Of whom a statue paid for by public subscription was erected in the Queens Park in Manchester in April 1898. He was popular in the county for writing books in the Lancashire dialect. Part of the inscription on the plinth reads, "He set forth with great faithfulness and power the life of the working-folk" and a grim life that would have been. Sadly, although Ben's plinth was still there, the statue itself had been vandalised, and had since been removed. To quote the newspapers of 1898, the "statute" was "the only Memorial of its kind ever erected to a Lancashire Dialect Writer".
Source: April 19, 2000 - Mr.Richard Brierley of London. Originally a Rochdale (Eng) Brierley.