The Forgotten Heroes of Postman’s Park

Abstract

The Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice in Postman’s Park contains fifty-three memorial tablets, each dedicated to an act of life-risking bravery, undertaken by an otherwise ordinary individual, largely in the course of their everyday life, and within commonplace surroundings. The memorial’s creator, G. F. Watts, was a pivotal figure in the conception and promotion of the idea of ‘everyday’ heroism in Britain. Where he led, others followed. On this basis, the Watts Memorial has come to inform our understanding of how everyday heroism as a concept was constructed. Further research has now identified eighty-four individuals who were intended for commemoration on the memorial but who are missing. Incorporating these ‘forgotten heroes’ into the memorial radically alters how we understand it. It widens and deepens our understanding of Watts’ construction of everyday heroism and the characteristics that underpinned the Victorian conception of the idea