in fog losing his footing on the towpath were considered, but the cause of his drowning has never been resolved. Kemp's death brought an outpouring of public grief. Huge crowds came to observe the funeral procession. The workmen who had laboured with him in the building of the monument carried his coffin from his home in Morningside to St Cuthbert's churchyard below Edinburgh Castle, where he was buried. Kemp died intestate, leaving assets of around , some furniture, and the model of Glasgow Cathedral, which proved unsaleable. A memorial concert to support the Kemp family was held and the Freemasons contributed, but Kemp's wife, Elisabeth, was left with little to live on and had to take work as a seamstress. Legacy After Kemp's death, the construction of the monument continued, under the supervision of his brother-in-law, William Bonnar. It was made more elegant when the height was increased to . It was completed in the autumn of 1844, with Kemp's 10-year-old son, Thomas, placing the topmost stone. Vast crowds attended the inauguration ceremony in 1846. Since then the Monument has become an icon of Edinburgh and indeed of Scotland, though an early critic was the author Charles Dickens who, in 1847, wrote: "I am sorry to report the Scott Monument a failure. It is like the spire of a Gothic church taken off and stuck in the ground". Similar denigrators were few and the building was, and still is, almost universally admired. The Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen sang the Monument's praises some 30 years after its completion: The Scott Monument has been visited from every land; engravings of it are diffused over the wide earth; and as long as it stands in its majestic and imposing beauty, the pilgrims of future centuries, who gaze upon it in silent admiration, will connect the name of its builder with the thought of him who it commemorates. 35,000–45,000 people a year visit it; roughly the same figure as have visited it every year since it was inaugurated: over seven million people in total. It has, as The Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen predicted, almost eclipsed the reputation of Sir Walter Scott himself. Few people are thought to visit the Monument now because it is a memorial to the author. The huge majority of visitors do so because it, and its architect, are themselves famous. Kemp is revered in Scotland and within the