THE ARTIST LS LOWRY (1887-1976) often gives prominence to street lamps in his paintings and drawings. In a few of his pictures, he includes overthrow lamps. These are lamps held by semicircular cast iron hoops above gateways or entrances.
An overthrow lamp drawn by Lowry
In his book “Lowry’s Lamps”, Richard Mayson noted that overthrow lamps were Georgian in origin and are more likely to be found in front of elegant houses Bath or London than in Manchester, where Lowry created most of his compositions. Manchester did not have many of these smart dwellings. The few examples of this kind of lamp in Manchester were usually to be found at public spaces, such as parks and cemeteries.
Mayson noted that Kensington Square in London is rich in these lamps. Today, I visited the Square, and found that what he wrote is accurate. By the way, his book is an excellent appreciation of Lowry and his work.
THERE ARE MANY statues depicting Mohandas K Gandhi (the Mahatma; 1869-1948) all over the world. There is one in Manchester close to the city’s cathedral. A small notice next to it notes that it was gifted by the Kamani family to honour their grandfather Bhanji Khanji Kamani (1888-1979). Inaugurated in 2019, it is a project by the Shrimad Rajchandra Mission in Dharampur (Gujarat).
Shrimad Rajchandra (1861-1901) was a Jain philosopher, scholar, and reformer. Gandhi was introduced to him in Bombay in 1891, and the two men wrote to each other when the Mahatma was a lawyer and activist in in South Africa. Gandhi wrote in his autobiography that Shrimad was his “guide and helper” and his “refuge in moments of spiritual crisis”. Well, I did not know that.
As for Bhanji Khanji Kamani, the notice next to the statue in Manchester notes that he was “… a Fellow Scholar of Gandhi.” I am unclear about the meaning of this because Bhanji was about 19 years younger than the Mahatma. I wonder whether he was actually a disciple of Gandhi, rather than a Fellow scholar.
We saw the statue representing a man who advocated peaceful protest on a day when violent protests were predicted all over England.
LANCASHIRE USED TO be the centre of the cotton processing industry in the UK. Cotton grown in the southern USA and in India’s Gujarat was shipped to Lancashire, where the cotton mills used it to manufacture textiles.
In the heart of the city of Manchester, we were surprised to find a huge bronze statue of the former President of the USA, Abraham Lincoln (in office from 1861 to 1865). Lincoln played a significant role in the abolition of slavery in his country. Many of the slaves worked to grow and harvest cotton, much of which was sent to Lancashire. The processing of the cotton grown by the slaves provided employment for the workers of Lancashire. The statue was created by the American artist George Grey Barnard (1863-1938) in 1919, and is one of three castings – the others being in Louisville, Kentucky and in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Beneath the statue in Manchester and carved in the plinth, there is the wording of a letter sent by Lincoln to the working people of Manchester. Written on the 19th of January 1863, Lincoln thanked the workers of Manchester, who were supporting the abolition of slavery and at the same time suffering because of the blockade that prevented cotton reaching Lancashire from the southern states of the USA. According to one website (https://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/statues/lincoln.html), Lincoln’s blockade of the cotton exporting ports was not universally welcomed:
“To what degree the people of Lancashire gave this support willingly is questionable. Lincoln’s Union Army blockaded the southern ports preventing the Confederate supporters from trading their cotton and causing what was known as the Cotton Famine in the UK. By November 1862, three fifths of the labour force, 331,000 men and women, were idle. The British Government was encouraged to take action to overturn the blockade and riots broke out because of the hardship suffered by the workers. The Confederate Flag flew on some Lancashire mills.”
The American Civil War was not the only time that the Lancashire cotton workers had to suffer because of a freedom struggle taking place many thousands of miles away. In addition to the USA, British India was a supplier of cotton to the mills of Lancashire. Indian cotton was sent to Lancashire, and processed to make textiles that were then sold in India. Because of this, a vast number of weavers in India, who could have made the textiles, were made unemployed and impoverished.
As part of Mahatma Gandhi’s attempt to free India from British rule, he initiated a boycott of cloth and clothing made with textiles manufactured in England. This was sufficiently successful to render a great number of Lancashire textile workers unemployed – at a time when the Great Depression was hitting the country. On the 25th of September 1931, Gandhi travelled from London to Darwen, a small town (with textile factories) north of Manchester. He spent the following days speaking to people of all walks of life, explaining the purpose of his Khadi movement – the boycotting of imported textiles and the encouraging of homespun Indian textile production. Both of my wife’s grandmothers chose to wear only khadi cloth because they supportrd the freedom struggle. James Hunt described Gandhi’s visit to Lancashire in his book “Gandhi in London”, and noted that:
“Everywhere Gandhi explained that whatever the effect of his khaddar movement and boycott might have on Lancashire’s unemployment was a result of his prior concern with the greater sufferings in India. While Britain had 3,000,000 unemployed. India had 300,000.000 villagers idle every year. The average Indian income was a tenth of what the British unemployed worker received from the dole …”
Overall, despite the effects that his boycott was having, the workers of Lancashire welcomed him warmly and supported his cause.
Until we visited the Manchester Museum, which is about 1.3 miles south of Lincoln’s statue, I was unaware of Gandhi’s visit to Lancashire. The museum has a gallery dedicated to the South Asian diaspora, despite being called “the South Asia Gallery”. One of its showcases concentrates on the Mahatma’s brief visit to Darwen.
We visited Manchester in May 2024 to see an art installation curated by our daughter. We also wandered around the city, sightseeing. Little did we expect to discover connections between this vibrant city and both Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi.
yamey 