The Mexico monument at St Anne’s was, and is, a focal point for collective mourning and a means
of continuous celebration of the heroism of the lifeboatmen lost in the
disaster of 1886. Although the monument formalized these processes they really began
very soon after the disaster happened as emotive depictions of the event and its aftermath appeared
across various print media.
It is a common conception that as a nation (and I speak here
perhaps more of England than Britain collectively) we have latterly become far more
likely to express emotion both as individuals and collectively. Critics of this
perceived trend suggest that we have become emotionally incontinent, less
inclined to traditional English stoicism and reserve. However, a quick study of
newspapers relating to national events over the preceding 150 years shows that the
desire to express emotion collectively over a national event has been with us
for a long time
The mourning and commemoration surrounding the Mexico disaster of 1886 is a classic example of this. All the events surrounding the disaster, the funerals and official commemoration were covered by local, national and international press eager to relay accounts of the tragedy, the heroism and sacrifice of the men,and the loss to local families and communities. In response people of all ages and backgrounds were not slow to try and express their reflections on the tragedy in verse and submit them for publication.
On 29 December 1886 the local paper in the St Anne’s area, the Lytham Times, published a poem by a Theo J Jones, 'The Wreck of the Mexico'. At the time the editor commented that 'We have received a large number of Poetical Contributions in references to the recent Lifeboat disaster, and much regret that we are quite unable to find space for them'. As it was a weekly publication we should perhaps take him at its word that it was lack of space that prevented others being published. However, one cannot help thinking that the quality of the verses made the editor shy away from publication. Although this particular poem is not without merit some lines are comparable with the worst (or best!) of the 'great' William McGonagall.
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| Lytham Times, 29 December 1886 |
The Southport Visiter published two full columns of poetry on 24 December 1886 under the headline ‘Tributes in Verse’. The quality of the poems is variable, although one submitted by a 12 year old girl and another by a Police Constable Hodge, who was on duty on the night of the disaster, are notable for their sincerity and lack of pretension. However, putting that to one side, the subject matter of this broad range is interesting to examine. The lifeboatmen’s actions are equated to those of national heroes with references by a W F Smith to the doomed heroes of the Light Brigade and, with more nautical associations, the celebrated exploits of Nelson. This national context is also picked up by J Bradley who celebrates the men as British martyrs and their actions as a sign that ‘Old England’s chivalry is not waning yet’. The heroism of the men is thus depicted as representative of virtuous national characteristics and their loss is portrayed as a cause of national mourning, which, according to a G Newman of Gravesend, 'stirs England’s heart’s-blood through and through’.
As a slight aside, another poem printed in the Visiter, ‘The Sequel to the Story’, was penned by a Marianne Farningham, a pseudonym of Mary Ann Hearn. It covers similar themes, placing them more specifically in a Christian context but, from a personal point of view, I was extremely interested to come across her name again. She first came to my attention in relation to the history of St Anne’s. Marianne was a Baptist and a prolific writer and journalist, and I had read somewhere that she had written a piece for Christian World about the burgeoning town which became home to a conspicuous influx of Nonconformists, many from the Rossendale area. Sadly, I have never been able to find this article. The second time I came across Marianne was when I was examining commemorations of maritime and coastal heroism and discovered that, under another pseudonym of Eva Hope, she wrote Grace Darling: Heroine of the Farne Islands, first published in 1875. Linda Wilson has noted that she would have been a well-known figure in many Victorian households so it is significant that a person of some ‘celebrity’ took the time to send her verse to a local newspaper.
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| 'Marianne Farningham' by Thomas Williams Hunt National Portrait Gallery, NPG D11177 |
Perhaps the most widely circulated piece of verse relating
to the disaster was 'Warriors of the Sea' by Clement Scott. Scott was a noted
journalist and theatre critic with a line in sentimental, melodramatic verse
and his piece appeared in Punch a few weeks after the disaster on
Christmas Eve 1886. As a man of letters his poem, although not of a high style,
is better than most but he shares the same concern to place these examples of heroism
in a national context by claiming that that the men were foremost in our roll of national heroes. As it appeared in a national periodical publication this poem
will have had much more reach than the others and this is perhaps evidenced by the fact that it was used for a Victorian needlework
sampler which was auctioned in 2017 - http://www.southportvisiter.co.uk/news/southport-west-lancs/southport-lifeboat-disaster-memorial-reach-12785665.
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| Clement Scott, from Theatre magazine, c 1880 Wikimedia Commons |
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| 'Warriors of the Sea', First Printed in Punch, 24 December 1886 Frank Kilroy Collection, Lancashire Archives, DDX 3123 |
In the year after the disaster a popular novelist who was on the staff of All The Year Round, Mrs De Courcy Laffan (born Bertha Jane Grundy), published a book of poetry,The Song of Jubilee and Other Poems, which includes 'At the Call of God – The Lay of St Anne’s lifeboat'. This poem is a piece of melodrama woven around the theme of the night of the disaster. Again, it is not high art but the writer did have literary pretensions and enough of a national profile for the Lytham Times to quote a section from the poem on 25 May 1888 when it reported on the unveiling of the monument on 23 May.
All of these expressions in verse show both the impact of
the disaster locally and nationally and although in some cases the poetry is rather clunky, a collective desire to express grief publicly over what was seen
as a national tragedy. There is much more to be said about such modes of
commemoration which reached a culmination in the monument and I hope to
return to this a a later date.
Sources
'Southport Lifeboat Disaster Memorial to Reach £1500 at auction', Visiter, 23 March 2017.
'Bertha Jane Grundy' (Mrs de Courcy Laffan), Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Jane_Grundy.
Andrew Walmsley, August 2020
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/history/about/people/andrew-walmsley
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