John Batman Memorial, Old Melbourne Cemetery (Queen Victoria Market). C.1920
When John Batman died of syphilis in 1839, only four years after Melbourne was established, he was buried in an unmarked grave in the original Melbourne Cemetery at the southern end of what is today Queen Victoria Market.
A posthumous cult of Batman as the city's founder (a status he debatably does not properly hold) had arisen by the 1880s, and Batman's grandson, Austin Batman Weire, was able to locate the unmarked gravesite due to his parents' memories of visiting it.
Funds for a permanent memorial were raised by J. J. Shillinglaw via public donations and the memorial was eventually erected in 1881 and publicly unveiled 3/6/1882 with Batman's 79 year old son-in-law, William Weire and grandson in attendance.
When the cemetery gave way to the expansion of the market in 1922, the memorial was relocated to the north bank of the Yarra at Batman Ave, just east of the Swan Street Bridge.
Batman’s remains were exhumed and re-interred in the Fawkner Cemetery (ironically named for his nemesis and arguable true founder of the city), where a new memorial was unfurled by Leslie Batman Weire (great-grandson) in 1924.
The original memorial has since been relocated to somewhere approximating its original site off Queen Street just south of the Market's M shed.