The story of how former mayor of Sydney’s Waverley Council, James Robert Markham, is to stand trial over an alleged plan to torture a male prostitute made me ponder how people are remembered in history.
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But now, as a historian at a leading Sydney heritage architectural firm, I am wondering if we in heritage are mired in a bog of our own making.
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On the morning I read about Markham, I had been assessing the associational significance of an 1850s building in The Rocks, once occupied by a mayor of Sydney. Thomas Playfair (1832-1893), a shipping butcher, is generally remembered as a kind, charitable and widely respected man whose achievements as alderman and mayor included improving Sydney’s water supply and sanitation. Naturally, I concluded in my assessment that, aside from its architectural and historical merits, the building was significant for its association with Playfair.
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