"A complicated design, foreground, middle distance, and sky filled with incidents, chiefly on applications of steam. In the foreground is a street-vendor's table spread with a white cloth and heaped with pine-apples, &c; beside it sits an elegant young woman reading a book, 'Sentimen ...', while a little boy holds over her a large pagoda-like umbrella, heavily fringed. A dustman gnaws a pine-apple, while his vis-à-vis, eating an ice, says "Vont you take a hice Joe." Beside it (left) is the tombstone of the 'Select Vestry', decorated with glass, knife and fork, and topped by a weeping cherub's head. On the right a steam-horse on a low-wheeled platform, on which are the necessary pipes, &c, careers forwards and to the right; the driver, dressed as a jockey, holds a steering-bar set in the creature's head; smoke pours from its nostrils; a huge smoking chimney, placarded 'The Steam Horse VELOCITY No Stopage on the Road', ascends from the tail. Behind the steersman sit four passengers: a lady in a riding-habit, a barrister in wig and gown, a well-dressed man, an Irish haymaker smoking a pipe. On the left is a little steam trolley beside which walks a woman crying 'Delicate Viends [sic] for your Quadrupeds'; on it is a basket of coal placarded 'Prime Cats Meat'. On the extreme left a footman in livery smoking a giant pipe (as in British Museum Satires No. 15604t) hands a letter to a flying postman, supported on webbed wings, who rings his bell, and has a pouch: "Two Penny Post". A man drives a lady in a light three-wheeled chair, worked by bellows and a propeller. A street-seller of 'Mutton Broth' walks before his huge steaming pan which rests on a wheeled platform with a funnel. A massive old-fashioned country wagon has a steam funnel and a steersman: "London & Bath in Six Hours". On the extreme right are adjacent open sheds; one contains a complicated mechanism where a top-boot is being brushed by steam; the owner sits on his portmanteau, waiting for them, while he puffs a cigar and reads the 'Gazette de France'. This is placarded 'Royal Patent Boot Cleaning Engine'; above: 'Puras Deus, Non Plenas, Adspicit Manus' [God regards only pure hands, not full ones]. The other is smaller and contains an engine to which is attached a huge razor, operating on the Duchess of St. Albans and placarded 'The St Al-ns New Steam Razor Patronized by her Grace' [cf. British Museum Satires No. 15654, &c.]. In the middle distance (left) are buildings. The Marble Arch (see British Museum Satires No. 15850), topped by a gibbet, which is placarded 'Designed to Elevate the Architects'; a man, smoking a cigar, kneels to adjust the noose. Behind is the east front of the Palace, with scaffolding and figures: on the dome, "the ball in the cup", see British Museum Satires No. 15669, a figure holds a trident, on the right a monstrous bird and a giraffe see British Museum Satires No. 15425). Next the arch is a 'Model for a new Church approved by the Mommitte [sic] of Taste': a fantastic neo-Gothic hybrid with a dome, topped by pillars supporting a platform, from which hangs a big bell, and on which squats a giant mandarin, with a clock-face on its belly, holding up two fingers and a lantern. The roof of the church is flat, covered with tombs, and edged with spikes for the protection of a cemetery, which is placarded 'This Church Yard is perfectly Safe' [see British Museum Satires No. 15777]; a coffin is being hauled up by a crane, apparently worked by steam. A smaller adjacent building (left) seemingly houses a furnace and steam-engine and is inscribed 'Kitchen'. The church abuts (right) on 'Greenwich Hill'; on this rests one end of a huge tube: 'Grand Vacuum Tube-Company Direct to Bengal' (a development of the Edinburgh-London tube of British Museum Satires No. 15075); this, receding in perspective, bridges an ocean, the other end resting on 'Bengal', where a tiny passenger steps out and clasps a welcoming Indian by the hand. Passengers on Greenwich Hill are about to enter the tube, where the back of a coach appears; a turbaned conductor shouts 'Now whos for Bengal'. An aperture or window in the tube shows passengers seated on an open coach or wheeled platform as in British Museum Satires No. 15075; women passengers wear monstrous hats. From the Bengal plain (right) a hill ascends on which rests the end of a bridge: 'Companys Suspension Bridge-To Cape Town'; a massive pier rising from the ocean contains a building: 'Restorateur' [sic]. On the water dividing England from India is a lady in a car harnessed to swans, as in British Museum Satires No. 11405 by Gillray. A big canopied passenger boat is drawn by a team of eight dolphins; the driver shouts 'Come up there'. On a plateau behind Greenwich Hill is a wheeled steam-engine, like a giant watering-can with spout fore and aft gushing water: this is 'Mc Adams Newly Invented to lay the Dust he makes' [cf. British Museum Satires No. 15365]. On the sky-line a demoniac figure fires a mortar from which a blast slants across the sky inscribed 'Quick Conveyance for Irish Emigrants': tiny figures, one with a rake, are shot into the air to fall headlong. Aerial travel is represented (1) by a platform supported at each corner by a balloon on which are soldiers and artillery (reminiscent of the French invasion fantasies of 1797 and 1803, see British Museum Satires Nos. 9220, 10029); (2) by an airship in the form of a whale-like monster with webbed wings, placarded 'For New South Wales'; raffish passengers of both sexes are seen through a window below which are the words 'with Convicts'. (3) A lady (right) sits between two propellers, steering a frail little machine drawn by a big kite (cf. British Museum Satires No. 15604!). On the left is a massive collection of cloud-borne castles, on which tiny builders are at work; placarded: 'Scheme for the Payment of the National Debt'."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title etched below image., Print signed using William Heath's device: A man with an umbrella., Approximate date of publication from British Museum catalogue., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., and One line of quoted text above image: "Lord how this world improves as we grow older."
Publisher:
Pub. by T. McLean, 26 Haymarket, London
Subject (Topic):
Steam, Airships, Steam automobiles, Pneumatic tubes, and Garbage collecting
"A complicated design, foreground, middle distance, and sky filled with incidents, chiefly on applications of steam. In the foreground is a street-vendor's table spread with a white cloth and heaped with pine-apples, &c; beside it sits an elegant young woman reading a book, 'Sentimen ...', while a little boy holds over her a large pagoda-like umbrella, heavily fringed. A dustman gnaws a pine-apple, while his vis-à-vis, eating an ice, says "Vont you take a hice Joe." Beside it (left) is the tombstone of the 'Select Vestry', decorated with glass, knife and fork, and topped by a weeping cherub's head. On the right a steam-horse on a low-wheeled platform, on which are the necessary pipes, &c, careers forwards and to the right; the driver, dressed as a jockey, holds a steering-bar set in the creature's head; smoke pours from its nostrils; a huge smoking chimney, placarded 'The Steam Horse VELOCITY No Stopage on the Road', ascends from the tail. Behind the steersman sit four passengers: a lady in a riding-habit, a barrister in wig and gown, a well-dressed man, an Irish haymaker smoking a pipe. On the left is a little steam trolley beside which walks a woman crying 'Delicate Viends [sic] for your Quadrupeds'; on it is a basket of coal placarded 'Prime Cats Meat'. On the extreme left a footman in livery smoking a giant pipe (as in British Museum Satires No. 15604t) hands a letter to a flying postman, supported on webbed wings, who rings his bell, and has a pouch: "Two Penny Post". A man drives a lady in a light three-wheeled chair, worked by bellows and a propeller. A street-seller of 'Mutton Broth' walks before his huge steaming pan which rests on a wheeled platform with a funnel. A massive old-fashioned country wagon has a steam funnel and a steersman: "London & Bath in Six Hours". On the extreme right are adjacent open sheds; one contains a complicated mechanism where a top-boot is being brushed by steam; the owner sits on his portmanteau, waiting for them, while he puffs a cigar and reads the 'Gazette de France'. This is placarded 'Royal Patent Boot Cleaning Engine'; above: 'Puras Deus, Non Plenas, Adspicit Manus' [God regards only pure hands, not full ones]. The other is smaller and contains an engine to which is attached a huge razor, operating on the Duchess of St. Albans and placarded 'The St Al-ns New Steam Razor Patronized by her Grace' [cf. British Museum Satires No. 15654, &c.]. In the middle distance (left) are buildings. The Marble Arch (see British Museum Satires No. 15850), topped by a gibbet, which is placarded 'Designed to Elevate the Architects'; a man, smoking a cigar, kneels to adjust the noose. Behind is the east front of the Palace, with scaffolding and figures: on the dome, "the ball in the cup", see British Museum Satires No. 15669, a figure holds a trident, on the right a monstrous bird and a giraffe see British Museum Satires No. 15425). Next the arch is a 'Model for a new Church approved by the Mommitte [sic] of Taste': a fantastic neo-Gothic hybrid with a dome, topped by pillars supporting a platform, from which hangs a big bell, and on which squats a giant mandarin, with a clock-face on its belly, holding up two fingers and a lantern. The roof of the church is flat, covered with tombs, and edged with spikes for the protection of a cemetery, which is placarded 'This Church Yard is perfectly Safe' [see British Museum Satires No. 15777]; a coffin is being hauled up by a crane, apparently worked by steam. A smaller adjacent building (left) seemingly houses a furnace and steam-engine and is inscribed 'Kitchen'. The church abuts (right) on 'Greenwich Hill'; on this rests one end of a huge tube: 'Grand Vacuum Tube-Company Direct to Bengal' (a development of the Edinburgh-London tube of British Museum Satires No. 15075); this, receding in perspective, bridges an ocean, the other end resting on 'Bengal', where a tiny passenger steps out and clasps a welcoming Indian by the hand. Passengers on Greenwich Hill are about to enter the tube, where the back of a coach appears; a turbaned conductor shouts 'Now whos for Bengal'. An aperture or window in the tube shows passengers seated on an open coach or wheeled platform as in British Museum Satires No. 15075; women passengers wear monstrous hats. From the Bengal plain (right) a hill ascends on which rests the end of a bridge: 'Companys Suspension Bridge-To Cape Town'; a massive pier rising from the ocean contains a building: 'Restorateur' [sic]. On the water dividing England from India is a lady in a car harnessed to swans, as in British Museum Satires No. 11405 by Gillray. A big canopied passenger boat is drawn by a team of eight dolphins; the driver shouts 'Come up there'. On a plateau behind Greenwich Hill is a wheeled steam-engine, like a giant watering-can with spout fore and aft gushing water: this is 'Mc Adams Newly Invented to lay the Dust he makes' [cf. British Museum Satires No. 15365]. On the sky-line a demoniac figure fires a mortar from which a blast slants across the sky inscribed 'Quick Conveyance for Irish Emigrants': tiny figures, one with a rake, are shot into the air to fall headlong. Aerial travel is represented (1) by a platform supported at each corner by a balloon on which are soldiers and artillery (reminiscent of the French invasion fantasies of 1797 and 1803, see British Museum Satires Nos. 9220, 10029); (2) by an airship in the form of a whale-like monster with webbed wings, placarded 'For New South Wales'; raffish passengers of both sexes are seen through a window below which are the words 'with Convicts'. (3) A lady (right) sits between two propellers, steering a frail little machine drawn by a big kite (cf. British Museum Satires No. 15604!). On the left is a massive collection of cloud-borne castles, on which tiny builders are at work; placarded: 'Scheme for the Payment of the National Debt'."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title etched below image., Print signed using William Heath's device: A man with an umbrella., Approximate date of publication from British Museum catalogue., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., One line of quoted text above image: "Lord how this world improves as we grow older.", 1 print : etching ; sheet 28.5 x 40.6 cm, Printed on wove paper; hand-colored., Mounted on old album paper with a collage of prints and a drawing on the back of one page and newspaper clippings mounted on the back of the other page., and Sheet trimmed within plate mark. Manuscript date "1828" in ink following title.
Publisher:
Pub. by T. McLean, 26 Haymarket, London
Subject (Topic):
Steam, Airships, Steam automobiles, Pneumatic tubes, and Garbage collecting
Fantastical depiction of advancing technology that includes all manner of steam-powered or aerial contraptions, domestic appliances, tunnels to the North Pole and South America, and a circulating library
Description:
Title etched below image., Print signed using William Heath's device: A man with an umbrella., Approximate date of publication based on that assigned to the companion print. See no. 15779 in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum, v. 11., Imprint continues: ... where political and other caricatues are daily pub. ..., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., Not in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum., and Mounted on old album paper. Manuscript date "1828" in ink following title.
"A complicated piece of machinery fills the centre of a room in a fashionable establishment; an open door (right) leads into a shop where, in the background, a pretty and extravagantly dressed woman (in the costume of c. 1828) presides at a counter; above the door is a model of the machine, 'Patent Shavograph!!!' Through a window (left) is seen the 'Ladies Hair Cutting Room': another machine operates on seated ladies, whose long hair is raised perpendicularly into the mechanism. Above the window is an erection of erect loops of hair, burlesquing the fashion. A dandy, waiting his turn, ogles the ladies through his monocle. Another, sitting on a chair (left), reads a newspaper, 'Herald'. The 'Shavograph' operates from right to left upon the customers who sit on a circular bench, each with his head held firm in a wedge cut from a millstone-like disk (B) at the back of his seat. The razor has just sliced off the nose of an officer who stands gesticulating wildly, putting his hand before splashing blood while one dismayed neighbour rises from his seat, and the other shouts 'Stop! Stop!' Four men on the left, waiting their turn for the razor, &c, to reach them, are unconscious of the accident. One is having his head pressed into position by a rod held by a fashionably dressed man (H) who is also working a lever. Below the design, in the border of the print: 'EXPLANATION. AAA a circular form on which the shavees sit. BBBBBB wheels that govern the position of the head. CC [cog-wheels] the machinery which moves the brush in every required direction. D a resevior [sic] of water [above the brush], boiling hot E a pipe [connecting F and D] filld with patent double compress'd shaving powder, through which the water is forced to forme a lather in the brush F. GGG [cog-wheels] the machinery which moves the razor H the Engineer with his directing rod. (Note) it is indispensible that the sitter should be firm & steady, it will be percived [sic] the neglecting this by looking after the Shop woman has cost one his nose, but he only pays the penalty of his own imprudence. "Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.' (This phrase is attributed to David Copperfield (1849) in the Oxford Dict, of Quotations, but Micawber was evidently quoting."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title from text above image., Shortshanks in the pseudonym of Robert Seymour., Text below image begins: Explanation. AAA a circular form on which the shavees sit ..., and Sheet trimmed to plate mark.
Satire against corruption with an image of a huge automaton representing the new London University (later University College, London) tramples over greedy clerics, doctors, lawyers and the crown. Five lines of text below image: "I saw a vision, a giant form appeard, it's eys where [sic] burning lights even of Gas, and on its learned head it bore A Crown of many towers, It's Body was an Engine yea of steam it's arms where [corn?] and the legs with which it stode like unto presses that men called printers use, from whence felt ever and anon small Books that fed the little people of the Earth, It rose and in it's hand it tool a Broom to sweep the rubish [sic] from the face of the land, the Special pleaders & thier [sic] wigs also & the Quack Doctors also and the ghosts & those tha twhear Horns & the Crowns of those kigns that set themselv's above the laws & the Delays in Chancery it utterly destroy'd, likewiase it sweept from the Clergy every Plurality, Nevertheless the Lawyers & the Parsons & divers others kick't up a great dust!!!"
Description:
Title from text above image., Shortshanks is the pseudonym of Robert Seymour., Date from online British Museum catalogue., and Not in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires.
"Fantastic scene at a London street corner which abuts on open country, the roadway deep in mud. A coach and pair advances left to right; the coachman has laid down reins and whip to read the Times through spectacles, the footman standing behind is deep in a book. A ragged but monocled street-sweeper on stilts sweeps towards a small child half-submerged in mud, and a lady in a monstrous hat who picks her way through the slough. On the foreground pavement a butcher and a dustman play chess, holding the board between them. One sits on a great joint of beef, the other on a bag; a dog runs off with a bullock's heart. A ragged ballad-singer plays a guitar, screeching operatically; her small child holds up a parasol. Two climbing boys with misshapen legs argue with each other, one uses a handkerchief. Two servants in livery walk arm-in-arm, one smoking a huge pipe (like the footman in BM Satires No. 15779). An apple-woman seated against a lamp-post reads Byron, while a boy sneaks an apple. The lamp-post is topped by a flaming sun, presumably of gas. A dust-cart is drawn by two asses tandem, with a postilion on the leader; the dustman, seated on his load (instead of walking with it) plays a 'cello. On the opposite pavement are three tiny street musicians: a fashionably dressed woman sings from a sheet of music to the accompaniment of a harpist and flautist with music-stand. In the background is steam-traffic: (1) a steam carriage for two with three wheels, a tall smoking funnel, and a pendent coal-scuttle, all but the last much as 'Mr D. Gordon's New Steam Coach, illustrated and described', Observer, 30 Dec, 1827. (2) A large steam lorry on which soldiers with bayoneted muskets sit in rows. A small carriage with a steersman and two passengers is drawn by a kite (a kite-drawn carriage was displayed in Regent's Park, Jan. 1828, described by Pückler-Muskau, Tour in England, 1948, p. 218). Behind is a narrow channel crossed by a suspension bridge linking Dover to Calais; another branch of the Channel is crossed by The . . . Tunnel (oddly drawn), the top of which collapses under the impact of a ship, so that water pours down. An aerial battleship supported by two balloons attacks three ships immediately below; they sink under a rain of flame and cannon-balls. There are also an ordinary balloon, a flying-machine drawn by wild geese, and an aerial vessel which collides with the moon. The foreground buildings are one vast shop-window and the adjacent house; over the window: Business of this Shop on a larger scale than any other house in London. The window is filled with draperies and ladies' huge hats (cf. BM Satires No. 15628). A lady, with a giant hat, pin-point waist, and vast sleeves, stares in. The adjoining house of the same height is three stories high, the principal floor with street-door, bow-windows, balconies, and awning is at the top; passengers are being hauled up to it by a man using a windlass to hoist chairs up a vertical chute from the street."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title from caption below image., Print signed using William Heath's device: A man with an umbrella., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., and Watermark: J. Whatman.
Publisher:
Pub. Jany. 23 1828 by G. Humphrey St. James's Street
Subject (Topic):
Balloons (Aircraft), Carriages & coaches, City & town life, Steam, Storefronts, and Street vendors
Title etched below image., Three columns of text below title provide a key to numbered parts of the image: 1. The guide and engineer ..., and Not in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires.
Publisher:
Published by J. Didsbury, 22 Southampton St., Strand
