly’s
background is similarly obscure; it is known that she worked as a ship’s
stewardess in the 1890s, was the daughter of a ship’s engineer and by
1900 was living in west Newcastle.87 All three provide a quotidian
perspective on war and imperialism and its impact on society.
 Lowry discusses the Crimean War and both he and Robson refer at
length to the wars of the 1870s and 1880s. Revealing the views and
opinions of ordinary people about the wars, the diaries show that both
men followed the progress of the wars avidly, had great strategic
awareness and were proud of British martial values. The impact of
newspapers is evident in their diary entries which repeat and
contemplate the news from the theatres of war. Both men supported
the various acts of British aggression and were critical of the Gladstone
government’s management of the wars. Kelly’s diary, which
intermittently covers the years 1893 to 1915, is more concerned with
the home front, detailing popular reaction to the Boer War such as how
it affected people’s dress and the streetscape. She also participated in
some of the spontaneous gatherings that bade farewell to the departing
troops at the train station and celebrated the eventual victories.
Diaries, as sources of historical evidence, are found in the tense
interaction between society and the individual and should be
interpreted with due care.88 While appreciating their prejudices,
presumptions and possible proclivity to position themselves in accord
with more ‘authoritarian’ opinions or sources, and taking into account
the exceptionality of the wartime environments in which they were
writing, their personalities and backgrounds are part of their
usefulness, representing ‘normal’ views and attitudes. The male–female
differences in focus—Robson and Lowry as self-assumed ‘fireside
warriors’ writing their opinions on strategy and heroism, and Kelly’s
observation of the emotional and everyday exuberance of popular
reactions to the war—is indicative of contemporaneous gender
attitudes and expectations, even if Kelly tends to avoid the introspective
and ‘non-public sphere’ often associated with women’s diaries of the
period.89 The lack of self-exploration serves this research well: Lowry
and Robson respond to what they have read in newspapers and
discussed with family and acquaintances ; Kelly is more immersed in
local events, personally observing reactions to war in her surroundings
(the wearing of khaki and ‘war buttons’, proliferation of flags and
bunting) and giving eye-witness accounts of events that are directly
significant to this research.
A range of commentators are cited, of national as well as local
importance, including politicians, journalists, businessmen, soldiers,
political activists, a solicitor and members of the aristocracy. These
convey different viewpoints which add balance and authority to the
main archival sources. Minutes of many different organisations’
meetings were consulted, including meetings of memorial committees,
town councils and sub-committees, and local branches of the Society of
Friends, although these tend to provide only basic information; it is in
the local press that a full record of what was discussed at the meetings
can be found.
This range of sources provides a balance of official and popular
viewpoints. Generally, this book is interested in intent rather than
reception: it seeks to know what were the narratives being imposed
onto communities and by whom. But these sources provide much scope
for understanding contestation of, and opposition to, these narratives
and their originators.
The book aims to rebalance the historiographical debate on war
memorialisation by analysing the development of civic, public war
memorials from the 1850s to the 1900s. Too much emphasis has been
placed on memorialisation of the First World War, leading to a debate
that fails to take into account the importance and significance of earlier
memorialisation—both in its own right and as a precedent for what
followed. Where analysis of nineteenth-century memorials has
occurred, it has tended to operate in silos, focusing on one war or one
theme, such as national identity. This study’s longer-term perspective
enables change and development in memorialisation to be more
effectively charted and placed in wider socio-economic, political and
cultural contexts which, it argues, were as important in shaping
memorialisation as the wars that were commemorated.

Footnotes
1 Barry Schwartz. ‘The Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective
Memory’, Social Forces, 61: 2 (Dec. 1982) 396.

2 Jay Winter. ‘The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the “Memory Boom” in

Contemporary Historical Studies’, GHI Bulletin 27 (2000).
Another random document with
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sexe féminin, sur la traditionnelle tendance à son abaissement; et,
incitait des écrivains à protester contre le préjugé assignant aux
femmes une activité sociale inférieure à celle de l’homme.
Parmi ces précurseurs du féminisme, Poulain de la Barre s’est
fait remarquer. En son livre de L’Egalité des Sexes publié en 1673, il
réclame avec énergie pour les femmes, l’égalité complète des droits
politiques et sociaux avec les hommes.

«Il est, dit-il, aisé de conclure que si les femmes sont capables
de posséder souverainement, toute l’autorité publique, elles le
sont encore plus de n’en être que les ministres: Que pourrait-on
trouver raisonnablement à redire qu’une femme de bon sens et
éclairée présidât à la tête d’un parlement et de toute autre
compagnie?... Il faut reconnaître que les femmes sont propres à
tout.»
Au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle, des femmes furent
ambassadrices: Mme Delahaye-Vanteley fut envoyée à Venise,
Mme de Guébriant à Varsovie.

*
* *
En 1789, les femmes du Tiers-Etat adressèrent une pétition au
roi pour demander que les hommes ne puissent exercer les métiers
de femmes: tels que couturière, brodeuse, modiste.
L’Assemblée Constituante, en avril 1791, par un décret-loi, donna
aux femmes le droit d’héritage, en supprimant les droits d’aînesse et
de masculinité dans le partage des successions. Mais en abolissant
les privilèges féodaux et coutumiers, cette même Assemblée
Constituante enleva à une catégorie de femmes, le droit qu’elle
possédait de se faire représenter aux assemblées politiques.
A la suprématie nobiliaire, succéda alors la suprématie
masculine, les ex-détentrices de fiefs, de même que les «vilaines»
furent exclues de l’affranchissement général, c’est-à-dire que la
majorité de la nation fut mise hors la loi et hors l’humanité.
 En excluant les femmes des affaires publiques, on causa la
faillite de la révolution; car on faussa son principe égalitaire et on la
priva des agents qui pouvaient faire rapidement triompher ses idées.
Les Françaises auxquelles on refusait leur part des conquêtes du
mouvement révolutionnaire, avaient en participant à l’effervescence
générale contribué à faire s’établir le conflit entre la nation et la
royauté. Souvent, elles avaient donné le signal de l’action, en
sonnant le tocsin dans les clochers.
En 1788, à la Journée des Tuiles, on avait vu les Dauphinoises
mêlées aux Dauphinois, lancer en guise de projectiles des tuiles
contre les soldats du roi qui s’opposaient à la convocation des Etats-
Provinciaux.
Ces femmes, avaient les premières compris que Grenoble devait
garder le parlement dans ses murs, sous peine de déchoir et de voir
se restreindre sa prospérité. Aussi, elles s’en étaient constituées les
gardiennes, montant la garde, veillant en armes, autour du château
de Vizille où siégeaient les Etats du Dauphiné qui préparèrent la
révolution.
Quand on convint d’obtenir de la cour, le retrait des troupes. Ce
fut à une de ces si vaillantes femmes et à un colonel, que fut confiée
la mission d’aller s’entendre, à ce sujet, avec le comte de Clermont-
Tonnerre. On affirmait ainsi, que le maintien du parlement à
Grenoble, était dû au sexe féminin.
*
* *
La petite fruitière Reine Audru et la fameuse Théroigne de
Méricourt reçurent, disent les historiens, un sabre d’honneur, en
récompense de la vaillance dont elles avaient fait preuve, à la prise
de la Bastille le 14 juillet 1789.
 REVENDICATION DES FEMMES EN
1789

En voyant proclamer l’égalité des droits entre le seigneur et le

vassal, le noir et le blanc, les femmes réclamèrent l’égalité des
sexes. Elles adressèrent pétitions sur pétitions pour demander
l’abrogation des privilèges masculins, la cessation de l’abus qui les
empêchait de siéger à l’Assemblée Nationale, à l’Assemblée
Constituante, à l’Assemblée Législative.
Les femmes firent déposer sur le bureau de l’Assemblée
Nationale ce projet de décret:

L’Assemblée Nationale[3] voulant réformer le plus grand

des abus et réparer les torts d’une injustice de six mille ans
décrète ce qui suit:
«1º Tous les privilèges du sexe masculin sont entièrement
et irrévocablement abolis dans toute la France».
«2º Le sexe féminin jouira toujours de la même liberté,
des mêmes avantages, des mêmes droits et des mêmes
honneurs que le sexe masculin.»

Nombreuses furent les femmes qui demandèrent leur part de la

liberté et de l’égalité, que tous proclamaient. Mais, ce fut surtout la
brillante improvisatrice Olympe de Gouges, qui formula avec
précision les droits du sexe féminin, en sa fameuse déclaration des
«Droits de la Femme.»

Déclaration des Droits de la femme et de la citoyenne

 «La femme naît libre et demeure égale à l’homme en droit.
Les distinctions sexuelles ne peuvent être fondées que sur l’utilité
commune.
«Le but de toute association politique est la conservation des
droits naturels et imprescriptibles de la femme et de l’homme. Ces
droits sont la liberté, la prospérité, la sûreté et surtout la
résistance à l’oppression.
«Ce principe de toute souveraineté réside essentiellement
dans la nation qui n’est que la réunion de la femme et de
l’homme. Nul corps, nul individu, ne peut exercer d’autorité qui
n’en émane expressément.
«La liberté et la justice consistent à rendre tout ce qui
appartient à autrui. Ainsi l’exercice des droits naturels de la
femme n’a de bornes que la tyrannie perpétuelle que l’homme lui
oppose. Ces bornes doivent être réformées par les lois de la
nature et de la raison.
«La loi doit être l’expression de la volonté générale. Toutes les
citoyennes, comme tous les citoyens doivent concourir
personnellement ou par leurs représentants à sa formation. Elle
doit être la même pour tous.
«Toutes les citoyennes et tous les citoyens étant égaux à ses
yeux, doivent être également admissibles à toutes les dignités,
places et emplois publics selon leur capacité et sans autres
distinctions que celles de leurs vertus et de leurs talents.
«La femme a le droit de monter à l’échafaud, elle doit avoir
également celui de monter à la tribune.
«La garantie des droits de la femme est pour l’utilité de tous et
non pour l’avantage particulier de celle à qui elle est accordée.
«La femme concourt ainsi que l’homme à l’impôt public; elle a
le droit, ainsi que lui de demander des comptes à tout agent
public de son administration.»

Olympe de Gouges mourut sur l’échafaud en 1793 à l’âge de 38

ans. Elle avait été traduite devant le tribunal révolutionnaire, non
point pour avoir revendiqué le droit des femmes; mais, parce qu’elle
avait trop pris fait et cause pour les partis politiques; s’était
alternativement déclarée royaliste ou révolutionnaire et avait osé
attaquer Robespierre.
La belle Liégeoise, Théroigne de Méricourt, qui le 5 octobre
1789, avec sa redingote de soie rouge, son chapeau d’amazone et
l’épée nue au côté, séduisit le régiment de Flandres, aida à faire la
royauté prisonnière de la révolution.
Cette courtisane si populaire qui n’aimait que les hommes
austères, enthousiasmait les révolutionnaires et personnifiait pour
les Français, la liberté.
Afin de lui enlever son prestige, des ennemis politiques
n’hésitèrent pas en 1793 à relever ses jupes et dit Michelet à la
fouetter comme un enfant, devant la foule lâche qui riait. Cet outrage
rendit folle Théroigne qui mourut à la Salpêtrière en 1817 sans avoir
recouvré la raison.
Les femmes de la révolution, s’employèrent bien plus à élever
encore l’homme au-dessus d’elles, en soutenant ses plus hardies
prétentions, qu’elles ne se dévouèrent à procurer à leur sexe
l’égalité avec le sexe masculin.
Des femmes cependant étaient puissantes, elles étaient
écoutées de l’élite masculine qui se pressait dans leurs salons; mais,
ni Germaine Neker (Mme de Staël)—que la politique absorbait et qui
inspira à son père l’idée du suffrage universel. Ni Mme Roland
(Manon Phlipon) qui poussa son mari dans la voie républicaine et fut
autant que lui ministre de l’Intérieur—ne songèrent à tirer leur sexe
de l’asservissement.
Pourtant, l’heure semblait si favorable, que les étrangères elles-
mêmes luttaient pour l’affranchissement féminin.
En même temps que la Hollandaise Palm Aëlders envoyait à
toutes les villes de France sa brochure revendiquant le droit des
femmes qui lui fit décerner par la ville de Creil la médaille et le titre
de membre honoraire de la garde nationale; l’Anglaise miss
Wolstonecraft publiait son livre: La défense des droits de la femme
où il est dit: que la femme devient un obstacle au progrès, si elle
n’est pas autant développée que l’homme».

L’acte originel de la république est dû à Mme Keralio-Robert[4].

Cette femme de lettres qui avait déjà appelé les femmes à l’action
publique; et, avait été l’inspiratrice du parti républicain fondé par les
sociétés des deux sexes, improvisa sur l’autel de la Patrie au Champ
de Mars le 17 juillet 1791, la pétition républicaine pour ne
reconnaître aucun roi.
*
* *
Les femmes spoliées de leurs droits, eurent pour défenseurs
Condorcet, Siéyès, l’abbé Fauchet, Saint-Just... Malheureusement,
les protestations de ces hommes de principes furent étouffées par
Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre qui ne considéraient la femme que
comme un instrument de plaisir charnel.
Condorcet secrétaire de l’Académie des sciences, demanda
publiquement en 1788 que les femmes participent à l’élection des
représentants[5].
Cet illustre philosophe qui réclama l’abolition de la royauté, la
proclamation de la république, posa le principe de l’égalité de la
femme et de l’homme qu’il regardait comme la base de la question
sociale. Condorcet fut donc en France un des précurseurs du
féminisme; et, sa statue quai Conti recevra avant longtemps, les
périodiques hommages des femmes reconnaissantes.
Le 3 juillet 1790, Condorcet publia son fameux article sur
l’admission de la femme au droit de la cité dont voici un passage:

«Au nom de quel droit, au nom de quel principe écarte-t-on

dans un état républicain les femmes du droit public? Je ne le sais
pas. Le mot représentation nationale signifie représentation de la
nation. Est-ce que les femmes ne font point partie de la nation?
 «Plus on interroge le bon sens et les principes républicains,
moins on trouve un motif sérieux pour écarter les femmes de la
politique. L’objection capitale elle-même, celle qui se trouve dans
toutes les bouches, l’argument qui consiste à dire qu’ouvrir aux
femmes la carrière politique c’est les arracher à la famille, cet
argument n’a qu’une apparence de solidité; d’abord il ne
s’applique pas au peuple nombreux des femmes qui ne sont pas
épouses ou qui ne le sont plus; puis, s’il était décisif, il faudrait, au
même titre, leur interdire tous les états manuels et tous les états
de commerce, car ces états les arrachent par milliers aux devoirs
de la famille.»

Les droits des hommes résultent uniquement de ce qu’ils sont

des êtres sensibles susceptibles d’acquérir des idées morales et
de raisonner sur ces idées. Les femmes ayant ces mêmes
qualités ont nécessairement des droits égaux. Ou aucun individu
de l’espèce humaine n’a de véritables droits, ou tous ont les
mêmes; et celui qui vote contre le droit d’un autre, quels que
soient sa religion, sa couleur ou son sexe a dès lors abjuré les
siens.»

En plaidant aussi bien pour les femmes ce grand esprit n’espérait

point se les rendre sympathiques, au contraire:

Je parle de leurs droits à l’égalité disait-il et non de leur

empire. On peut me soupçonner d’une envie secrète de le
diminuer, et, depuis que Rousseau a mérité leurs suffrages, en
disant qu’elles n’étaient faites que pour nous soigner et propres
qu’à nous tourmenter, je ne dois pas espérer qu’elles se
déclareront en ma faveur. Mais il est bon de dire la vérité dût-on
s’exposer au ridicule.»

Les idées de Condorcet furent exprimées dans plusieurs cahiers

de doléances; celui de Rennes notamment, demande d’admettre les
procurateurs des veuves, dont les maris auraient le droit de vote, à
être électeurs et éligibles. Mais, les requêtes de ces précurseurs du
féminisme ne furent pas entendues.
 Quand dans les réunions publiques quelqu’un parlait d’appeler
les femmes à exercer leurs droits; aussitôt, des cris et des
hurlements couvraient la voix de l’orateur et si l’on ne pouvait lui
enlever la parole, la séance était levée.
La cabale des clubs contre les droits de la femme, fut bientôt
répercutée au sein de l’assemblée législative: La loi du 20 mai 1793
fit exclure les femmes des tribunes de la Convention, et la loi du 26
mai 1793 leur défendit d’assister aux assemblées politiques.
Trois journaux: l’Orateur du Peuple, Le Cercle Social, La Bouche
de Fer, soutenaient le droit des femmes, aidaient les femmes à
organiser des réunions. Labenette dans son journal, Les Droits de
l’Homme, demande l’admission des femmes dans les assemblées.
«Pendant que vous vous tuez à délibérer, elles ont, dit-il, déjà saisi
toutes les nuances qui vous échappent.»
Parmi les clubs de femmes La Société Fraternelle des Patriotes
des Deux Sexes, défenseurs de la Constitution dont Mme Roland
était membre, se fit surtout remarquer par ses protestations contre
les décrets de l’Assemblée Constituante.
La société des Femmes Républicaines et Révolutionnaires que
présidait l’actrice Rose Lacombe et dont faisait partie Mme Colombe
imprimeur de la feuille de Marat, dépassait les hommes en violence,
quand il s’agissait de prendre une détermination[6].
Le 28 brumaire 1793, Rose Lacombe accompagnée d’une
députation de femmes révolutionnaires coiffées comme elle de
bonnets rouges, força l’entrée de la séance du conseil général de la
commune—à ce moment, la pétition orale était admise—cependant,
en voyant ces femmes, le procureur général Chaumette s’écria:

«Je requiers mention civique au procès-verbal, des murmures

qui viennent d’éclater; c’est un hommage aux mœurs, c’est un
affermissement de la République! Et quoi! des êtres dégradés qui
veulent franchir et violer les lois de la nature, entreront dans les
lieux commis à la garde des citoyens et cette sentinelle vigilante
ne ferait pas son devoir! Citoyens, vous faites ici un grand acte de
 raison: l’enceinte où délibèrent les magistrats du peuple doit être
interdite à tout individu qui outrage la nation! ...Et depuis quand
est-il permis aux femmes d’abjurer leur sexe, de se faire
hommes? Depuis quand est-il d’usage de voir les femmes
abandonner les soins pieux de leur ménage, le berceau de leurs
enfants, pour venir sur la place publique dans la tribune aux
harangues, à la barre du Sénat, dans les rangs de nos armées,
remplir les devoirs que la nature a répartis à l’homme seul? A qui
donc cette mère commune a-t-elle confié les soins domestiques?
Est-ce à nous? Nous a-t-elle donné des mamelles pour allaiter
nos enfants? A-t-elle assez assoupli nos muscles pour nous
rendre propres aux soins de la hutte, de la cabane ou du
ménage? Non, elle a dit à l’homme: Sois homme! les courses, la
chasse, le labourage, les soins politiques, les fatigues de toute
espèce, voilà ton apanage. Elle a dit à la femme: Sois femme! les
soins dus à l’enfance, les détails du ménage, les douces
inquiétudes de la maternité, voilà tes travaux.

«Femmes imprudentes qui voulez devenir des hommes!

n’êtes-vous pas assez bien partagées? Que vous faut-il de plus?
Vous dominez sur tous nos sens; le législateur, le magistrat sont à
vos pieds. Votre despotisme est le seul que nos forces ne
puissent abattre, puisqu’il est celui de l’amour...
«Autant nous vénérons la mère de famille qui met son
bonheur à élever, à soigner ses enfants, à filer les habits de son
mari et alléger ses fatigues par l’accomplissement des devoirs
domestiques, autant nous devons mépriser, conspuer la femme
sans vergogne qui endosse la tunique virile et fait le dégoûtant
échange des charmes que lui, donne la nature contre une pique
et un bonnet rouge.—Je requiers que le conseil ne reçoive plus
de députation de femmes.»

La proposition de Chaumette fut adoptée.

En même temps que la femme était en la personne de l’actrice
Rose Lacombe, traitée par Chaumette d’être dégradé; la femme était
élevée au rang des dieux, en la personne de Mlle Maillard, actrice de
l’Opéra, qui remplissait le rôle de déesse de la liberté, dans la fête
de la raison célébrée dans l’église de Notre-Dame de Paris.
 Rose Lacombe protesta contre la décision du Conseil général de
la commune; et elle parvint à entraîner beaucoup de femmes à
demander leurs droits.
Ces femmes étaient souvent battues par les très royalistes
dames des halles. Un jour que les républicaines, vêtues en hommes,
reprochaient aux marchandes de poissons de s’abstenir de porter la
cocarde nationale. Celles-ci les assaillirent et les fouettèrent
publiquement.
Les réunions des républicaines finirent par inquiéter le comité de
sûreté générale, qui chargea un de ses membres de révéler le fait à
la Convention.
Le Conventionnel Amar monta à la tribune et dit:

«Je vous dénonce un rassemblement de six mille femmes,

soi-disant jacobines, et d’une prétendue société révolutionnaire...
Plusieurs, sans doute, n’ont été égarées que par un excès de
patriotisme; mais d’autres ne sont que les ennemies de la chose
publique et n’ont pris le masque du patriotisme! que pour exciter
une espèce de contre révolution.»

«Les droits politiques du citoyen sont de discerner, de faire

prendre des résolutions relatives aux intérêts de l’Etat et de
résister à l’oppression. Les femmes ont-elles la force morale et
physique qu’exige l’exercice de l’un et de l’autre de ces droits?
L’opinion universelle repousse cette idée...
Et puis la pudeur des femmes leur permet-elle de se montrer
en public, de lutter avec les hommes et de discuter à la face du
peuple sur des questions d’où dépend le salut de la République?
Voulez-vous que dans la République française on les voie venir
au barreau, à la tribune aux assemblées politiques comme
l’homme, abandonnant la retenue, source des vertus de ce
sexe?».

Il est curieux d’entendre ces révolutionnaires invoquer des lieux

communs et des préjugés surannés, pour maintenir les privilèges de
sexe, après que tous les privilèges de caste ont été abolis. C’est
d’autant plus révoltant, que dans l’épopée révolutionnaire, des
femmes se sont montrées à la hauteur des plus grands hommes et
souvent les ont inspirés et dirigés quand elles n’ont pas agi elles-
mêmes.
Après le discours d’Amar, un seul homme se leva des bancs de
la convention, le député Charlier qui soutint énergiquement que les
femmes avaient le droit de se réunir pour s’occuper des affaires
publiques. «A moins, dit-il, que l’on constate comme dans un ancien
concile que les femmes ne font pas partie du genre humain, on ne
saurait leur ôter ce droit commun à tout être pensant.»
Mais la cause des femmes était perdue d’avance; la convention
resta sourde aux objurgations de Charlier et décréta que toutes les
sociétés de femmes, quelles que soient leurs dénominations, étaient
supprimées et dissoutes.
Ceux qui dénient le droit commun aux autres, tiennent
suspendue au-dessus de leur tête la menace d’être à leur tour
exclus du droit commun. Les hommes, qui supprimèrent les clubs de
femmes, eurent tous leurs clubs fermés par Bonaparte.
Les femmes qui voulaient que la révolution s’accomplisse au
profit des deux sexes, faisaient preuve de bien plus de sens pratique
que les Jacobins, qui en leur fermant les portes de la révolution,
rejetèrent les femmes dans la réaction.
Cependant, la liberté eut encore des militantes: En 1799, sous le
Consulat, des femmes qui s’honorent du titre de «citoyenne»
refusent d’être appelées de nouveau «madame» et font acte
d’indépendance en s’assemblant rue de Thionville pour discourir sur
leurs droits méconnus[7].
 APRÈS LA RÉVOLUTION

Les femmes, qui en donnant dans les salons l’essor aux idées
philosophiques avaient préparé la révolution et tant aidé à la faire,
furent indignées en se voyant exclues du droit commun et
condamnées par les révolutionnaires autocrates à rester dans la
société nouvelle des parias.
Puisqu’il n’y avait pas de justice pour elles, il ne devait y en avoir
pour personne!... Et ces dupes de la révolution, ne songèrent plus
qu’à devenir des femmes de plaisir ayant pour unique souci de
paraître belles; à leur dissolvant contact, les hommes se
déprimèrent, rentrèrent vite sous le joug en se donnant pour maître
Bonaparte.
Napoléon sanctionna la servitude féminine que la révolution avait
conservée. Lors de la promulgation du Code, les femmes ne furent
comprises dans la législation nouvelle, sous le titre générique de
français, que dans les chapitres ayant trait à la compression, aux
charges; pour tout ce qui avait trait au droit et à la liberté, le mot
français ne s’appliquait pas à elles.
Bonaparte, avait pour idéal la polygamie et déclarait que la
femme puisqu’elle donne des enfants, est la propriété de l’homme
comme l’arbre à fruit est celle du jardinier. «Il y a, disait-il, une chose
qui n’est pas française, c’est qu’une femme puisse faire ce qui lui
plaît.»
Les femmes, cependant, manifestaient un fol enthousiasme pour
le tyran. A son retour après ses victoires, toutes voulaient le
contempler et jeter des fleurs sous ses pas.
Mme de Staël (Germaine Neker) elle-même avait été son
admiratrice avant de devenir l’ennemie qu’il exila, en même temps
qu’il condamna au séjour forcé de Lyon, les duchesses de
Chevreuse et de Luynes qui avaient refusé de faire partie du cortège
de l’impératrice.
Napoléon si hostile à l’égalité de l’homme et de la femme,
autorisa pourtant la publication d’un journal féministe qui parut en
1808 sous ce titre: l’Athené des Dames, il était exclusivement rédigé
par des femmes et avait pour directrice: Mme Sophie Senneterre de
Renneville.
Après la restauration, les femmes publièrent un manifeste,
formulèrent un plan d’émancipation où elles revendiquaient les droits
politiques.
Les Saint-Simoniens firent espérer qu’ils allaient aider à
l’affranchissement féminin; mais, en exaltant l’amour libre, en faisant
découler l’égalité des sexes de la liberté de l’amour, ils prouvèrent
que ce n’était que la liberté illimitée de l’égoïsme et de l’immoralité
de l’homme, qu’ils réclamaient.
Le sociologue Fourier, avait lui, très nettement posé le principe
de l’égalité de l’homme et de la femme, en faisant dépendre les
progrès sociaux du progrès des femmes vers la liberté.

Dans la «théorie des quatre mouvements», il explique que «si

les philosophes de la Grèce et de Rome dédaignaient les intérêts
des femmes et croyaient se déshonorer en les fréquentant, c’est
que depuis le vertueux Socrate jusqu’au délicat Anacréon, ils
n’affichaient que l’amour sodomite et le mépris des femmes».
Ces goûts bizarres n’ayant pas pris chez les modernes,
Fourier ajoute qu’il y a lieu de s’étonner que nos philosophes
aient hérité de la haine que nos anciens savants portaient aux
femmes et qu’ils aient continué à ravaler le sexe féminin, alors
que les femmes se montrent supérieures aux hommes, quand
elles peuvent déployer leurs moyens naturels».

Pendant que les derniers Saint-Simoniens annonçaient le règne

de la femme, chantaient le compagnonnage de la femme, Mmes
Laure Bernard et Fouqueau de Pussy écrivaient dans Le Journal des
Femmes des articles offensants pour les Saint-Simoniens.
Mme Poutret de Mauchamps fondatrice de la Gazette des
Femmes (1836-1839) réclama l’électorat pour les femmes qui
payaient 200 francs d’impôts; et, elle pria Louis-Philippe de se
déclarer roi des Françaises comme il se déclarait roi des Français.
En 1846, M. Emile Deschanel proposa que les veuves et les filles
majeures, inscrites sur les rôles des contributions comme
propriétaires foncières, fussent électrices. On était à ce moment-là,
sous le régime censitaire, pour pouvoir voter, il fallait payer 200
francs d’impôts. M. Emile Deschanel ne faisait donc que revendiquer
le droit commun pour les femmes, lorsqu’il proposait de faire les
propriétaires électeurs.
 LES SUFFRAGISTES EN 1848

Quand en 1848 l’électorat fut accordé à tous les hommes, aux

pauvres comme aux riches, aux ignorants comme aux instruits; les
femmes demandèrent à être englobées dans le suffrage universel.
Victor Considérant fut le seul des neuf cents membres de
l’Assemblée Constituante qui soutint leurs prétentions, en proposant
d’admettre les femmes à exercer leurs droits politiques.
Pierre Leroux présenta un amendement en faveur de l’électorat
municipal des femmes.
Le pasteur Athanase Coquerel réclama lui, la loi d’exclusion,
retranchant de la politique le sexe féminin.
La République avait été proclamée le 24 février, un mois après,
le 23 mars, quatre déléguées des «Droits de la Femme» se
présentèrent à l’Hôtel-de-Ville pour solliciter: la liberté de participer
au gouvernement du pays. L’universalisation du suffrage. L’égalité
de la femme et de l’homme devant la loi.
Ce fut Marrast membre du gouvernement provisoire, qui reçut
cette délégation féministe; il répondit à sa requête en encourageant
ses espérances.
Mme Alix Bourgeois professeur d’histoire naturelle et beaucoup
d’autres dames, demandèrent individuellement au gouvernement, le
droit électoral pour le sexe féminin.
A ce moment l’influence féminine était grande: George Sand
rédigeait avec Jules Favre le Bulletin de la République; et, il y avait
dans la masse populaire un tel sens de l’égalité, que quant à la
prière d’une revendicatrice, Cabet[8] posait dans un club qu’il
présidait cette question:—La femme est-elle l’égale de l’homme
devant le droit social et politique?
Le communiste Cabet était déconcerté (sic) de voir presque
toutes les mains se lever pour l’affirmative.
Proud’hon disait: «La République tombe en quenouille.»
Pauline Roland, que Victor Hugo a qualifiée l’apôtre; Jeanne
Deroin, Anaïs Ségalas, Henriette Wild créèrent successivement trois
journaux. La Politique des Femmes. La République des Femmes.
L’opinion des Femmes. Les rédactrices de ces journaux
s’entendirent avec Mmes Eugénie Niboyet, E. Foa, Louise Collet,
Adèle Esquiros qui avaient fondé La Voix des Femmes, pour offrir à
George Sand de porter sa candidature.
La grande romancière, répondit dans La Réforme: qu’elle ne
partageait point les idées des revendicatrices et ne connaissait pas
les dames qui formaient des clubs et rédigeaient des journaux.»
Les femmes arrivées croient qu’elles n’appartiennent plus au
sexe féminin.
Après George Sand refusant d’aider à l’affranchissement
politique des Françaises, on a vu Clémence Royer, la commentatrice
de L’origine des Espèces de Darwin, ne point vouloir que les droits
politiques soient conférés aux femmes et disant à M. Adolphe
Brisson, rédacteur au journal Le Temps: «Du jour où les femmes
voteront nous sommes perdus.»
*
* *
Les dames obtenant difficilement la parole dans les clubs
d’hommes créèrent des clubs féminins. Le plus renommé, fut le Club
des Femmes, ouvert le 11 mai 1848 à la salle de spectacle du
boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. La foule rendit les séances
tumultueuses. Les femmes ne purent bientôt plus parler dans ce
club transformé en ménagerie où les hommes aboyaient, miaulaient,
beuglaient.
 Eugénie Niboyet qui présidait, dit dans Le Vrai Livre des
Femmes: «Une heure de pilori m’eût paru moins douloureuse que
cinq minutes de cette violente lutte. Toutes les clubistes qui avaient
promis de me seconder disparurent comme les feuilles sous le vent
et laissèrent peser sur moi la responsabilité de notre tentative.»
Jeanne Deroin avait posé sa candidature à l’Assemblée
Constituante pour consacrer le principe de l’égalité politique des
deux sexes; mais, elle ne put parvenir à la faire admettre, partout les
bureaux la rejetèrent comme étant inconstitutionnelle.
Les Françaises eurent de suite la preuve, que leur exclusion
électorale faisait d’elles des parias dans la société. Aussitôt, en effet,
après l’instauration de la République, les membres du gouvernement
provisoire avaient créé des ateliers nationaux pour les ouvriers en
chômage—électeurs—mais point pour les ouvrières en chômage
non électrices.
Ces demi-réformateurs furent donc un peu gênés, quand de
pauvres ouvrières en chômage vinrent à l’Hôtel-de-Ville demander si
elles étaient comprises dans la proclamation du droit au travail; et,
où était l’atelier national des femmes?
L’atelier national des femmes?... Mais... Il n’existait pas!... Les
femmes ne comptaient point en France puisqu’elles ne votaient pas!