The public memorial of reform: Commemoration and contestation

Godwin's remarks are a good starting point for anyone who is interested in commemoration and memorials of British reformers. Reformers have described their memorials as object lessons for the beholder; the messages are meant to create and reinforce the appropriate mentality for a reformed society. Historians are intrinsically interested in what Tom Griffiths has called 'seasons of memory' and 'waves of nostalgia', but rarely have these phenomena been studied systematically in relation to monuments. The importance that Halbwachs attached to 'the localization of memories' has been given added force by writings on the social and political culture of the modern city. The proliferation of public monuments as a means of recruiting the dead for political narratives was urged on and given shape by the special place of death in nineteenth-century European culture, an area of research that has attracted much attention from recent historians.