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During the Second World War pupils at the Blind School were evacuated to Rhyll, and the branch at Wavertree was used by a variety of people being moved around because of the war: first French soldiers waiting to be repatriated, then people displaced from Scotland Road in Liverpool because of the Blitz. The RAF and the Thames and Mersey Marine Insurance Company also passed through.
A big gold head is quite a hefty thing to make off with – there is no telling whether the original ended up discarded in a bomb site, or is now sitting on a mantlepiece in Liverpool or some completely different part of the world, shorn of its significance.
Somewhere in the midst of the chaos, a gold painted head representing the School’s founder, Edward Rushton, disappeared. The slightly battered image above is a copy created after the pupils returned to the School in 1947. A big gold head is quite a hefty thing to make off with – there is no telling whether the original ended up discarded in a bomb site, or is now sitting on a mantlepiece in Liverpool or some completely different part of the world, shorn of its significance.
Edward Rushton’s own children might not have been especially sorry at the loss. The original bust was by the sculptor Gibson but they preferred an image by Moses Houghton which they thought was a better likeness. A memoir published in St Mary’s Chronicle April 1888 records ‘his face marked him out among his contemporaries, and encourages a belief that there were giants in those days’ It seems to suggest the Gibson bust was created as a result of Rushton having experimental surgeries to restore his sight.