General Charles Gordon Print Page

The stained glass window commemorates the life and work of General Charles Gordon (1833 - 1885). The window was erected in the main stairwell of Booloominbah, the residence of F.R. White, now one of the University administrative buildings. 

Gordon’s death in 1885 was the occasion for an outburst of British loyalty and Imperial pride, combined with an assertion of a colonial pride and confidence. The contingent of New South Wales troops which went to assist the British in the Sudan, and perhaps to avenge Gordon’s death, was seen by one Englishman visiting Australia at the time as a ‘demonstration in favour of national identity’.

The Window is depicted as one scene in the top four segments is the unarmed Gordon wearing a fez, hand upraised to hold back the many armed arabs which surround him, that is, the Battle of Khartoum. In the central eight segments are four scenes. In the left hand upper, Gordon is wearing a fez and mounted on a white horse flanked by his soldiers riding into the midst of the Abyssinian army. In the right upper, Gordon is similarly mounted and clad confronting the slave trader Suleiman at Darfour. In the lower left of the window, Gordon is wearing a fur hat and greatcoat consulting a map with others in the snow at Sebastapol. In the lower right of the window, Gordon is in Chinese costume conversing with another soldier and a Chinese man flanked by two British sailors who watch gun boats filled with sailors row up the Yangtze River. The lower left shows a schoolroom with the seated Gordon teaching children at desks. The lower right shows young Gordon at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.

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