A FEW FOOTPRINTS

TJohn Passmore EdwaJrdsJohn Passmore Edwards e 1823-1911Autobiography of John Passmore Edwards

Foot Notes

6
A short time after I erected the Falmouth Hospital, and when I was presented with the honorary freedom of the borough in September, 1893, I said, at the complimentary dinner which followed, that, as Cornwall was mainly surrounded by the sea, I should like, in the interests of sailors of all lands, to build a lighthouse somewhere on the Cornish coast; and as there was a point near by-the Manacles, notorious for the disastrous shipwrecks they occasioned-it might be a fitting place for such a lighthouse; and, if built, I should like to dedicate it to the memory of Couch Adams, the distinguished mathematician, and joint discoverer with Le Verrier of the planet Neptune. I should also like to pay a similar tribute of respect to Le Verrier, and erect to his memory a similar lighthouse on the coast of France. Such sister lighthouses, if erected, might complacently glance at each other, and mutually promote a friendly feeling between two sister nations-England and France." The matter was subsequently talked over with the Mayor and others of Falmouth, when it was decided that I should provide a free library for the town in preference to building a lighthouse.
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That The Public Good was serviceable in its day and generation may be seen in the following extracts from letters which came to hand unexpectedly within a few days of each other. Mr. Sherwood Smith, the Chairman of the Bristol Branch of the National Peace Congress, in a letter dated April 22nd, 1905, inviting me to the annual Congress about to be held in Bristol, says:-It was to you, through The Public Good, nearly sixty years ago, that I became specially interested in this kind of Christian work, and of other causes now marching in the right direction." A few days after I received a letter, dated May 7th, 1905, from Mr. William Tebb, Rede Hall, Surrey, who says -"As your monthly magazine, The Public Good, was the first to direct my attention to humanitarian reforms about sixty years ago, I am sending, for your kind acceptance, a copy of the second edition of my book [Premature Burial] on an important but much-neglected subject. A Bill has been prepared to lay before Parliament with the object of putting an end to the tragic occurrences described in the volume, and to which we are all more or less liable." I have received from time to time during the last fifty-five years hundreds of similar letters.
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April 17, 2005