Description:The Joseph Sturge Monument at Five Ways: A Photographic Essay.
All text by Dr Andy Green
This city story highlights the changing fortunes of Birmingham’s monument to Joseph Sturge (1793-1859).
In the early nineteenth cenury, Joseph Sturge’s name was recognised as a powerful symbol of social reform. His reputation as a reformer and anti-slavery campaigner extended both locally, nationally and internationally. A Quaker by faith, a corn merchant by trade, Sturge’s life was dedicated to a variety of political and charitable causes: in Birmingham, he strove to improve conditions for the poor and the under-educated; in the West Indies and America, he campaigned to bring an end to slavery; in other parts of the world, he embarked upon ‘peace missions’ in an attempt to diffuse international conflict, such as the Crimean war.
Such was Sturge's local and national significance that three years after his death in 1862, a public monument was unvieled at Five Ways. It featured him standing besides a bible, surrounded by two angels appearing to represent charity and freedom. One of the symbolic figures at Sturge’s feet reaches out towards a small child, who could be read as an image of the emancipated slave (a similar motif is evident in the oil painting of Sturge in Birmingham Central Library). Inscribed around the stone block on which Sturge stands are the words ‘temperance’, ‘charity’, ‘peace’ and ‘faith’. In the nineteenthce century, no-one making their way through Five Ways into town could have missed his imposing statue, and its adorning inscription: ‘He laboured to bring freedom to the negro slave, the vote to the British workman, and the promise of peace to a war worn world’.
It is now more than one hundred and fifty years after Sturge's death. The following photographs, texts and documents in this essay show how his statue was moved and the surrounding urban landscape completely transformed. They hint about how our moral focus was reshaped and shifted: a monument which once represented a highly visible nineteenth century moral landmark became completely overlooked after the twentieth century commercial redevelopment of Five Ways Island. Today, at the time of writing, Sturge is currrently under covers as repairs on the monument begin. This long overdue restoration is timed to coincide with the two hundred year commemoration of the Slave Trade Act (1807). What now will be the future of this monument? Perhaps Joseph Sturge himself would argue that the restoration of his monument could only gain credibility if it is matched by a determination to combat the inequalities confronting our own age.
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All photographs kindly reproduced by loan of Birmingham Central Library Local History Department. Additional Photos also reproduced courtesy of Pete Ashton.