Unkempt memorial stone to Wollstonecraft

• AMID the squabbling about a suitable statue to Mary Wollstonecraft, (New Mary campaign calls for rejected statue to be installed, 20 November), the monument at the site of her burial in Old St Pancras Churchyard stands neglected and crumbling.

Though her remains and those of her husband, William Godwin, were moved by her grandson to the Shelley family-tomb in Bournemouth, the condition of Mary and William’s burial stone is a depressing sight.

Old St Pancras, just minutes from where the couple lived in Somers Town, is where Mary was buried at age 38, following complications from childbirth, 11 days after the birth of her daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

Those who wish to honour Mary’s contribution to feminism could do worse than remember the manner of her early death.

Whoever wins out in the battle of the statues, a fundraiser to restore this moving monument to a magnificent woman is surely in order? The churchyard attracts many visitors, unlike that in Bournemouth where the couple’s exhumed remains were re-buried.

MEG HOWARTH
Ellington Street, N7