There’s
been a lot about statues of ‘the great and the good’ in the news recently.
From
Facebook archives …
·
On the way down to the Quayside Market today I spotted this statue and water fountain dedicated to WilliamLisle Blenkinsopp Coulson 1841-1911. No idea who he was but he seems to have been a good lad.
Younger readers may wonder "Why a water feature?" Well best beloved in the olden days clean water on tap was a rarity in most
places so water troughs for horses, dogs and people were seen as philanthropic
public services.
(The family home in Wales didn't get mains water until the
late 1950s.)
Mr Mull According to the Tyneside daily photo site after his military career:
"he served as
a magistrate and on the boards of many charities concerning themselves with
child and animal welfare. He toured
schools and borstals throughout the country giving lectures on morality, and
published essays on the welfare of children and women..."
More Information
In
Julius Ceasar Shakespeare has Mark Anthony say
“The
evil than men do lives after them
The
good is oft interred with their bones”
However
it would appear in the case of William Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson that some of
the good he did has lived after him.
To
quote The Archives Hub
“William
Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson (1841-1911), after leaving the army in 1892, served
on the boards of many charities concerned with human and animal welfare,
including the RSPCA and NSPCC, and wrote numerous works protesting animal
cruelty. He was a founding member of
the Humanitarian League which opposed corporal and capital punishment as well
as campaigning for the banning of vivisection and all hunting for sport, making
it a forerunner to the modern animal rights movement. Blenkinsopp Coulson became a prominent figure
in Newcastle upon Tyne, establishing there the Newcastle Dog and Cat shelter at
Spital Tongues.”
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