The Scottish Military Research Group - Commemorations Project

Adam Brown · Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 4:56 pm Post subject:

Jim

Thanks for the clarification. You are right, the single commemorations need to be shown to be the only ones from that location to count as a ‘civic’ memorial. Hopefully local newspapers would mention that at the time of unveiling.

On another thread on the forum I have tried to compile a list of Scottish Boer War memorials we know about.. We now have seventeen Boer War civic war memorials in Scotland, plus three county-wide rolls of honour. The full list including regimental and other memorials is here

http://warmemscot.s4.bizhat.com/viewtopic.php?t=3942

Here are the civic memorials

Angus
Edzell Civic War Memorial
"The Muster Roll of Angus" Roll of Honour

Argyllshire
Lochawe Civic War Memorial
Strachur Civic War Memorial

Ayrshire
Girvan Civic War Memorial

Banffshire
Soldiers of Banffshire, Roll of Honour

Clackmannashire
Alloa Civic War Memorial

Dunbartonshire
Dumbarton Civic War Memorial

Fifeshire
Dunfermline & District Civic War Memorial
Newport-on-Tay Civic War Memorial

Glasgow
Glasgow, Western Necropolis Civic War Memorial?

Haddingtonshire (East Lothian)
Aberlady Civic War Memorial

Morayshire
Forres & District Civic War Memorial

Perthshire
Alyth Civic War Memorial
Blairgowrie (Rattray) Civic War Memorial
Perthshire Roll of Honour

Renfrewshire
Neilston Civic Memorial

Ross-shire
Achiltibuie,Coigach Civic War Memorial

Selkirkshire
Hawick Civic War Memorial

Stirlingshire
Falkirk Civic War Memorial

Two of these memorials are in churches

http://warmemscot.s4.bizhat.com/viewtopic.php?t=3303

http://warmemscot.s4.bizhat.com/viewtopic.php?t=2248

Regards

Adam

Adam Brown · Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 6:56 pm Post subject:

On another forum Spoons has posted a monument to those who died in Dumfries during the Cholera epedemic of 1832

http://scottishmonuments.s2.bizhat.com/viewtopic.php?p=53

I'm guessing here, but I don't suppose many of the 440 souls lost in Dumfries in 1832 had a headstone?

A community loses a large number of its inhabitants and feels the need to remember them in a physical way...sound familiar?

I wonder what else is out there like this?

Adam

Adam Brown · Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 2:07 pm Post subject:

Mark has today posted an article from 1901 which gives some background to the erction of Alyth's Boer War memorial

http://warmemscot.s4.bizhat.com/viewtopic.php?t=405

THE ALYTH GUARDIAN: 09.08.1901

"...From the outset it was felt that Alyth had suffered in so special a manner from the South African War that, instead of joining with neighbouring communities in commemorating the fallen, it was fitting that it should have a local monument to commemorate its own gallant dead. Steps were at once taken to this end, meetings called, and a committee and collectors appointed..."

This shows it was decided to honour their own dead locally rather than just include them in a Perthshire memorial and a committee of fund-raisers were appointed.

Adam

Adam Brown · Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 2:31 pm Post subject:

I've been trying to find a list of disasters which affected Scotland prior to 1914 to see what the response has been.

Apart from the Dumfries Cholera outbreak above here are some others.

The merchant ship Annie Jane sunk off Vatersay in 1853 with the loss of 384 lives - memorial erected. See here
The Eyemouth fishing disaster of 1881 when 189 men died. - memorial erected. See here

The Tay Bridge disaster in 1879 with the loss of 75 souls. No memorial erected
The loss of the SS Daphne in 1883 when 124 men died. Two modern memorials erected in the 1990s which don't count here, it’s only contemporary commemoration I’m interested in.

I have not included mining disasters in this list for reasons explained in previous posts.

What can we take from this?

A memorial where there are no bodies

Eyemouth. The male population was devastated in one day and many bodies missing - a memorial erected

The Balmaclellan War memorial and Civic Boer War Memorials are the same as this type of memorial.

A memorial which is a marker for a mass grave

The Dumfries Cholera Outbreak – A large loss of life over a short period and a mass grave, no or few individual commemoration.
Annie Jane -a large loss of life. Many unidentified bodies washed ashore on Vatersay to be buried and no doubt a large number lost at sea.- a memorial erected.

The Gretna Rail Crash cross in Edinburgh from 1915, and the Vanguard Cross of 1917 can also be seen as this type of memorial

Disasters without memorials

Tay Bridge - large loss of life but those lost not local. How many bodies not recovered, how many not identified? Is there a headstone to mark unidentified graves?
SS Daphne - Sunk in the Clyde at launch. Most bodies would have been recovered and how many would have headstones? Would they need a memorial? Is there a mass grave somewhere?

For these last two I’m going to do some digging around to see if there are markers in graveyards near the Clyde and Tay which are related to these disasters.

What I’m trying to look at here is that in Scotland if there was a large loss of life in a community and there was a problem with the normal burial / grieving process then how often was the result the erection of a memorial?

Adam

spoons · Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 8:43 pm Post subject:

Extending the original thought.............the people obviously found it necessary to have a stone to mark the departed, and looking at gravestones, you can see this.

Here is an example of someone buried overseas and yet they erected a stone with his being the first name (not just added to an existing stone), I have seen others where the age of the first inscription is older than any following.

There is even the occasional stone where the soldier commemorated is the only one named, and he is not buried, so an empty grave. This shows me that for many the stone was more important than the grave, or at least a reasonable substitute.

Adam Brown · Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 10:54 pm Post subject:

Another interesting point highlighted. Here's another similar case. These headstones are in Brora cemetery

The one on the left is a CWGC headstone for an RAF man from the Second World War buried in the cemetery and listed on the local memorial. The one on the right is a private headstone in a CWGC style commemorating his brother who is buried in Aden.

The family obviously felt the need to commemorate him in the local cemetery with his own headstone. As a NAAFI man who I presume died accidentally or of natural causes during peacetime he would not have been eligible to be listed on the memorial.

Adam

Adam Brown · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 2:25 pm Post subject:

Now we’ve had a bit of debate its maybe worth trying to get some conclusions from them. I’ve also added a couple of other things I’ve thought of.

People in Scotland have a need to remember their dead, that much we definitely know.
The simplest way is to erect a headstone over a grave. If there is no individual grave in a local churchyard there is still that need, and to use a 21st Century term, ‘closure’ can be achieved by:

1. Inscribing a name on a family headstone to someone not buried there
2. Erecting a substitute headstone in the cemetery even if the body is in another part of the world.
3. Erecting a memorial over a mass grave (which may or may not list a name)
4. Erecting a memorial listing the names of those who died overseas somewhere locally

This need for closure has probably been around for some time but in the later part of the 19th century and early 20th century extra factors came into play which were not around before then.

There were many monuments being erected to local worthies in the centres of towns, not just on their graves – statues, obelisks etc. a public commemoration for those worth remembering.

There was now a middle class who could now afford to erect headstones and expected their death to be commemorated in stone and remembered and visited by their relatives

There was large number of emigrants in the colonies that had left family behind and deaths abroad were being commemorated by their families in Scotland on headstones

Even the working class had a little bit of disposable income which meant even if they couldn’t afford their own headstone they could contribute a small amount to a community collection.

There was a large market for newspapers and more literacy so many people were aware of what was happening in other parts of the country. Memorials and monuments being unveiled would have been widely reported nationwide.

There were also some military factors perhaps worth considering.

Regiments had started to erect monuments to the men they lost on overseas campaigns. It may have been easier for regiments to find the funds to pay for memorials because pay could be stopped (at a soldier’s request I’m sure) by the paymaster.

By the time of the Boer War, British soldiers were even getting their own graves – unheard of before that time.

In 1900 local Rifle Volunteers who were part-time soldiers volunteered to serve alongside their regular counterparts in service companies. Militia battalions were embodied and served on overseas garrison duties. Therefore civilians in uniform were serving and dying and being buried as soldiers abroad.

So, to start summarising (thank goodness you cry!). By the end of the Boer War there was that need to find closure for the local boys who had died abroad, but now all the factors above can be taken into consideration and for the first time (Balmaclellan excepted) communities erected civic war memorials on a comparatively large scale.

When it comes to the First World War I think we have an extra factor to take into consideration. Not only was the need to commemorate there again but the sheer scale of it was completely unprecedented.

Is it safe to say a mass hysteria took place in the aftermath of the Great War? Every community be it a town, a school, a club, a society, a church i.e. any group of people who shared a common loss felt they needed to have a memorial or roll of honour - a focus for that shared grief, and this in turn led to a boom in memorials.

Perhaps on top of this mass grief was also a 'memorialising bandwagon' where no community wanted to be left out?

It’s taken a while for us to get to this point but are these fair conclusions for me to have come to? Are there any other factors I’ve missed?

Regards

Adam

spoons · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 4:11 pm Post subject:

That's a great summary, but a couple of further thoughts.

Perhaps before the Great War, wars were fought by soldiers so it was THEY who were fighting but by 1914 civilians were joining (voluntarily or by conscription) so it became WE who were fighting. I make the distinction because professional soldiers ceased to be an active part of the community (except in Garrison towns of course) whereas when it is US (the local community) who have lost recently enlisted men, then it is US and not THEY who need to commemorate the loss.

Add to this the extremely high proportion of dead and wounded and you see that the Great War had a significant ongoing effect in local communities compared to the much smaller numbers in earlier wars. A sense of 'things will never be the same again'.

\Paul

Adam Brown · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 5:04 pm Post subject:

spoons · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 5:09 pm Post subject:

I have certainly picked up a lot of history from this thread, until quite recently I had no knowledge of military history between the Romans and WW2!

\Paul

Adam Brown · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 6:46 pm Post subject:

Adam Brown · Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 2:48 pm Post subject:

I'm just revisiting this discussion from a slightly different angle. Four of the most common types of civic memorial in Scotland are:

Celtic Cross
Obelisk
Statue
Wall plaque

There are plenty of other types around the country but if you ranked them in order I’d imagine these four types would come pretty much at the top of the list.

I have been mulling over why these were so popular as a choice of memorial in the post-Great War period and here are some of my thoughts

Celtic Cross
Represents a gravestone for the dead. Widespread use in cemeteries and for monuments throughout the 19th Century.

Obelisk
Classical monument to the dead. Used by the ancient Egyptians (e.g Cleopatra’s Needle) and then copied all over the West in the 19th century after renewed interest in the Pharaohs. Standard monument for remembering the dead throughout 19th Century.

Statue
Classical again – started as monuments to the great & the good in Greek and Roman towns and cities. Spring forward to Renaissance and as in classical times used for royalty, successful generals and politicians. By C.19th more and more used for local worthies (casting techniques making it cheaper perhaps, or was it from a more Radical background that the ‘common’ man should be recognised too?)
Then used by regiments in late C. 19th and early C.20th. Black Watch, Scots Greys and KOSB in Edinburgh, Black Watch in Aberfeldy, A&SH in Stirling, RSF in Ayr, QOCH in Inverness, HLI in Kelvingrove. A statue of a soldier in this case does not represent any particular man but a regiment or group of soldiers as a whole. By the end of the Boer War the regimental memorial using a statue was also copied as a civic memorial in the Argylls recruiting area by Alloa and Falkirk.

Wall plaque
Common method for commemorating the dead in churches. By late 19th Century very few churches would not have had some plaque to commemorate a local rich family or former minister.

Not mentioned above but which is worth discussing at this time is the 'practical' war memorial. I'm including halls, hospitals, clocks, parks in this category. Something where the whole community benefits from the money raised for a war memorial. In the case of Leith the chairman of the war memorial committee was also chairman of the pre-war hospital committee and from articles in local papers at the time it looks like he proposed and was the guiding force behind using the funds from one to the benefit of the other.
How many others of the public memorials we see today were ongoing public works being completed with the funds raised for a war memorial? I'm thinking of another Edinburgh memorial, the Gorgie Memorial Hall? Did they just decide at committee meetings that they'd like a community hall OR was a hall a long standing wish which came to fruition because of the funds. How many other halls had been propsed before 1914 and were now a reality in a small community because of the funds raised? How many fishing communities saved on raising extra money for a prominent beacon by making the war memorial something practical? This doesn't detract from the aims of the commitees to commemorate the dead and I'm sure their families were more than happy to see their names on something so practical which would benefit so many people for so long
Not all practical memorials will fall into this category (the clock in Brora being a case in point) but I'll bet a trawl through local papers in Arran before the war mentions the need for a proper new hospital or Helmsdale's need for a beacon for their fishermen was a long standing wish.

It's worth pointing out too that with these practical memorials the use of the memorial can obscure its purpose over time. The people who use a memorial hall today may not realise why it is there. The people of Leith don't have the use of the War memorial building as a hospital now so can they relate the flats now occupying the building to their community's sacrifice of over 2,000 men and women? A statue like Maxwelltown leaves no doubt in anyones mind why it is there.

Regards

Adam

spoons · Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:54 pm Post subject:

Some interesting thoughts. When looking at civic memorials, I think for smaller rural communities then the cost of a statue would have sometimes put it out of reach but where cost was an issue we have instead mortared cairns and there are quite a few in Dumfries and Galloway.

Although this thread started looking at community memorials, you may consider church memorials which, apart from the expected plaques, also include items of furniture and church fittings (including stained glass windows).

\Paul

ADP · Joined: 13 Jun 2008 Posts: 467 Location: Edinburgh

A totally different type of memorial that was practical and beneficial to the living community was the one I reported recently - a district nurse was employed in the neighbouring rural parishes of Glenshiel and Kintail.

http://warmemscot.s4.bizhat.com/viewtopic.php?t=4161&highlight=

ADP