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Statue is a full-length portrait of Milligan standing, left arm leaning on a column, right arm slightly extended, holding a scroll or document in his right hand. Figure is clothed in a double-breasted frock coat and cravat. A bronze plaque below the statue depicts a helmeted warrior with a spear cradled in his right hand, seated on the head of a lion, being greeted by a female figure cradling a sceptre in her right arm, with three cherubic figures around her feet. The first of them is holding a horn of plenty, filled with fruit, and the cherub's left arm is extended, laid on the warrior's knee. In the background is a sailing ship.

'Following the death in 1809 of Robert Milligan, the prime force behind the establishment of the West India Docks, the dock company erected a bronze statue to his memory. It was made by Richard Westmacott in 1810-12 for £1,400 and was placed within the Hibbert Gate, immediately south of the dock office entrance portico. The statue is a frank and unidealised representation of a merchant, thus anticipating Victorian bourgeois statuary. The caduceus at Milligan’s feet signifies Mercury, patron saint of commerce, and the relief on the granite pedestal depicts Britannia receiving commerce. Milligan’s statue was at the centre of an open area, referred to as "The Square", occasionally roofed in with canvas as a sorting floor. In time the statue became an obstacle. Traffic arising from the admittance of carmen to the north quay, led in 1875 to its removal to the top of the central pier at the West India Dock Road entrance. The pier was dismantled in 1943 to admit wider vehicles through a single gate. The statue survives as part of the Museum in Docklands collection'.(1) The statue was finally restored to its original position in February 1997, mounted on its original granite base following negotiations between the London Docklands Development Corporation and the Museum of London.(2) When first erected, in 1813, the pedestal bore a bronze bas-relief plaque depicting a figure of Britannia receiving commerce. This no longer survives but has been replaced by a new, bronze relief created in 1998 by Vincent Butler, based on Westmacott’s original design.

circa

raw year

Condition

At risk

Inscriptions

Signatures

Statue

Bronze

170cm high approx x 95cm wide approx x 70cm deep approx

Plinth

Granite

210cm high approx x 260cm square at base narrowing in three steps to 105cm square

Relief on plinth

Bronze

73cm high x 90cm wide