page_title: James Renforth
section_title: Burial and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: James Renforth / Burial and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Renforth's Memorial in Gateshead.
context_page_description: James Renforth was an English Tyneside professional oarsman. He became the World Sculling Champion in 1868 and was one of three great Tyneside oarsmen, the other two being Harry Clasper and Robert Chambers.
context_section_description: His body was brought home to Tyneside and he was buried in St Edmund's Cemetery, Gateshead. It was claimed that 100,000 mourners attended his funeral. It is true to say that Tyneside was shocked by the death of a 29-year-old athlete in his prime, especially so soon after the deaths of Chambers in 1868 and Clasper in 1870. As with the other two oarsmen, a funeral monument was commissioned to stand over his grave. In 1992, it was restored and moved to a site outside the Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead, where it remains.
  Renforth's name was not forgotten in Canada. The community in which his last race took place in New Brunswick was named Renforth in his honour.
  "In 1868 Renforth, one of the most powerful men that ever sat in a boat, easily defeated Kelley. With the subsequent history of this noted sculler everybody is familiar. His untimely death in America cast a gloom over the whole of the United Kingdom. I believe him to have been one of the fastest men that ever handled a pair. His loss to us at that most critical time was irreparable, for from his death may be dated the decline of English sculling"
  Otago Witness, Issue 1951, 11 April 1889, Page 25
caption: Renforth's memorial in Gateshead
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