ii s. ix. AL 25, i9i4.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
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the scene for many years of a remarkable
activity in a somewhat unfavoured dis-
trict, is now a kinematograph theatre.
Eloquent whether as preacher or politician,
an accomplished lecturer, and earnest citizen,
Dawson was instrumental in urging on the
progress of the community at a time when
its public spirit was susceptible to the lead
he offered. The inception of the fine
Shakespeare Memorial Library was largely
his, with the late Samuel Timmins as his co-
adjutor.
The first Dawson statue of 1881, by Woolner, being regarded as unsatisfactory, its removal, with a broken nose, to an alcove in the lower lobby of the public Reference Library, where its defects are less exposed to public remark, followed, and its place at the north-east corner of Chamberlain Square was taken in 1884 by another statue from the chisel of F. J. Williamson, which better realizes the ideal to which Dawson's pic- turesque personality lent itself. The coat, &c., were modelled from Dawson's actual garments. The beauty of the figure is dis- counted by the imposition of a lofty canopy and spire, the former bearing medallions of Shakespeare, Cromwell, Bunyan, and Carlyle the subjects of some of Dawson's lectures. The removal of the canopy was advocated as long ago as March, 1385, by the late Eliezer Edwards (" S. D. R"). It is curious that Shakespeare, a Midlander, never mentions Birmingham under any one of its varieties of name, though in ' Henry IV.' he makes Falstaff say to Bardolph, just prior to Shrewsbury's fight of 1403 :
" Get thee before to Coventry, fill me a bottle of sack, our soldiers shall march through ; we '11 to Sutton Coldfield to-night."
Sutton Coldfield is now close to the northern border of Greater Birmingham, extended in 1912.
At the north-west corner of the Square is F. J. Williamson's (seated) * Sir Josiah Mason ' (1795-1881), unveiled in 1885. A manu- facturer of steel pens, split-rings, and electro- plated ware in the early days of those inven- tions, Mason rose, by perseverance and industry, from poverty to affluence. A native of Kidderminster, he is buried in the grounds of the Orphanage founded by him at Erdington, a Birmingham suburb, and on a window of a mausoleum chapel is the following quatrain on the upbringing of children :
Make them wise and make them good,
Make them strong in time of trial,
Teach them patience, self-denial,
Patience, kindness, fortitude.
Sir Josiah's name, however, will be most
readily associated with the University
(1900), as the founder of its nucleus,
Mason College, in Edmund Street (1880).
Orphanage and College were each endowed
with 200,OOOZ. The Homoeopathic Hospital
in Easy Row was another institution to
benefit by his generosity.
An earlier design for a statue by F. G, Papworth was at first approved of. It made- way, however, for that of the present statue, and a solatium of 150 guineas was granted to the disappointed artist.
' John Skirrow Wright ' (1822-80), also by F. J. Williamson, was unveiled by John Bright on the refuge (east end) in front of the Council House on 15 June, 1883. A popular Liberal leader and a lay preacher of considerable power, he would in the ordinary course of things have been returned as a Birmingham member to Parliament, but unselfishly stood on one side when the oppor- tunity offered itself to make way for Mr. Chamberlain's first election to Westminster. At the General Election of 1880 Wright was successful at Nottingham, but died suddenly on 13 April when attending a committee meeting in the Birmingham Council House before taking his seat in the House of Com- mons the first member of the 1880 Parlia- ment to pass away.
The statue now stands in Chamberlain Square in the vicinity of Priestley's. It was removed to its present position on the rearrangement of the Victoria Square statues consequent on the arrival of King Edward's. It may, perhaps, not be out of place to men- tion now, after all these years, the co- incidence that, on the day of Wright's lamentable death, the local political cartoon of the week (by J. H. Bernasconi) was to have represented the newly elected of Nottingham as a " Peri " flying upwards to a political Paradise in the sky (of which an outline of the clocktower at Westminster was the symbol), with the well-known lines beneath :
Joy, joy for ever ! My task is done,
The gates are passed, and heaven is won.
The " cartoon " was, of course, hurriedly suppressed at the last moment. A few- copies only were preserved, and in its place was substituted a portrait of Wright which met with a ready sale.
In the Sculpture Hall of the Art Gallery is Mr. A. Bruce Joy's * John Bright' (1811-89), unveiled in 1 888, a statue similar to the same artist's later work in the Lower Waiting Hall of the House of Commons, which
