Statue of Robert Raikes, London Statue of Robert Raikes, London A statue of Robert Raikes, often regarded as being the founder of Sunday schools, executed by the sculptor Thomas Brock, stands in Victoria Embankment Gardens, London, United Kingdom. It was unveiled by the Earl of Shaftesbury on 3 July 1880 and marked the centenary of the opening of the first Sunday school. The critic Edmund Gosse considered the statue to be "as good as anything of the kind we possess in England". In 1958 it was designated a Grade II-listed building. The front of the plinth reads: . An inscription below the figure's right foot
Arthur Raikes M. Laronce the French consul and, in court with the Arab caid, pronounced a sentence of one years imprisonment on the slaver. The British consul Arthur Henry Hardinge pronounced that the likelihood was that the slaver was born in Pemba and even if from the Comoros his birth would have preceded the declaration of the French protectorate. In 1899 Raikes, on behalf of the Zanzibari sultan, accepted the line of demarcation proposed by Hardinge between British and Zanzibari possessions on the African mainland, this crossing the line of the Uganda Railway. By 1902 Raikes had been promoted to Captain of