There’s an interesting article in the Telegraph about street shrines, in London and elsewhere, mostly commemorating the fallen, but sometimes simply honouring all those who went to fight.
I like this snippet of information:
This did not come without controversy. Prayers for the dead went against the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. J H Kensit of the Protestant Truth Society said that the shrines inspired idolatry, and he made a protest at the unveiling of a shrine at St Bartholomew the Great in 1917. Kensit was taken for a pacifist and nearly set upon by the crowd.
All this suggests that the process of memorialisation began before the Armistice, and that it was a grass-roots movement, later taken up officially yo produce the memorials and cenotaphs that adorn every town and village in the country.
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The Ian Hislop series NOT FORGOTTEN suggested that the reason for the sudden proliferation of street shines (and ultimately the huge memorials and cenotaphs) was the Government’s decision not to return the bodies of the fallen. A street shrine at least gave some sort of focus for mourning family members who didn’t have a grave site to visit.
Good point. I wonder, though, whether there are any earlier examples – from the Boer War, maybe, or commemorating sites of accidents.
But isn’t it the case that before the twentieth century, wars were what you sent other people to deal with? When mass conscription became a reality in WWI, I suppose that it was the first time that the public had had to deal with loss on that scale. It might also be the case that until widespread literacy became a reality, history tended to be oral history. If you couldn’t read, what was the point of a written tribute?
As for the accident memorials…It does seem to be an almost instinctive reaction to tragedy. A young girl was killed in a road accident close to our house, and within days the street lamp at the scene was covered with flowers, cards, expressions of sorrow, cuddly toys. There was no spoken decision, but once the first card was put there, the avalanche started.
I’ve seen a window and plaque from, I think, the 18th century. It was in a Church, and commemorated the loss of members of a congregation who had died when the building was struck by lightning. I’ll have to see if I can remember anything more about it, but it does seem sort of relevant to this discussion.