"Design in an irregular oval border to which four scrolls are attached: ‘To the Work House, To the Mad-House, To the Gaol, The Gibbet'. The shop is ornate and pilastered, lit by a double gas chandelier. The customers, dregs of the town, stand at the counter, within the toothed circle of a huge man-trap on the floor. A drunken man in the remnants of fashionable clothes, takes a glass from the barmaid (right). She is outwardly comely, but her fashionable dress, a smiling mask, and gloves, conceal a skeleton, revealed by a skull which grins from her shoulder, and the bones of a foot and ankle. Beside her is a book: ‘Open Gin Shop The Way to Wealth'. An old hag drinks, another gives gin to an infant in her arms; a little girl drains a glass, and a tiny child clamours at the counter. On the counter stands a small cask on which sits a skeleton: Bacchus with bottle and glass. On the left stands Death (who has set the trap), a skeleton dressed as a London watchman; he holds up an hour-glass in place of lantern; he holds a javelin which points ominously to a trap-door in the boards at his feet. He says: ‘I shall have them all dead drunk presently! They have nearly had their last glass'. On the extreme right behind the barmaid is a doorway framing a ring of little demons dancing round a spirit-still; a skull grins from the transparent retort; below the floor is a dark space: ‘Spirit Vaults'. The casks in the shop are coffins. A huge one is ‘Old Tom' [gin, especially if good and strong]. The others are ‘Deady's Cordial' [Deady was a well-known distiller], ‘Kill Devil' [rum, especially if new], ‘Blue Ruin' [bad gin], ‘Gin & Bitters'. On the wall are two placards: [1] a playbill, ‘Drury Lane Theatre, Road to Ruin [cf. British Museum Satires No. 8073] --Life in London [cf. British Museum Satires No. 14320], Devil to Pay' [cf. British Museum Satires No. 7908]; [2] ‘Wanted a few Members to complete A Burial Society'."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title etched below image., Four lines of quoted verse below title: "Now oh dear, how shocking the thought is, They makes the gin from aquafortis; They do it on purpose folks lives to shorten, And tickets it up at two-pence a quartern". New Ballad., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., One of six plates of a series entitled: Scraps and sketches / by George Cruikshank. Part the second. See Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires, v. 11, pages 239-240., Temporary local Medical Library subject terms: Drunkeness -- Children and Childcare, and 1 print : etching, hand-colored ; sheet 27.5 x 36.7 cm.
Publisher:
George Cruikshank
Subject (Topic):
Alcoholism, Death (Personification), Alcoholic beverages, Gin, Intoxication, Children, Demons, Stills (Distilleries), and Coffins
