The return of Thomas Picton, a colonial slave owner turned fallen hero of the Battle of Waterloo, to the National Museum Cardiff marks another step in the delicate dance of curating Britain’s history. Demoted to a side room, Picton’s portrait is presented in a packing case with a plank across his groin area, a nod to emasculation in its concealment of his optimised endowments.
Though not as high profile as Cecil Rhodes or Bristol’s toppled Edward Colston, Picton is a similarly divisive figure. After a six-year stint as governor of Trinidad, he was convicted of the appalling torture of a 14-year-old girl, a conviction that was later overturned on a technicality. Even the Duke of Wellington, under whose command Picton lost his life in 1815, had earlier described him as “a rough, foul-mouthed devil”. Yet two centuries after his death, he is commemorated not only on streets and pub signs in his native Wales, but also in the names of settlements as far afield as New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
