LONDON STATUES

Evening Star, Issue 19412, 22 November 1926, Page 1

LONDON STATUES

There arc about 221) “open-air statues in London, and, some persons, mainly royal, are represented by two or more (says( a writer in ‘John o London’s Weekly’). Wo have no levvor than eight statues of Queen Victoria, five of Prince Albert, and four of Edward VIE I doubt whether many Londoners know that there is in London a statue of the late Queen Alexandra Appropriately it is in the grounds of London Hospital, but, less appropriately, it is invisible to the outside public. It was erected by.“friends of the hospital ” in 1908. • London has four statues of Charles lE, and would have five if the one which formerly stood in Soho square had not been spirited away. I know where it is, having seen it in its present rural habitat. There are three statues of Queen Anne and.three each of George I. and George III.; also three each of Bacon. Shakespeare, and Milton. The most notable statue of Milton is that which my old friend, Sir J. J. Baddeley, afterwards Lord Mayor, placed outside the old church of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, where Milton sleeps. A fair number of personages have two statues, one of whom is Gladstone. Remembering easily the one in front of St. Clement Danes Church, in the Strand, you may ask: “ Where is the other? It is in Bow, of all places, and was erected there by an admirer sixteen years before his death. That is understandable, but I have never understood why the chief London statue of Gladstone was. set uj) in the Strand instead of in Parliament square. In the Strand he looks to me like an exile from Val- 1 halla.