Souvenir Newsletter of the North West Research Group of the Lifeboat Enthusiasts Society, December 1986 Frank Kilroy Collection, Lancashire Archives As a slight diversion writing a chapter for my PhD, I thought I'd add another post to my blog. The chapter is about the centenary commemorations of the Mexico disaster in 1986, which is a great way to consider the continuing relevance of the monument and how the disaster was framed almost a century later. Most of my comparisons go back to the unveiling of the Mexico monument on 23 May 1888, but I am also thinking about the immediate aftermath of the disaster in December 1886. In 1986 a committee was established by the local RNLI including Frank Kilroy, the Lifeboat Operations Manager for Lytham St Anne's, and author of The Wreck of the "Mexico" , first published in the centenary year. The specific aims of the committee, expressed in a newsletter from the North West Researc
'Life Boat Monument, St Anne's on Sea', Wyndham Series Postcard, 1902 One thing that continues to fascinate me about William Birnie Rhind's Mexico Monument is the depiction of an ordinary man as the focal point of a piece of civic sculpture. In present times, with a now established interest in local history and 'history from below', we are much more used to seeing working-class heritage and the lives of ordinary people celebrated in sculpture.* For example, we have a recently unveiled monument to Wigan miner s or, closer to home, The Shrimper in Lowther Gardens in Lytham. Miners' Monument (2021), Steve Winterburn, Wigan However, when the Mexico Monument was unveiled in May 1886 it would have been highly unusual to see an ordinary man, or for that matter, even an ordinary seaman or soldier, as the focal point of a piece of statuary in Great Britain. One of the few examples might be considered to be Rhind's memorial to the Black Watch, unveiled in 1887