Death of the First Mayor
Information
1893: Henry Pearson Gates - elected the first Mayor of Peterborough in 1874 - died on this day in Jersey. In all he served four times as mayor of this city, the last being in 1887, when he oversaw the celebrations for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. A permanent memorial to him - an impressive drinking fountain - was unveiled in the Market Place by his widow in 1898. It was hoped that the fountain would provide refreshment to the wayfarer and the weary, which it did for over sixty years before being removed, as new plans for the area were put in place. Later it was repositioned in the Bishop's Road gardens, minus its refreshing liquid, as a lasting memorial to one of the great men of Peterborough's long history. (People of Peterborough, Peterborough Museum Publications, 2009)
Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.