The Crowd

cenotaph.jpg

Preston, England 1926. The dedication of the Cenotaph funded by public subscription and designed by Giles Gilbert Scott. Scott, who was architect of the classic British red telephone box, Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and Tate Modern (Bankside power station), described his design as conforming to the ‘Greek feeling’ of the square, dominated by the Harris Museum. Note the orderly arrangement of military, civic leaders and churchmen around the monument and the crowd funnelled and shaped by the medieval road beyond. The sailors on the right are quite variable in stature compared to the soldiers on the left.

Ungraspable statistics dominate descriptions of the Great War. John Ptak has a number of excellent posts about crowds, and, through old photographs, is attempting to put a “fleshy face on an otherwise forensic statistic”. See 20,000 Soldiers & 1 Mule, 1918 and 100,000 People at the Dempsey-Carpentier Fight, 1921: a Remarkable Photograph.

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