On this day … 23 November 1850

The Preston Chronicle carried a report of a public meeting at which it was agreed to erect the statue to Sir Robert Peel that now stands in Winckley Square. At the time, there were many in the town who favoured different projects to honour the former prime minister, who had died in the July. Indeed, even when a statue had been settled on as the most appropriate monument, its siting was by no means a done deal.

Just a few days after Peel’s death, the question of a fitting memorial was being discussed, as the Chronicle reported:

‘On Wednesday evening last, a meeting, hastily convened by circular, was held in the Mitre Inn Assembly Room, to consider the propriety of opening a subscription for the purchase of a bust of the late Sir Robert Peel, to be placed in some public building or other place in Preston. The favour with which the project was received induced the promoters afterwards to extend the design to a statue, or some other fitting memorial of that distinguished man.’

Subsequent meetings made it clear that the majority of people favoured a statue over suggestions for different forms of memorials. One of those suggestions from a correspondent to the Chronicle was for a clock tower in the Market Place:

‘I would, with deference, advise that a lofty and handsome tower should be erected, either on the site of that wretched abortion, the “Obelisk,” as it is erroneously styled, or on any other site that might be found to be more suitable for the purpose, to be called the “Peel Tower,” and at a height sufficient to be seen from a considerable distance.’

Other alternative memorials proposed included a Peel Cemetery, a Peel Park, a Peel Infirmary and a Peel Library. The Chronicle threw its weight behind the proposal for a statue.

But once it had been finally settled that the memorial was to be a statue, the question of its siting had to be agreed, and Winckley Square was not the only contender. Another favoured spot was on Avenham Walk, in front of the newly-built Avenham Institute, as was the lower terrace below Avenham Walk, looking south over the Ribble.

The reason there was so much support for a monument to Peel in the town rested on the reforms he introduced during his political career, as the Chronicle set out in an editorial:

‘…in the Catholic Emancipation Bill, in the repeal of religious tests, in the amelioration of our criminal laws, and in the establishment of Freetrade, we find that the primary object was to preserve, protect, and advance the interests of the many, as opposed to the exclusive privileges of the few. There can be no doubt that the instrument of these concessions would, had his life been spared, have followed up his beneficial advocacy of popular rights, by similar enlargements of freedom with respect to the suffrage …’

What the Chronicle omitted to mention was that for many years at the beginning of his political life Peel was one of the fiercest opponents of these reforms, especially of Catholic emancipation. On the latter issue he was so far to the right that he was nicknamed Orange Peel, so close was his position to that of the anti-Catholic Orange Order.

His abrupt conversion to that reform surprised and disgusted his former allies. It was more pragmatic than principled. The same could be said of his later repeal of the Corn Laws, which he promoted as a means of bringing relief to Ireland at the time of the Great Famine, but which his chief biographer argued was just a pretext to gain a reform he had long been advocating.

Indeed, his reaction to the Irish Famine shortly after the passing of his Corn Laws legislation bears that out: ‘There is such a tendency to exaggeration and inaccuracy in Irish reports that delay in acting on them is always desirable.”

The Preston MP and Orange Order supporter Robert Townley Parker, along with so many other Tories, despised Peel for his adoption of Catholic emancipation and free trade, and he faced their anger and contempt in the Commons:

‘Last week the debate in the House of Commons came to a close at last, wound up by a speech of Disraeli’s, very clever, in which he hacked and mangled Peel with the most unsparing severity, and positively tortured his victim. It was a miserable and degrading spectacle. The whole mass of the Protectionists cheered him with vociferous delight, making the roof ring again, and when Peel spoke, they screamed and hooted at him in the most brutal manner. When he vindicated himself, and talked of honour and conscience, they assailed him with shouts of derision and gestures of contempt … They hunt him like a fox, and they are eager to run him down and kill him in the open …’

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Sources
Anyone with a Lancashire County Library card can read the Preston Chronicle and many more papers for free here: https://link.gale.com/apps/BNCN?u=lancs&aty=rpas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel
http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/cornlaws/grevdiz.htm