PUPILS and dignitaries have remembered the 19th-century general who gave 90 per cent of his wages to Gravesend's poor and needy.

Mayor of Gravesham Councillor John Loughlin and children from Chantry School, Ordnance Road, Gravesend, laid wreaths at the statue of General Charles Gordon during a service held on January 26.

Gordon served in the Crimea and in China with The Royal Engineers.

He was posted to Gravesend in 1865, where he helped the poor.

He visited the sick and dying and it is estimated he gave away 90 per cent of his £3,000 pay as pensions to the elderly every year.

This year's memorial service marked the 120th anniversary of Gordon's death.

He was murdered on January 26, 1885, in Sudan, Africa, by a Muslim group opposed to Anglo-Egyptian rule.

Gordon's statue, which was unveiled in 1893, is in Gordon Gardens, Gravesend.