This cache is part of the Bow Heritage Trail.
The statue’s past is bound up with that of the Bryant and May matchgirls. William Gladstone, four-time Liberal Prime Minister, was popular with East End Irish due to his support for Home Rule. Theodore H. Bryant, who co-owned the nearby factory on Fairfield Road, commissioned Albert Bruce-Roy to make a statue. Completed in 1882, it would be ‘a gift to the east of London.’
In the build up to the statue’s unveiling rumours circulated that it had been paid for by docking a shilling from the wages of Bryant and May factory workers.
Gladstone’s hands have been coated in rusty red ever since, a tribute to the plight of Bryant and May factory workers, whose fury came to a head with the London matchgirls' strike of 1888 To this day cleaning the hands is a pointless exercise. The marks always come back.
Whether or not Bryant and May skimmed money off workers’ wages (it has never been proven), the statue represented a social gulf. A factory director commissions a grand bronze statue of an acting Prime Minister and arranges for it be unveiled by a Lord. Overworked, underpaid factory workers are then trudged down, retching from white phosphorus, and expected to receive this ‘gift’ with grace and gratitude. The scene wouldn’t look out of place in a Dickens novel.
You're getting two locations in one here, Bow Church is the parish church of St Mary and Holy Trinity, Stratford, Bow. There has been a church on the same site for approximately 700 years. The church was bombed in the Second World War, and the bell tower was reconstructed just after the war.
You’re looking for a magnetic cache, below knee height.
Hall of Fame:
Gold: Anytar 11/09/2020 FTF
Silver: Caskhunter 11/09/2020
Bronze: AHM1987 13/09/2020