The Bigg Market used to be Newcastle’s Hyde Park Corner, a place where people could rant at the public about politics or religion. The black and white photo shows one of these ranters standing on a carriage in 1908, and the colour one shows the same scene today for comparison.
The old photo was taken in September of 1908, it can be dated by a poster on the right which is advertising an appearance at the Empire Theatre by the actor Laurence Irving that month. The identity of the man on the carriage is unknown, but September 1908 is when the famous suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst made an appearance in the Bigg Market, amid disgraceful scenes.
She drew a crowd of around 7,000 people, almost all of them men, and spent an hour standing on a carriage while being subjected to a frenzy of abuse. The men engulfed her carriage and pushed it up and down the Bigg Market with the horse still attached, before she was able to make her escape down Pudding Chare, protected by policemen with their truncheons drawn.
Votes for women wasn’t the only thing that excited the Bigg Market crowds, who were spoiled for choice every Sunday evening. Political agitators of all persuasions vied with religious fanatics and teetotallers for their attention. These individuals were goaded and heckled until midnight, their audiences fuelled by the large number of pubs in the vicinity.
The man in the first photo has parked his carriage next to the Rutherford Memorial Fountain, the prime spot for the teetotallers. It was erected in memory of the preacher and fanatical abstainer from alcohol, John Hunter Rutherford, by a temperance movement called the Band of Hope. They added an inscription to the fountain, ‘Water Is Best’.
The fountain has since been relocated to the top of the Bigg Market, where the people of Newcastle continue to ignore its advice.