Scott Memorial Monument at Mount Wise

Image: © Tom Jolliffe Taken: 30 Jun 2008

The Scott memorial was built from The Mansion House Scott Memorial Fund. Max Jones wrote in Times Higher Education 3 April 1998 as follows: "Donations were reported from all classes of society and all parts of Britain, from Cheam Girls' Club to Alnwick Town Band, from Dinglewood School in Colwyn Bay to a self-proclaimed "Sad Beggar" from Scotland, who contributed a surprising ten shillings. One of the most original initiatives was Evelyn Noble's chain-letter scheme for a "British Girls' Scott Memorial Fund". Letters were distributed asking the recipient to contribute one shilling to the fund, and to copy the letter and send it on to five other girls. (Although one magazine pointed out that 60 per cent of the £225 raised would have been wasted on stamps.) Numerous souvenirs of the tragedy were produced, from the 24 different memorial postcards printed by eight companies in 1913 alone, to the Captain Scott Cigarettes advertised under the slogan "Cool - like the iceberg". Even in Edwardian Britain the distinction between hero as moral exemplar and hero as celebrity commodity was blurred. Some £10,000 from the Mansion House Fund was allocated to finance the erection of a national memorial statue in London. A competition was held and a design by Scottish architect Albert Hodge chosen. He envisioned a 40-foot high monument, with bronze figures of Captain Scott and a winged Britannia standing on a granite pylon. Yet the Mansion House committee failed to secure a site in London for the statue and even considered abandoning the project after the war. The Board of Works refused to sanction the sacrifice of "a single blade of grass in any of the Royal Parks" for a Scott memorial. A site was finally secured on Mount Wise in Devonport, where Hodges's statue was unveiled in 1925. By then 23 other memorials had been erected throughout Britain."

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