John Howard

1894. Sculptor: Sir Alfred Gilbert
Location: St Paul' s Square, facing the High Street

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The bronze statue represents Bedford' s second-most famous son (after Bunyan), the eighteenth century philanthropist, John Howard (1726-1790), standing in thoughtful pose and wearing the travelling clothes of the period. Howard was a local landowner in Cardington who became the High Sheriff of Bedfordshire, with some responsibility for Bedford prison. It was as a result of his finding what conditions were like for prisoners there that he took up his life-long, self-imposed quest to visit prisons both in this country and abroad and make recommendations for their improvement. His report on the "State of Prisons in England and Wales", published in 1777, was very influential in bringing about gradual improvements in conditions for prisoners. Between 1775 and 1790 he made seven long journeys, much of them on horseback, across Europe, as far afield as Kherson in the Ukraine, where he died of fever and is remembered there by a local memorial. His life is also commemorated, nationally, by a statue'. s Cathedral, London. Today, his name lives on in the institution known as the Howard League for Penal Reform which continues his good work.

More information about John Howard

The Sculptor

Sir Alfred Gilbert was a perfectionist, which might account for why it took him from 1890 to 1894 to finish this commission. He liked to add his own artistic flourishes to public commissions, despite the views of the various committees to which he was answerable. In this outstanding memorial he has decorated the base of the statue with a tour de force in the, then, latest artistic fashion for Art Nouveau, with its sinuous curves. A closer look at the four intriguing but grotesque masks on each corner of the base, reveals a cherub within, looking out. Was this the artist alluding to Howard' s belief that within even bad men there was some good seeking to reveal itself?

Gilbert' s other works include the world-famous, so-called, Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus London, one of the first statues to be cast in aluminium, and which celebrates the works of Lord Shaftesbury, another great philanthropist, dedicated to the care of children.