# When did Makeshift Public Altars become a Thing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 4, 2020, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-makeshift-public-altars-become-a-thing/847462 "2020-02-04T01:27:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-makeshift-public-altars-become-a-thing/847462/1 "2020-02-04T01:27:17Z")
I see they are clearing out all the flowers, terry bears and whatnot the public used to make a mourning display for Kobe Bryant at the stadium in Los Angles. When did we start doing that? There was no such behavior in World War II, or during Vietnam, when I was growing up. After 9-11 it was a thing. Bringing stuff to the school after a shooting is a downright custom in America at this point. I suspect we can identify about when this started. Any ideas? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-makeshift-public-altars-become-a-thing/847462/2 "2020-02-04T01:37:59Z")
A more common name for what you’re talking about seems to be “informal memorials”, which according to [this source](https://books.google.com/books?id=WQNXCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA4) surged in popularity starting in the 1990s, but has a much older history: > [@](#): > > Creating a memorial from scratch by placing a cross at the site of a roadside death has long been a tradition in Catholic regions. In the southwestern US, this tradition dates back at least 200 years […] In New York City, the first such memorial appeared in 1980 at the site of John Lennon’s assassination outside his home. […] By 1997, the practice had become well enough known to help fuel the worldwide creation of informal memorials following the accidental death of Diana, Princess of Wales […] > > Since the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, assemblages of flowers, cards, candles and many other tributes appear even more frequently in urban locations to commemorate the death of a single individual or a group of individuals. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-makeshift-public-altars-become-a-thing/847462/3 "2020-02-04T01:41:42Z")
I don’t know about elsewhere in the world, but it seems to me it started in New Zealand in about 1991, with a citizen-initiated road safety campaign that started placing white crosses at the sites of fatal road traffic accidents. While initially resisted by the authorities, the campaign eventually gained official sanction. Many of the crosses formed the nucleus of makeshift shrines, with flowers, clothing and other memorials. However, it seem that public shrines at the site of accidental deaths have older roots, as detailed in this [article about the road-side crosses.](https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/roadside-crosses-a-memorial-and-a-message/) > [@](#): > > The story of the roadside cross—while not unique to New Zealand—has precedents that run deep into our past. In the 1880s, Hareti Poihipi carved and erected a figure close to State Highway 30, which runs through the Rotorua thermal area, to indicate the site where a man had been asphyxiated by gases from a fumarole while trying to catch a pig. Like crosses visible today just south of Huntly, on State Highway 1, the memorial was draped with the victim’s clothing and served as both a memorial and a warning of the danger. > > Italian miners working on the Tongariro power scheme in the central North Island also used memorial markers at the site of accidents. They erected small iron crosses to mark the sites where colleagues had died, and emulated a tradition practised by Greek immigrants in the early part of last century who erected small shrines at the site of fatal accidents. These memorials were based on the icon stops in use in their own country. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-makeshift-public-altars-become-a-thing/847462/4 "2020-02-04T01:42:14Z")
Excellent reply. Sometime about 1980. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-makeshift-public-altars-become-a-thing/847462/5 "2020-02-04T08:33:45Z")
Putting tat out at shrines happens more now because tat is so much cheaper and easier to get now. And we didn’t have WWII roadside shrines because it didn’t happen at the roadside here — but I’ve seen flowers at roadside shrines in France. There were certainly shrines for WWII: around here they still come out and put flowers at the WWII (and WWI and WWI+II) shrines every year. A traditional place for piling up big piles of memorial flowers was at a church. The Kobe Bryant thing is (1) because he was a stadium star, and (2) a lot of people don’t go to church. But, regarding the title of the thread, yes Princess Di legitimatized road-side accident shrines for a lot of Greek/Italian families around here, who wanted to do it, but didn’t feel comfortable doing it in Aus until the English example. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-makeshift-public-altars-become-a-thing/847462/6 "2020-02-04T08:39:53Z")
ive seen it since the 80s for car accidents and then shootings and such in california ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-makeshift-public-altars-become-a-thing/847462/7 "2020-02-04T08:54:21Z")
They are pretty much discouraged over here. There was a big one in Wales somewhere, where a biker died. His family built a shrine and it became an annual thing for all his mates to visit and they kept extending it. Eventually, the local council dismantled it on the grounds of road safety. Mor usual is the sad little bunches of flowers tied to a fence or a lamp post. They are invariably left in their plastic wrap which will pretty much last forever and stays there with the dead remains of the flowers until someone takes it down. I understand that people want to mark a tragic and untimely death in some way, but leaving flowers (still wrapped) and teddy bears outside a school where a child died seems rather silly to me since they will all end up in landfill after being out in the weather for a week or two. You might guess that I have a ‘thing’ about wrapped flowers. I recall after Dianna died, there were literally thousands of bunches of flowers left as some kind of memorial. The flowers last a day or two, but the wrapping stays or gets blown around until the council come and sweep it up. A few years ago, we scattered my mother’s ashes in a woodland memorial garden nearby. In spite of the managers best efforts, this beautiful place was quite spoiled by the litter of flower wrappings. We took ours home and simply scattered the flowers over the spot. the last few funerals I have attended, there have been “No flowers by request” and money donated to some good cause. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2020, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-makeshift-public-altars-become-a-thing/847462/8 "2020-02-05T02:34:34Z")
I seem to recall small roadside shrines east of Los Angeles in the 1960s, and north of San Francisco from the 1980s. I know the scariest and saddest was later, in southern Mexico, where dozens of mini-shrines sat side-by-side on a cliff edge - site of a bus plunge. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2020, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-makeshift-public-altars-become-a-thing/847462/9 "2020-02-05T08:54:11Z")
I’ve seen a few here in Hampton Roads. I’d never heard of ghost bikes until I looked at the Wikipedia page about roadside memorials just now. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2020, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-makeshift-public-altars-become-a-thing/847462/10 "2020-02-10T22:06:46Z")
> [@si\_blakely](#): > > I don’t know about elsewhere in the world, but it seems to me it started in New Zealand in about 1991, with a citizen-initiated road safety campaign that started placing white crosses at the sites of fatal road traffic accidents. While initially resisted by the authorities, the campaign eventually gained official sanction. Montana’s highway crosses predated this by several years - when driving through there in the summer of 1986, mostly along US Route 2, they were a commonplace sight. One curve had seventeen different poles with crosses - quite sobering. And you’d better believe we slowed down!! This was more of a warning than what the OP was talking about, of course. There are several of the informal memorials near me - one in a senior citizen apartment community, the other near a shopping center. Both were hit-and-run accidents, I think.