EBENEZER ELLIOTT
(1781 - 1849)

The Ebenezer Elliott Memorial: Two Amusing Stories,
A Poem About The Statue & Details of Fund Raising

Details of Fund Raising: Problems & Donations

After the death of the Corn Law Rhymer, it was suggested that a statue should be constructed in memory of the distinguished poet. The two following items appeared in the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent newspaper in September 1850 giving the state of play with preparations for providing a statue.

The newspaper abstracts have been kindly supplied by Diane Gascoyne who found them while leafing through early copies of the newspaper. The first abstract is quite short, but makes an interesting comment:-

MONUMENT TO EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

 (NB The Mayor of Sheffield is listed below in the list of donors, namely Thomas Birks).

The list shows a number of well-known contributors, some of whom get a short mention in the footnotes which have been added to the original newspaper article.

The Committee, authorized to collect Subscriptions, have pleasure in announcing the following List. They also respect­fully request further Names and Donations, which will be received by THOMAS BIRKS, Esq., Mayor; Edw. BRAMLEY, Esq,, and Wm. FISHER, Jun., Esq., Honorary Secretaries ; and at the Offices of the Independent and Times Newspapers. 

¹ Richard Cobden. The MP was known as "The Apostle of Freetrade" which makes him a natural ally of Elliott who referred to him as "the golden-mouthed orator" and as "the Hero of the Bloodless Revolution."

²  Samuel Bailey. Philosopher & essayist who became a wealthy businessman with trade links to the USA. Stood for election to parliament in 1832 when Sheffield first elected its own MPs. Samuel polled 812 votes & came fourth. Ebenezer dedicated to Bailey the poem "Withered Wild Flowers."

³  John Parker.  Owner of Parker & Shore's bank where Elliott had a bank account at one time. Parker (together with J.S. Buckingham) was elected MP for Sheffield in 1832.

⁴  Robert Leader. There were two Robert Leaders, father & son. Leader, Jun., was the owner of the Sheffield & Rotherham Independent newspaper which he edited for 50 years. When the paper announced Elliott's death, Leader wrote: "Mr. Elliott was for many years an occasional correspondent of the Independent; and we record his death with feelings of great regret. We were often favoured by his communications in both prose and verse  whilst he resided in Sheffield; and our poet's corner has even lately been graced by his original productions. Our personal acquaintance with him has been to us a source of much pleasure." (A full obituary was to appear in the paper later).

⁵  Joseph Hunter. The archaeologist & historian famous for his monumental volumes on "South Yorkshire" and on "Hallamshire."

⁶  John Fowler. Secretary to the Sheffield Mechanics Institute. He was a very close friend of Ebenezer, often dining at his home. The bard wrote his poem, "The Gypsy" for Fowler.

⁷  Asline Ward. Thomas Asline Ward was a wealthy Unitarian businessman & public figure much admired by the Corn Law Rhymer who dedicated the poem "They Met Again" to him. Ward was nominated by Elliott at the 1832 election in Sheffield but came third. (See also footnote below).

⁸  S.C. Hall. Was the author (with his wife) of an 1865 article called "Memories of the Authors of the Age" in the Art Journal, vol 4 New Series. From this we can assume the couple were acquaintances of the Rhymer.

⁹  James Montgomery. The famous hymn writer, poet & newspaper editor who was president of the Sheffield Mechanics Institute when Ebenezer was vice-president. He was a wealthy pillar of the community & a friend of Wordsworth, Coleridge & Southey. Elliott seemed a little in awe of him, though he submitted poems to him & dedicated the poem "Spirits and Men" to him.

¹⁰  Paul Rodgers. Was a close friend of the bard and, like John Fowler, was a member of the Elliott Club, as they called themselves. Curator of the Sheffield Mechanics Institute, his wages were cut by Elliott in 1835.

¹¹  T. A. Ward. There are two entries for Thomas Asline Ward (see above) in the list of donors. As one entry describes him as being in the USA, perhaps one of the donations was made on his behalf.

¹²  Isaac Ironside. Sheffield's leading socialist who was also Elliott's accountant, close friend and business agent. Made a speech when the Charter was introduced by Elliott to the people of Sheffield in 1838.

¹³  Michael Beal. Described in a Sheffield newspaper as one of "our local smallfry agitators." Beal was a Chartist who also spoke when the Charter was introduced to Sheffield in 1838.

  The total of the donations listed was £231.48, so the committee's decision to widen the appeal to other towns was a sensible one. The total finally spent on the statue was £600. One thing that the list reveals is the importance of rank in the time of the Corn Law Rhymer: notice how the top half of the donors merit the term "Esq" and the bottom half largely does not qualify for the honour.

  Another point to ponder is the donor from the United States, namely John Garside. Ebenezer's wife was a Garside before her marriage. Was this Garside in Newark, USA, a relative or was it purely coincidence?

 In the middle of the list of donations appear the names W. Fisher, W. Fisher, Jun., and F.E. Fisher. The latter is very likely Frances Fisher, a much loved young friend & walking companion of the poet. Fisher, whose father was William Fisher, was struggling to make a career as an Unitarian minister. The name Fisher is commonplace, and caution is recommended here in accepting Frances Fisher as the named donator.

 The bronze statue of the Corn Law Rhymer was erected in 1854 in Market Place (now called High St). It was the work of Neville Burnard. Walter Savage Landor, a well-known poet of the day, wrote the following poem in honour of Elliott & his statue.

 ON THE STATUE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT BY NEVILLE BURNARD,
ORDERED BY THE WORKING MEN OF SHEFFIELD.

A second hurled his thunderbolt and flame
When Gaul and Spaniard moor'd their pinnaces,
Screaming defiance at Gibraltar's frown,
Until one moment more, and other screams,
And other writhings rose above the wave
From sails afire and hissing where they fell,
And men half burnt along the buoyant mast.
A third came calmly on and askt the rich
To give laborious hunger daily bread,
As they in childhood had been taught to pray
By God's own Son, and sometimes have prayed since.
God heard; but they heard not. God sent down bread;
They took it, kept it all, and cried for more,
Hollowing both hands to catch and clutch the crumbs.

I may not live to hear another voice,
Elliott, of power to penetrate as thine,
Dense multitudes; another none may see,
Leading the muses from unthrifty shades,
To fields where corn gladdens the heart of man,
And where the trumpet with defiant blast
Blows in the face of war and yields to peace.
Therefor take thou these leaves, fresh, firm, tho' scant,
To crown the City that crowns thee her son.
She must decay: Toledo hath decaid;
Ebro hath half forgotten what bright arms
Flasht on his waters; what high dames adorn'd
The baldric; what torn flags o'erhung the aile;
What parting gift the ransom'd knight exchanged.
But louder than the anvil rings the lyre;
And thine hath raised another City's wall
In solid strength to a proud eminence,
Which neither conqueror, crushing braver men,
Nor time, o'ercoming conquerer, can destroy.
So now, ennobled by thy birth, to thee
She lifts with pious love the thoughtful stone.
Genius is tired in search of gratitude;
Here they have met; may neither say farewell.

Anecdotes About The Statue

 In 1875 the statue was moved from Sheffield's Market Place to the city's Weston Park where it remains today. Moving the statue was celebrated in a witty newspaper article which appears below.

Ebenezer Elliott, the Poet of the Poor

(The statue was restored in 2007)

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SHEFFIELD DAILY TELEGRAPH

ON THINGS IN GENERAL 

by

Our Erratic Correspondent

Sir, -

Here is a trifling advertisement of my own to which I beg you will give publicity free of charge:-

 "Missing from his home in the Market-place, Sheffield, a bald, stone-deaf old gentleman, dressed in a durable suit of soot. Was last seen on the night of 30th June, seated in a doubled-up condition on a granite pedestal devouring - with his eyes - the sausages in an opposite restaurant. Is suspected of having been a poet and a patriot, but was otherwise inoffensive and respectable. Fears are entertained that he has been drowned while fruitlessly endeavouring to wash himself clean in the River Don, or that some evil-disposed persons have cut him up and manufactured him into sham black marble mantlepieces.

  His name was Ebenezer Elliott, but he was oftener called 'Ebbey,' and 'Old Ebony.' Whoever gives information of his present whereabouts, or produces his body, will be rewarded with a copy of the 'Corn Law Rhymes,' and will be allowed the privilege of standing on his head in the centre of the Market-place on the day of the Royal Visit. - Apply anywhere, between the hours of three and five a.m.; Sundays excepted.

In the name of the rising generation of Sheffield humorists, I solemnly and seriously protest against the removal of our venerable friend. That Statue has time out of mind been the legitimate butt of budding "wits." It taught the young the idea how to shoot - satiric arrows. There it stood - calm and impassive - a mark for the jokes and jests of anybody and everybody. We all had an interest - a vested interest - in it. It was competent for us to point it out to intelligent strangers as a petrified negro discovered embedded in a seam of coal. Or we could describe it as a fossil Hottentot. We were free to say that it was an allegorical figure of a "black man," set up in our Market-place to commemorate the triumph of Wilberforce's Emancipation crusade. Or we could confirm that it was a correct likeness of the very first "Old Sheffielder.

 There was no limit to the jokes that might be made about that chaste and beautiful Statue. It was only by remembering that laughing is an offence against the Borough by-laws that I could ever view its nose without open merriment. It was a nose that had obviously been pulled and twisted unduly, for it had the appearance of a corkscrew. One of the eyelids was contracted in an impressive and portentous wink. The Statue seemed desirous of informing the beholder in this sly way that it was aware it was a guy, but did not mind that so long as it afforded any amusement to the public. The eye that wasn't winking had a fixed and stony glare. It was an Ancient Mariner kind of eye. This eye was Tragedy and the other was Comedy. The mouth was a "mixed" mouth. In point of fact it was not so much a mouth as a tunnel stopped up with a lump of stone. Never in my experience have I met with a Statue with so much cheek. My impression always was that the sculptor was a conscientious gentleman who, having been supplied with too much stone for his purpose, had converted the superfluous material into "cheek." Thus an unusually scrupulous tailor will sometimes surprise you by sending home two waistcoats instead of one - explaining that you gave him more cloth than was necessary for a suit. The Statue's "cheeks" were of an inky hue - leading you to suppose that it had blushed black. 

 Elliott's living relations had an undoubted "cause of action" against the sculptor on the score of the legs. These legs were of the species termed "bandy," and did not strike you as being fellows. One leg looked like a fragment of a cast iron pillar and the other like an elongated vegetable marrow. To walk through life on legs of such remarkable formation would be a sheer impossibility.

 The sculptor, however, gave the Statue a liberal allowance of coat. It wasn't a coat for an age but for all time. The tails alone would have sufficed to clothe an ordinary family through several generations. A stingy sculptor might have left the Statue in its shirt-sleeves to save the expense of a coat altogether. But the Elliott Statue fared better. Its coat was a sumptuous one of elaborate cut. There were buttons enough on it to button up the pockets of half the misers in Great Britain.

 Probably there was not stone enough left to give the Statue a hat or a neckerchief. At any rate it wore neither. Its throat was exposed to the heat of summer and the cold of winter; and its head was covered only with an elegant representation of a newly-reaped corn-field, which may have been meant for hair.

 The Statue was an accommodating one. A paint-brush would have converted it into the likeness of anybody. Two or three dabs of white about the face and forehead would have made it Byron. A dash of red would have made it an Indian Chief. The smoke of Sheffield made it an Abyssinian Warrior. What has the Town Council transformed it into? I cannot put faith in the report that reaches me that it has been "sent to the wash" with a view to its being presented to the Prince and Princess of Wales as a fitting memento of their visit to Sheffield. Neither do I believe that it has been removed to the hospital and put under medical treatment. As to the statement in the newspapers that it is to be placed in Weston Park - pooh! the idea is monstrous. A Work of Art - an unexampled, unrivalled Work of Art - to be hidden away in Weston Park! Why those Goths and Vandals will talk next of banishing the handsome and wonderful portraits in the Cutlers' Hall and the Council Chamber to some municipal lumber-room.

  My firm belief is that the Town Council has caused the Statue to be taken to some tailor's to be measured for a new suit of clothes against the Royal Visit. If so, let me entreat that it may also have a hat and a better pair of boots. The entire town is concerned in having the Statue dressed in a respectable manner. If the Council can shave it and have its hair - or what passes for its hair - cut so much the better. A pair of spectacles would gracefully conceal the eye that winks, and a judicious use of pointer's putty or plaster of Paris would render its nose less unlovely. The legs, I fear, will prove unmanageable. However, as the Statue will not be expected to walk in the Procession, this defect will not attract general attention. Could we not elect it a Town Councillor, so as to entitle it to wear Robes? The robes would effectually conceal its legs."

Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Saturday July 3rd 1875

A  Libel  On  Ebenezer  Elliott

Another amusing tale about the poet's statue appeared in the Sheffield Telegraph for 23rd May 1918.  A newcomer to Sheffield tells of "a little interview" he had with a local humorist.  In reading the anecdote, please note Elliott's statue was once on Market Place (now Sheffield High St) before it was removed to Western Park.  The "interview" goes as follows:-

This charming tale was rescued from obscurity by Diane Gascoyne, the celebrated Elliott researcher.

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