The Caricatures of Gillray – Miller & Blackwood

The Caricatures of Gillray; with Historical and Political Illustrations, and Compendious Biographical Anecdotes and Notices was a nine volume history of James Gillray’s works, published by John Miller of London and William Blackwood of Edinburgh between 1824 and 1827. It was one of four major posthumous editions of Gillray’s prints to have been published during the first half of the nineteenth-century, although it was the only one to have been produced using copied engravings rather than Gillray’s original copperplates.

Prints from the series were sold either individually or in bound volumes, with
customers being able to choose from a range of binding and colouring options. The variations in colouring are particularly interesting, with the differences in the illustrations shown here (taken from two separate bound editions) indicating that customers could choose between a basic colour-wash, or finer hand-colouring that more closely aped Humphrey’s ‘shop’ colour. Nine volumes were published in all, each containing around 80 engraved plates accompanied by a short explanatory article. A tenth volume appears to have been in the making when the project was brought to an abrupt halt, forcing the publishers to sell the latest batch of engravings seperately. The reasons for this are not known, but given that large publishing projects such as this were usually funded on the basis of pre-sale subscriptions, it seems likely that Miller & Blackwood were unable to raise sufficient capital to cover the cost of publication or justify the risk of further investment.

The series was almost certainly conceived as an attempt to provide customers at the lower end of the market with an affordable alternative to Gillray’s expensive originals. The printseller S.W. Fores had tried something similar in the early 1800s, paying the jobbing caricaturist Charles Williams to engrave a number of copies of popular Gillray designs which were then sold at less than the cost of the original. Miller & Blackwood simply took the scale of this piracy a step further, copying whole swathes of Gillray’s back-catalogue and selling them in cheaply bound and coloured volumes. Their methods may have been crude but they were undoubtedly successful, as the relative longevity of the series and large quantity of surviving prints indicates. The secret of their success is obvious – a customer walking into George Humphrey’s printshop in 1824 would have been expected to pay between 2 and 5 shillings for a coloured copy of one of Gillray’s famous caricatures. Miller & Blackwood on the other hand, could offer the same customer a bound edition of 80 coloured images for 10s 6d. It is a comparison which neatly illustrates the changing nature of the market for printed satire in this period and explains why so many of the older West End printshops began to diversify or disappear from 1820 onward.

Surviving examples of prints from the series are still relatively common, and although individual plates carry very little financial value, bound volumes and complete editions can be worth several hundred or even a few thousand pounds depending on their condition.

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The Wonderful Mill in full vigour

George Cruikshank, The Wonderful Mill, c.1805

The Wonderful Mill must rank alongside the Tythe Pig as one of the most commonly used satirical tropes of the mid-to-late eighteenth-century. Variations on the theme of a machine capable of reversing the aging process appeared in multiple print editions published between the 1770s and early 1800s and the design was taken up and reproduced extensively on all manner of printed creamware pottery.

The Mill’s origins are unclear, although similarities between the central image of the giant crank-powered grinding machine and Dutch satires published in the wake of the Peace of Utrecht, raises the possibility of later British editions being based on an older Continental template. The earliest known reference to the design comes from Sayer & Bennett’s 1775 catalogue, in which Old Women and Old Men Ground Young is listed alongside “moral and instructive Emblems for the entertainment of Children – Commonly called TURN-Ups”. The image’s subsequent adaption for use in adult satire chimes with the theories that Marcus Wood has advanced about the links between children’s illustrations and radical satire in the Peterloo era, and suggests that it may be possible for historians of print to extend the chronological and thematic scope of Wood’s theories in future. This change of audience also presumably coincided with the production of a slightly saucier variant of the design (right), in which a crowd of young men waits to canoodle with the batch of freshly milled young lovelies .

The design proved particularly popular with potters, so much so that ceramic versions of the image are now far more common than their printed counterparts, and it is known to have been used on a variety of creamware goods including mugs, plates, jugs and teapots. At least two major variations of the image were produced for use on pottery; a tamer version in which the young men and title are omitted (left), which carries the verse: “Good lack how wonderful to view it / I neer believd it till I knew it / Come here ye toothless lame & Grey / Come & be Ground without delay”; and another entitled Old Women Ground Young which is accompanied by the rhyme: “Good lackaday, cries out the grinder / I shan’t want work, indeed I find Sir / This grinding is a bonny trade, my fortune shortly will be made.” Multiple adaptations of the image also appeared in print, with the British Museum holding two particularly interesting examples of the design from the early 1800s, the first being produced by the thirteen year old George Cruikshank for a set of children’s illustration and the second satirising Mary Ann Clarke’s ability to ‘grind’ humble tradesmen into senior army officers.

Albion’s dark Satanic mill

The Albion Mill was London’s first great wonder of the industrial age. The industrial revolution was already well underway in Britain by the time the construction of the mill began in the early 1780s and yet it had made comparatively little impact on the capital itself. The opening of the mill in 1786 changed all this at stroke, temporarily catapulting London to the forefront of the nation’s industrial development.

Albion Mill was called into existence by the pioneering engineering firm of Boulton & Watt to address London’s insatiable appetite for bread. The city’s population had grown prodigiously during the second half of the eighteenth-century, rising from just under three-quarters of a million in the 1760s to well over a million by the time of the first census in 1801. This was an age in which bread and beer were the staple foodstuffs of the working man and consequently the demand for fresh quantities of corn and flour had almost continually outstripped the level of supply. Albion Mill was designed to change all that. By harnessing the revolutionary power of steam, its creators reasoned, it would be able to process unprecedented quantities of corn and drive the price of bread down to lower and more sustainable levels.

It was a spectacle from the very outset. A few weeks after construction began on the site overlooking the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge, a large crowd watched in silence as the gigantic arms and condensers of the mill’s steam engines were slowly winched into place. The building that grew up around them also became the talk of the metropolis, as the architect and co-owner James Wyatt had determined that the modernity of the mill’s interior should be reflected in an external facade that conformed to the very heights of architectural fashion. The frontage was therefore executed in an elegant neo-classical style, complete with huge Venetian windows, that made the mill appear more like a well-appointed country manor than a major industrial complex.

But not everyone in London was impressed by this bold statement of scientific progress. The city’s millers had looked on in horror as this bulky five-storey titan rose slowly out of the mud of the south bank to loom over the rooftops of Southwark. They were well aware of Boulton & Watt’s highly publicised claims about the mill’s productive capacity and knew that the finished mill would be able to produce as much flour in a month as their own mills could in an entire year. The economies of scale associated with production on such a vast scale also meant that they could not hope to compete with the price of Albion milled flour. The situation seemed hopeless and many a miller must have spent their nights praying for some form of divine intervention to carry away this diabolical new threat to their livelihoods forever.

Their prayers were finally answered late on the evening of 2nd March 1791. Pedestrians crossing Blackfriars Bridge reported seeing the dull orange glow of flames flickering through the mill’s darkened windows. The fire took hold rapidly and within half an hour the building was entirely consumed by flames. Fire engines were brought up in the streets and on barges moored on the Thames, but the building was already beyond salvation. The final death throws of the mill came when the burning roof crashed in on itself, sending a jet of flame shooting into the night’s sky above London and hurling debris as far off as St James’s Park. The blaze was finally extinguished at daybreak and London awoke to find the mighty Albion Mill had been reduced to a smouldering shell of badly charred masonry.

Foul play was suspected almost immediately, not least because of the reaction with which the London mob had greeted the fire. The poet Robert Southey had walked among the crowds that lined Blackfriars Bridge to watch the conflagration and noted that there were groups of millers dancing with joy by the light of the flames. Shouts of acclamation had gone up with each new sign of the mill’s impending destruction and some sections of the crowd had refused to respond to the fire wardens pleas for help in tackling the blaze. The sudden appearance of placards bearing slogans such as “success to the mills of ALBION but no Albion Mills”, also gave the gathering a sinister, more politicised, edge. This was early 1791 and affluent Britons, aware of events unfolding just across the Channel in France, were already nervously looking about them for signs that the working classes at home were preparing to rise up and overturn the economic and social status quo. Many now began to speculate whether the fire was actually the work of machine-breaking radicals, determined to use force to roll back the tide of industrialisation. 

As always, London’s printsellers and publishers were quick to capitalise on any piece of news that captured the public’s imagination. Indeed, Southey’s account suggests that printed ballads celebrating the mill’s destruction were being hawked among the crowds on Blackfriars Bridge by daybreak on the morning after the fire. The Baker’s Glory, Or, The Conflagration give us some indication of what these items would have looked like. They were crudely illustrated with recycled woodcuts taken from older pamphlets and almanacs, accompanied by rhymes reflecting common criticisms of the mill and its owners. A number of caricatures were also produced in the weeks following the fire. Some of these, such as S.W. Fores’ A bon fire for the poor or the shame of Albion exposed, continued to reflect the populist image of the mill as a destroyer of jobs and tool of capitalist oppression. Fores’ image shows demons leaping amid the flames, while the barge-loads of maize and potash waiting to be unloaded near the building’s river-gate constitute an accusation that the Albion Mill’s success was built on the criminal practice of adulteration.

Satirists catering for a more educated audience tended to take an opposing view. The artist Samuel Collings produced a caricature plate for the magazine Attic Miscellany entitled Conflagration! Or the merry mealmongers, which shows a group of grotesquely caricatured rustics capering about as the mill burns behind them. One man carries a miniature windmill symbolising his rigid adherence to out-dated and inefficient production methods, while his mate clutches a fistful of radical balladsheets whose hyperbolic titled foretell the downfall of capitalism. It is an image which drips with class-based prejudice and seeks to castigate those who had so frivolously celebrated the destruction of new technology.

Eventually, it was proved that this new and untested technology was in fact responsible for the mill’s undoing. The young Scottish engineer John Rennie, who had worked as technical supervisor at the site since 1788, conducted an investigation into the fire and found it had been caused by an overheating baring. It transpired that the owners claims about the profitability of the mill had been somewhat optimistic and in an effort to claw back his investment, James Wyatt had insisted on increasing both the length and rate of production. The strain pushed the mill’s engines to breaking point and in the building’s highly flammable atmosphere it had taken just a single spark to from the overheating machinery to spark a cataclysmic blaze.

The destruction of Albion Mill lived on in the collective memory of Londoners for years to come. Rowlandson and Pugin were commissioned to engrave an image of the fire for Rudolph Ackermann’s Microcosms of London (1808-1810), and the finished plate suggests that the passage of almost twenty years had done little to diminish the sense of sublime awfulness the inferno inspired. But if the name of Albion Mill is remembered at all today it is thanks entirely to the poet William Blake. Blake lived less than ten minutes walk from the mill and may even have witnessed the conflagration in person. Even if he did not, he would certainly have been familiar with the hulking and blackened ruins of the building, as his trade took him across Blackfriars Bridge and into the City on an almost continual basis. The otherworldly power of the mill’s machinery and the destructive force of the fire it unleashed held dark, infernal, connotations for the evangelical Blake. A number of the poet’s biographers have suggested that the memory of the fire would eventually inspire Blake to question whether the kingdom of God could ever be established among the “dark Satanic mills” spawned by the industrial revolution.

“A Prize of £30,000 Huzza!” Caricaturing a royal wedding on creamware

Everyone loves a royal wedding right? Well, if you were living in Britain in 1816 then your love of all things regal may well have been tempered by the fact that you were probably unemployed, half-starved and in no mood to be asked to dig deeper into your increasingly threadbare pockets in order to fund a gigantic knees-up for members of the ruling class. The end of the long wars against Napoleonic France heralded the arrival of a crippling recession, in which unemployment was rampant and food prices soared. By the spring of 1816, the mood in the country was growing ugly and with the ranks of the poor and destitute now swollen by hundreds of thousands of recently demobilised soldiers, many must have felt as though even a relatively minor incident could be the spark that ignited a revolution.

The news that Princess Charlotte, only child of the Prince Regent, was to marry Prince Leopold of Brunswick provided many with a rare cause for celebration amidst the gloom. Charlotte was young, attractive, and comported herself in a manner which contrasted favourably with the buffoonish antics of her dissolute father. The wedding took place at Carlton House in May 1816 and the surrounding streets were thronged with people who had gathered to cheer the royal newlyweds as they departed for their honeymoon. Perhaps the cheering drowned out the sound of other voices muttering darkly about the expense of it all and the obscenity of the poor being taxed to pay for a party for the rich. If they did then it was only for a moment, as London’s caricaturists spent much of the spring and summer of 1816 etching images of John Bull being roundly abused by the venal members of the aristocratic elite. The publisher and printseller S.W. Fores greeted the news of Charlotte’s engagement with a caricature by Charles Williams which shows the princess riding a debt-ridden John Bull like an ass. 

In this context even the most tin-eared of politicians would have realised that the cost of the newly expanded royal household would have to be kept from the public at all costs. When the issue was eventually put before Parliament the government attempted to use an accountancy trick in order to claim that the wedding had actually saved the hard-pressed taxpayer some money. As a bachelorette Charlotte had been entitled to an annual income of £30,000 (just over £2 million in today’s terms) from the Civil List. However, ministers argued, as a married woman Charlotte no longer qualified for that money and the poor and needy could be extra-grateful to the royal family for having made such a significant contribution to the restoration of the public finances. Of course, what those same ministers failed to mention was that the government had simultaneously agreed to pay an additional £60,000 to the royal privy purse in order to fund the increased expense of Charlotte’s newly enlarged household. It was a move which was not lost on members of the opposition, but the issue was largely dropped once it became clear that Charlotte was pregnant and then completely forgotten about amidst the hysteria that followed her untimely death 18 months later.

This creamware mug is a rare piece of transferware produced to commemorate Princess Charlotte’s wedding. Pieces like this are presumably rare because the economic distress in the country meant that few people were in a position to spend money on such trifles and those that could were wealthy enough to collect better quality porcelain. The design does not appear to have been based on a known caricature print, although it is clearly influenced by the ‘long head’ and ‘pigmy revels‘ engravings that G.M. Woodward produced in conjunction with Isaac Cruikshank and Charles Williams during the 1790s and 1800s. The design shows four figures, one of whom appears to be Princess Charlotte, celebrating the news of the royal wedding. The male figure standing immediately to Charlotte’s left waves a placard reading “A Prize of 30,000£ Huzza” and is joined in his celebration by a musician and another man dancing a jig.

There are two possible interpretations we can place on the meaning of this design. We could take at face value and assume it is exactly what it purports to be: a piece of commemorative-ware designed to mark the occasion of the royal wedding. However look closely at the image and a more subtle message emerges. All four characters are portrayed as unflattering comic grotesques. The two figures that stand at either end of the scene as so heavily caricatured that they appear as capering buffoons to be laughed at not with. Our friend with the placard is dressed in a clown’s costume, suggesting perhaps that he too is a fool who has swallowed the government’s claim that the royal wedding will save the taxpayer some money. This may even be a caricature of Leopold himself, as his hat resembles a Germanic shako and he appears to be dancing with the Princess. If this figure is meant to represent the Prince then it would seem likely that the ‘prize of £30,000’ is a snide reference to the additional money that the public were being forced to contribute towards the cost of the royal household each year.

James Gillray, John Bull Roasted, c.1807

The image of the nation as a great ox being slowly roasted for consumption by members of the government is one which appears to have occupied James Gillray’s mind on a number of occasions during the mid-1800s. However despite the fact that he made no less than three preparatory drawings for a caricature on this subject, it seems as though he ultimately failed to translate the design into a finished print for some reason.

The drawing shown here was formerly the property of the American cartoonist and Gillray historian Draper Hill (1935 – 2009) and will be offered up for auction here in England in a couple of weeks time. The other two sketched versions of this caricature can be found in the Courtauld Institute and the New York Public Library. The latter version has the line John Bull Roasted hastily scrawled across it and this is assumed to have been Gillray’s working title for the design.

So why did Gillray produce three versions of the same image? Ordinarily this could perhaps be explained by variations between the different drawings which would suggest that he was trying out different ideas as he worked towards a composition that he was happy with. However, apart from the fact that the Courtauld’s version is a mirror image of the other two and is drawn almost entirely in chalk, there does not appear to be a great deal of difference between the three sketches of the design. Nor can this be an image which Gillray kept returning to over a number of years, as the caricature relates to the short-lived ‘Ministry of All the Talents’ and therefore all three drawings must have been completed during their time in office between February 1806 and March 1807. Perhaps the presence of Gillray’s signature on this version and the Courtauld’s copy indicate that they were sold or given away to collectors shortly after they were drawn, thus requiring him to re-draw the design when the idea of engraving it resurfaced some weeks or months later? Whatever the explanation it is clear that Gillray couldn’t quite make up his mind about this caricature and went through the process of repeatedly working it up before finally abandoning the project once the Ministry of All the Talents left office in March 1807.

The handwritten notes on the New York Public Library’s version of this drawing indicate that the image was conceived as a satire on the ‘New Plan of Finance’ announced in Parliament by Lord Henry Petty, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 29th January 1807. The plan essentially called for a massive unfunded increase in public debt which would be used to meet the immediate costs of continuing the war against France and her European allies. The public was promised that taxes would remain at their current level for the next three years, but opponents of the plan rightly warned that the proposed levels of borrowing would require swingeing tax rises to service the national debt once this period of grace had expired.

Gillray shows the Prime Minister Lord Grenville as a cook basting John Bull with loans. The flanks of the roasting beef are covered in indistinct labels, one of which reads ‘New Loans’, whilst the juices from the meat drop into the ‘Broad Bottomed Dripping Tray’ which has been placed beneath the carcass on the floor. Lord Henry Petty is depicted as a ‘spit dog’ running in a wheel which turns the spit to which John Bull’s carcass has been fastened. Sidmouth, Lord Privy Seal in the Talents administration, stands on the far right of the images washing dishes in a sink, possibly intended as a visual pun on the new sinking fund that his government was planning to introduce. The caricature may have been intended to serve as a sequel to John Bull and the sinking-fund-a Pretty scheme for reducing the Taxes & Paying-off the National Debt! , Gillray’s other caricature on the New Plan of Finance, which was published by Hannah Humphrey on 23rd February 1807. However the Ministry of All the Talents was dismissed from office a month later and the New Plan of Finance was immediately shelved by their successors, thus rendering further satires on the subject irrelevant.

The image was initially sketched in red chalk and then outlined in ink. The paper carries an 1805 watermark for the company of Ruse & Turners Upper Tovil Mill in Maidstone, Kent. It is estimated to fetch somewhere between £3,000 and £5,000.