A Haunting in… Sunderland?!

G.M. Woodward & R. Newton. The Haunted Cellar, 1792

Hauntings and other spooky goings-on were to become a recurring theme in English caricature from the 1790s onward. It was a trend that undoubtedly reflected the growing popularity of gothic novels rich in ghosts, goblins and funny little men living in ruined castles, as well as the first rumblings of an animist movement that would eventually flourish into the spiritualist craze of the Victorian-era. Some of these ghost prints were simply humorous images designed to raise a laugh at the expense of the stock figure of the incredulous yokel, while ghosts often played a more dramatically Shakespearean role when used in political satires.

Ghosts seem to have captured the imagination of the young Richard Newton and he was to produce several prints on the subject before he, rather ironically, went to an early grave in 1798. His 1792 aquatint The Haunted Cellar, is a particularly effective example of this odd sub-genre of caricature prints and shows a group of frightened plebeian figures bursting into confront a nesting owl which has been mistaken for a restless spirit. Surprisingly, it would seem as though such scenes may have had some basis in reality, as this article from the 24^th February 1786 edition of the Stamford Mercury makes clear:

A GHOST!

The town of Sunderland has lately been much alarmed by an apparition of a female figure, all in white, with a child in its arms, which has appeared to many in the dead of night coming from the sea and advancing with solemn step up the streets. An unfortunately young woman having been drowned in that neighbourhood, it was generally believed to be her perturbed spirit. Some of the revenue officers, prowling in quest of legal prey, meeting her, and not thinking that their duty extended to the obligation of examining visionary beings, took care to give her large room…

The story becoming known to the officers of the military, one of them ordered a soldier to speak to it, should it appear on his guard, but he begged to be excused, for though he feared nothing living, he said he could not stand before a ghost; on which the officer … took his firelock and stood sentry…

He accordingly took his station, the ghost appeared, and when it advanced nearly opposite him he… received it, but with the coolest intrepidity; and finding that it began to quicken its pace as he approached, and that on nearer view it had more of the masculine than the feminine in its demeanour, he drew his sword, swearing if it was vulnerable, he would run it through – It then stopped, called for mercy, and stooping, delivered itself, not of a child, but of two kegs of Hollands [gin]; and throwing off a sheet, discovered not the semblance of a woman but the lean form of a stout smuggler…

Thus has his Majesty’s revenue there been happily relieved from the fraudful interference of a supernatural agency. Ghosts will now be suspected of smuggling, and customs house officers may lay violent hands on the spectre of the night without fear of premature perdition.

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Printsellers on the periphery – The provincial trade in satirical prints, 1783 – 1815

John McGahey, A Scene in Liverpool, Bold Street Mid-day, c.1840, Bold Street was one of Liverpool’s main commercial thoroughfares and home to at least six printsellers during the early part of the nineteenth-century.

Those of you with good memories may recall a couple of articles which appeared on the blog last year, in which I shared some thoughts on the state of the provincial trade in satirical prints in Britain during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century. Those of you who don’t remember can catch up by clicking here (1, 2), and should probably try to eat more oily fish in future.

Using a combination of source materials and a basic geo-mapping tool, I was able to create a series of maps showing the number and geographic distribution of printsellers operating outside London in 1784, 1819 and 1832. These maps, when paired with data from the British Book Trade Index showing a rise in the number of businesses dealing solely in prints, seemed to be indicative of a trade in printed images which was growing larger and more complex over the fifty year period under consideration.

While it was relatively easy to prove that the number of printshops in England had increased during the early nineteenth-century, it was far more difficult to determine how satirical prints fit into a commercial landscape which was obviously becoming larger and more diverse. I was essentially relying on the publication lines of the prints in the British Museum to provide me with evidence of caricatures being produced in the provinces, and unfortunately the Museum’s collection contains hardly any items which were published outside London before the mid-1820s. I was therefore left to conclude that the provincial market for satirical prints during the so-called “golden age of British caricature” probably consisted of a small, wealthy elite, who passively consumed caricatures and other luxuries imported from the metropolis. Caricatures had not been published in the provinces because such items would have lacked the cultural cachet of metropolitan satires which reflect the worlds of national politics and high society.

Looking back on all of this now, I realise that I missed a trick by failing to include an analysis of newspaper advertisements in my original research. Analysing the publication lines of prints themselves was never likely to reveal much about the domestic trade in satires, as the vast majority of satirical prints were being published in London and a proper understanding of the provincial print trade must therefore inevitably focus on the marketing and distribution networks which allowed prints to flow out from the capital and into the regions. Having recently acquired temporary access to the British Newspaper Archive’s online portal, I decided to scan provincial newspapers published between 1783 and 1815 for information relating to satirical prints, caricaturists and printsellers.

The advertisements indicate that the market for satirical prints operated in much the same way outside London as it did in the metropolis, albeit perhaps on a smaller and more sporadic scale. The affluent residents of large provincial cities in the Midlands, Northern England and Scotland, certainly had access to a range of retail outlets that either stocked prints, or were capable of sourcing them from London with relative ease. The dates on which many of the advertisements were published also suggests that in most cases, new caricatures would be available in the provinces within a week or two of publication [1]. Prints were most commonly sold by printshops, booksellers and stationers, but could also be purchased at specialist print auctions, from local news vendors and at commercial exhibitions of caricatures. An interesting example of the latter comes from Liverpool, which was possibly the largest single market for printed images outside London during the late eighteenth-century, where a Society for Encouraging Painting & Design had been founded to support local artists, engravers and publishers [2]. In 1773 the Society had staged an exhibition of the works of the Lancashire caricaturist John Collier and was still active in this respect some fifteen years later, when the following advertisement appeared in one local paper:

Exhibition and sale of capital prints and drawings, humorous and political caricatures &c. at the Society’s room for encouraging painting and design… Tickets to be had at Mr Green’s silversmith, or Mr Pye’s music shop and Mr Fletcher’s stationer. Hours of admittance between ten and four [3].

The singling out of “humorous and political caricatures” gives us some indication of their particular popularity at the time.

Newspaper sources also reveal something of the appearance of provincial printshops which was, unsurprisingly, very similar to that of their counterparts in London. Customers approaching a shop would often be greeted by a window display containing books, pots of ink and paints, and a selection of prints. An advertisement for the Leeds book and printseller John Spence (right) provides us with a good summary of the inventory of a regional printshop:

His stock will at all times consist of books in all languages and branches of learning, stationery, of every kind, particularly a complete assortment of writing, drawing and packing papers; drawing and writing vellum and parchment; Ledgers and account books ruled to any pattern, in leather vellum and other bindings; Reeve’s and Ackermann’s colours, fancy gold, fancy marble and splash paper; Gold ornaments, medallions, caricatures and other prints; Music and musical instruments. Magazines, Reviews and every other periodical publication supplied with the utmost regularity and dispatch

An article from the Chester Chronicle, criticising printsellers in Manchester for displaying unpatriotic caricatures which might discourage young men from joining the army, also provides us with definitive proof that satirical prints were displayed in printshop windows around the country [4].

Businessmen like Spence appear to have acquired their caricature prints in one of four ways: Firstly, they may have published them themselves, although it seems unlikely that this was particularly common prior to the introduction of lithography and the expansion of the middling and working class market for prints from the mid-1820s onwards. Secondly, they could have cultivated formal links with specific publishers in London, who would then name them as their local agents in newspaper advertisements placed in the national or local press [5]. Thirdly, the wealthier ones could afford to travel to select and acquire new stock directly from publishers either in London or abroad. Indeed, some provincial printsellers developed their own links with suppliers in Europe and Ireland, which was a major source of cheap books and prints during the late eighteenth-century. In January 1800 for example, the Manchester printseller Victore Zanetti placed an advertisement in his local newspaper which boasted that:

J.V.Z is just returned from Italy and London, wher[e] he has purchased a very large and capital collection ancient and modern paintings, prints and drawings of Italian, French, Dutch and English schools – Transparencies, caricatures, medallions, drawing books, and new invented impressions on satin, velvet & c., for furniture, fire-screens, pictures and the use of schools, which they will dispose of at very low prices.

Zanetti was also clearly sensitive to the notion that his fellow Mancunians should be deprived of any service which was available in London and continues by sketching out a proposal to open a reading room above his shop, allowing customers to peruse or borrow folios of caricatures and other prints.

JVZ & Co. judging that the want of such an institution as the following, in this town must have long felt by a liberal public, intend fitting up an elegant Subscription Room, at No. 10 Market-street-lane, (to be opened every day from 10 o’clock in the morning to 8 in the evening) where they mean to deposit, for the use and instruction of the subscribers, and to be out to them occasionally, a large and valuable collection of the carious articles above mentioned, with many esteemed books, on the subjects of painting, drawing & c. Terms of Subscription to the room. Each Subscriber for one year, to pay One Guinea – for half year twelve shillings – for a quarter year Seven Shillings. The Room to be opened every day, Sundays excepted, from ten in the morning till eight in the evening. Every Subscriber to be allowed to take out a portfolio of prints & c. which must be returned in one day, on forfeit of 2s 6d… Any person losing or damaging a print, drawing, &c. to make such loss or damage good, or forfeit their Subscription… Admission to the Room for Non-subscribers 1s.[6]

Clearly the ability to loan out an album of caricatures for the evening was not limited solely to those who frequented the fashionable printshops of London’s West End.

Finally, printsellers would also have acquired new stock in response to consumer demand. This demand appears to have been deliberately cultivated by London-based publishers frequently placing advertisements for new works in both the national and local press. These adverts usually concluded with the tagline ‘available from all book and printsellers in the Kingdom’, which it seems safe to assume was not literally true, but rather designed to encourage potential customers to place an order for the print in question at their local printshop [7]. Such aggressive marketing tactics are entirely consistent with the cutthroat nature of the London publishing trade in this period and it is likely that much of the power in these relationships rested with the buyer. Timothy Clayton’s excellent work on the international trade in caricatures indicates that publishers were often willing to offer generous credit and discount wholesale orders aggressively in order to break into new markets and ward off the competition [8].

Two things are immediately noticeable when one is looking for evidence of the types of satirical prints being sold outside London in this period: The apparent link between the growth in the provincial print trade and the rise of the caricature magazine during the early 1800s, and the relative anonymity of the caricaturist. Periodicals containing one or more satirical plates are among the most frequently mentioned caricature-related items to appear in the satirical press from the 1780s onwards. Some of these early magazines, such as the Charlton House Magazine and the modestly titled Wonderful Magazine, included caricature plates among a jumble of different line and woodblock engraved illustrations. Others, such as the apparently short-lived Court & City Magazine, dealt solely in humorous and satirical subjects:

A WORK ENTIRELY NEW.

With COPPER-PLATES elegantly coloured.

On Thursday last was published, Price 6d.

Embellished with two large Quarto Copper-plates, most beautifully coloured, each of which is superior to those which are sold for 1s 6d at any of the Printsellers Shops in London, elegantly printed on superfine paper, and calculated to afford universal Entertainment,

No.1 (to be continued the first of every Month) of THE COURT and CITY MAGAZINE;

Or, Universal Repository of Knowledge and Entertainment. Displaying the Manners, Customs, Oddities, Whims and Humours of the Times. Each Number to be illustrated with two large Quarto Copper-plates, on political, humorous, and satirical subjects, engraved in a superlative style, from original designs…

N.B. The Engravings given in this Work, when framed and glazed, will serve as excellent Embellishments in genteel apartments; and be highly agreeable to those who have a Relish for Humour, Whim, Caricature, or Satire…

Hints of Subjects for Engravings, adapted to the above Plans, whether from Ins or Outs, Whigs or Tories, Person of Distinction, or Persons without Distinction, will be thankfully received and dully attended to [9].

Humorous caricature magazines appear to have become more popular during the first decade of the nineteenth-century, when the number of advertisements increases markedly. The light-hearted and more bourgeois tone of these new publications is also reflected in a marketing style which was becoming snappier and far less formal than that of a generation earlier, as the following advertisements for Henry Delahoy Symond’s Social Magazine, make clear:

A new and popular work for the Christmas Holidays, embellished with Eight Droll Caricature Prints. This Day is published No. 1, price 8d. or on fine paper with Proof impressions of the Plates 1s… The SOCIAL MAGAZINE, or Cabinet of Wit and Fun!! Containing a rich Fund of amusing Bon Mots, Funny Jests and Witticisms, choice Epigrams, Repartees, &c. intended to excite Mirth and a jovial Laugh to every British subject, at a small expence, by his own Fire-side.

Fun! Fun!! Fun!!!… The only magazine wholly appropriated for entertainment. To be had of every bookseller in the kingdom… embellished with a droll caricature print, No. II price only Eight-pence, or on a fine wove paper One Shilling [10].

By the mid-1800s, popular titles such as The Scourge were claiming a circulation of several thousand copies per edition and evidently had a readership which was scattered throughout the United Kingdom [11]. This popularity presumably reflecting both the growth of the middle class audience for satirical prints and perhaps also a preference among provincial audiences for magazines as a value for money alternative to traditional single sheet caricatures.

Examples of advertisements containing the names of specific caricaturists are surprisingly few and far between [12]. Gillray, Rowlandson and Bunbury all received some level of acknowledgement and therefore must have been known as artistic personalities in their own right, but in most instances the caricaturist was either referred to in euphemistic terms, such as “a celebrated artist”, or was simply not named at all [13]. This process of marginalisation seems to have accelerated during the mid-1800s, when even Rowlandson’s name appears to have been eclipsed in Thomas Tegg’s advertisements for The Caricature Magazine, or Hudibrastic Mirror and A Lecture on Heads, perhaps suggesting the beginnings of a perceived decline in the quality of the genre since its late eighteenth-century heyday [14].

Hopefully, even this superficial sweep of the British Newspaper Archives’ holdings has helped to demonstrate the value of provincial newspapers as a source of information on the trade in caricature prints during the reign of George III. These sources paint a picture of an industry which was developing alongside the wider trade in printed materials and changing to match the country’s shifting economic geography. The development of an explicitly national market for satirical prints clearly fits into the wider historical narrative surrounding the stylistic, commercial and technical changes which began to take place in the British print publishing trade after 1800. These were the years in which new formats, such as the caricature magazine began to emerge, and a new wave of printsellers targeting middle class consumers burst into the market. Newspaper sources may also reveal some wider truths about the print-trade in general, particularly with regards to the perceived cultural value of the satirical print and the individuals responsible for producing them. The anonymity in which most caricaturists appear to have worked, coupled with the prolonged harking back a previous generation of satirists, would seem to suggest that the genre’s heyday may have passed several years before historians have typically assumed that the ‘golden age’ of caricature came to an end in Britain.

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Notes

1. For example, Rowlandson’s The School for Scandal was published by Picot on 1^st August 1788 and was advertised in the Derby Mercury on 21^st August. The lag between metropolitan and provincial release dates decreased during the early 1790s and by the mid-1800s publishers in London were even providing provincial customers with advanced warning of new publications, see the advertisement for issue no. 1 of The Satirist which appeared in the Chester Chronicle of 11^th September 1807.
2. See Martin Hopkinson ‘The Print Market in Liverpool in the Late Eighteenth Century’, Print Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp.107 – 108. An advertisement for a print auction published by one Liverpool Newspaper on 17^th May 1789 reads: “At the exhibition room over the Library, Lord-street, to be sold by auction on Thursday next, the 21^st of May, a large collection of paintings, fine drawings, proofs and other prints in superb burnished gold frames and glasses, an original model of a Roman Emperor in clay, and a model of the Sabines in wax, humorous political caricatures &c.” See the Hull Packet 10^th January 1809 for another example of an advertisement in which caricatures are listed among the items offered for sale at an auction of prints.
3. Ibid p.108.
4. Chester Chronicle 2^nd October 1795 – A caricature etching, descriptive of the glorious rewards of war, such as a veteran returning home from the Continent with a wooden leg, surrounded by his starving family, was lately stuck up in the window of a print-shop in Manchester; – the abominable tendency of which drew down the following very benevolent and patriotic rebuke from a gentleman belonging to the order of war-ites: “These things are infamous… they have a shocking effect on the national ardour, and tend to damp the energy of our youths” – How little must this gentlemen know of the energy of British bosoms, to suppose they can be damped by so trifling and simple a thing as a wooden-leg? This may be a reference to James Gillray’s John Bulls Progress, which had been published in 1793 and shows a yeoman marching away from his family and fireside full of martial vigour and returning home a cripple to find his family has been reduced to starvation and penury in his absence.
5. See York Herald, 24th September 1809, for a list of Thomas Tegg’s associated provincial printsellers.
6. Manchester Mercury, 21st January 1800.
7. For examples see, Newcastle Courant, 1st November 1800 and Chester Chronicle, 11th September 1807.
8. T. Clayton, ‘The London Printsellers and the Export of English Graphic Prints’, in A. Kremers & E. Reich eds., Loyal Subversion? Caricatures from th24th Sre Personal Union between England and Hanover (1714 – 1837), (Hanover, 2014), pp. 140 – 162. Printsellers based in large commercial ports may also have acted as middlemen in the international trade in caricature prints. Samuel Tipper, the London-based publisher of The Satirist or Monthly Meteor, promised to offer “A most liberal allowance… to those gentlemen who purchase the volume for exportation to the East and West Indies, where it must experience a most rapid sale.” Presumably this was either a means of expediting overseas sales by exploiting the expanding maritime links of cities like Liverpool and Glasgow, or merely a clever means of throwing the risk associated with dealing with overseas markets onto other printsellers. Chester Chronicle, 19^th February 1808.
9. Leeds Intelligencer, 6th July 1784.
10. Chester Chronicle, 25th July 1800 & Newcastle Courant, 1st November 1800.
11. Chester Chronicle, 19th February 1808. Claims a combined circulation of 16,000 for the first five editions of The Satirist.
12. Derby Mercury, 21st August 1788. Contains one of the few advertisements in a provincial newspaper to name specific artists and the titles of their designs, there are: Long Minuet at Bath & The Porpogation of a Lie, both by Bunbury; The Prince’s Bow, by F.G. Byron; The School for Scandal, by Rowlandson; and The Cotillion, by Kingsbury. Gillray’s name appears in connection with his non-satirical works, such as his engraving of a scene from the opera Nina and the mawikish portrait of prison reformer John Howard entitled The Triumph of Benevolence, far more frequently than it does with caricatures (see ibid and Northampton Mercury, 7th April 1796). However, descriptions of two unnamed satires which appeared in the Chester Chronicle, 2^nd October 1795 and Newcastle Courant, 14th May 1796, are very similar to John Bulls Progress (1793) and The Fashionable Mamma…(1796). The lack of references to Gillray’s caricatures may also be explained by the fact that Humphrey, who published the bulk of his prints, appears to have disdained newspaper advertisements. I have been able to locate only one advertisement which bears her name in the BNA, it was published in the 27th March 1807 edition of the Morning Post and relates to a caricatured version of Lady Hamilton’s Attitudes copied from Nature. Gillray provided the images for this work but is not mentioned by name in the advertisement.
13. York Herald, 12th September 1809.
14. Chester Chronicle, 12th September 1806 and York Herald, 24th September 1808. The decision to build a commercial following around a particular title, rather than specific artists, presumably reflected both the fickle nature of the relationships between caricaturists and publishers, and a desire to ensure that the balance of power in the commercial relationship did not tip too far in the artist’s direction.

A Loyal Song for the 4th July

Anon. The Yankie Doodles Intrenchments near Boston 1776, published in London c.1776.

A Loyal Song
(Tune, Vain Britons Boast No Longer)

Vain boasters cease, shall the Yankies the British flag defy?
Shall Britons bear the insult, and not to vengeance fly?
Tho’ wide the deep that parts you from Old England’s warlike shore
Yet still, amid your coward ranks, her cannon loud shall roar,
Yet still, & c.

Tho’ hoary headed Putnam, should bring your legions on,
With Arnold, Sinclair, in his train and godlike Washington;
Their rebel pride shall soon be tam’d, by Britons great and brave,
While Albion’s banner high in air, triumphantly shall wave.
While Albion’s & c.

Tho’ benediction’d navies should sail to lend you aid,
By bigots bles’d, with bigots mann’d, impenetrable made;
Sunk in the deep by Hearts of Oak, ne’er shall they rise again,
While absolution, bulls and bead, lie floating in the main.
While absolutions, & c.

From post to post, from town to town, your trembling legions cry,
Pale discord reigns, and horror broods, where’er the traitors fly;
Destruction stares them in the face, and hope for ever gone
A shadow independency – A shade great Washington.
A shadow & c.

For you what British worthies have bravely fought and bled,
What noble heroes dying smited on honours painful bed;
But know correction waits you all, ingrates, wherev’er you are,
For Britain is and ever was, high heav’n’s peculiar care.
For Britain &c.

Still Britain’s matchless navies shall awe the trembling world,
Thro’ Asia, Africa, India, her thunders shall be hurl’d;
The vaunting boasts shall vanish then, of each rebellious son,
Nor Britain’s glory be transferr’d to them or Washington.
Nor Britain’s &c.

Then from fell sons of discord, your rebel arms throw down,
With tears repentant sue for grace, at injur’d Britain’s crown:
Fair peace shall quietly then return, with plenty in her train,
And commerce raise her drooping head, beyond the Atlantic main
And commerce &c.

This song, which was intended as a satirical retort to a popular rebel marching tune, was published in the Newcastle Courant of 15th November 1777. At that time, the British press was awash with jubilant accounts of Howe’s victories in Pennsylvania, and consequently The Morning Chronicle counselled its readers to ignore the “mischievous impressions” which were already beginning to filter across the Atlantic, via “channels of infamy and falsehood”, of the disaster which was said to be engulfing General John Burgoyne’s army in the Hudson Valley. When the first definitive confirmation of the defeat at Saratoga finally reached Britain in early December, the news exploded like a thunderclap; sending the King into “agonies”, stunning the House of Commons into silence and transforming every coffeehouse in the land into barrack-room of armchair generals, determined to thrash out a plan to defeat the Yankee armies from the safety of their firesides.

Guest Post: A biographical sketch of G.S. Tregear (c.1801 – 1841)

For the final installment of their short series of articles about Gabriel Shire Tregear, Mike and Daphne Tregear present a fascinating biographical sketch of their ancestor’s life and major works.

Gabriel Shire Tregear (also spelled Gabriel Shear Tregear); Printseller

In the Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Volume XI, M. Dorothy George writes:

From about 1833 the printshops (Marks, Tregear, Spooner, and Hodgson) produced degenerate coloured etchings or lithographs, such as Spoonersʼ ʻFunny Charactersʼ or Tregearʼs ʻBlack Jokesʼ (on negroes), which seems to be ancestors of the comic postcard. Such things have an interest for the social historian; they have little to do with ʻpolitical and personal satiresʼ, or with comic art, which was chiefly represented by George Cruikshankʼs illustrations, notably My Sketch Book (1834-6) and the Comic Almanack (1835-6).

and further:

HB [the artist John Doyle] had given caricature a new look, and from 1831 his imitators were at least as numerous as those of [William] Heath had been in 1829. In 1832 and 1833 there are none of Heathʼs coloured etchings; in 1834 he did a few for Tregear, a decline indeed from the years when McLean was his ʻsole publisherʼ.

and finally:

Gabriel Shire Tregear represents the movement towards cheaper prints; he was also an engraver.

So, in the British Museum world of Dorothy George, Tregear was definitely well below the salt although 31 Tregear prints are included in the 1954 volume of the BM catalogue, of which seven are not overtly political.

It is possible that Tregearʼs need to satisfy the cheaper end of the market was a decision made for him. He was born in 1801 or 1802 and died aged 39 in 1841. His parents (Henry and Elizabeth) are believed to have relocated from Truro, Cornwall, to London after 1800 (Henry Tregear is described in a family will of 1801 to be ʻlate of Truroʼ). In 1821, aged 19, Gabriel Tregear is married by licence to Ann McLean, the sister of the printseller and publisher Thomas McLean who had premises in Hay Market and concentrated on catering to an upmarket clientele in Londonʼs West End with exclusive products. While Thomas McLean may not have wished his sister to starve, a brother-in-law who encroached on his livelihood would not have been welcome. Tregear later kept a good distance away from the McLean printshop both geographically and in terms of the focus of the business. The authors have not found any documentary evidence of how Gabriel Tregear, the son of a Cornish carpenter with no obvious connections, came to acquire the skills to draw and colour various kinds of prints and attach himself to the McLean family; however, society at that time provided plenty of examples of talented individuals who were successful, rose in society and came to public notice.

Tregearʼs publishing career began slowly. In 1823 he published the third edition of Spilsburyʼs ʻPicturesque Scenery in the Holy Land and Syriaʼ (Thomas McLean had published the second edition) from an address in Southwark, the first time his name appears professionally. In 1826 Tregearʼs occupation was still print colourer at his childrenʼs baptism and he had moved back north of the river Thames to Drury Lane. Also that year he published his own material from St Peterʼs Alley, Cornhill. In 1827 and 1828 he published prints from 104 St Martins Lane. An advertisement from the Royal Cornwall Gazette from 28th July 1827 shows him perhaps using his Cornish roots to advantage, advertising a coloured engraving priced 10s. 6d. of Cornwall and Devonshire wrestling and stressing at the bottom that ʻThe County Colours, Arms, Mottos, &c. are admirably displayed.ʼ Another Cornish-themed print shows ʻJames Polkinghorn, The celebrated Cornish Wrestler and Champion of the Worldʼ (left). This lithograph shows Polkinghorn standing facing to the left with his arms extended as if waiting for an opponent’s move. He is wearing a shirt, open at the collar, knee breeches and stockings. James Polkinghorn was the landlord of the Red Lion Inn at St. Columb Major, Cornwall. He has been described as ʻhaving a neck like a bull, dark curling sideburns, piercing eyes and a determined jawʼ. On the 26th October 1826 he fought a match against the champion of Devon, Abraham Cann, and won. As well as sporting prints, Tregear has a line in theatrical prints. One lithograph shows ʻMiss Kelly as Lisette in the Sergeant’s Wifeʼ (below right); Frances Maria Kelly had particular success when she appeared as the Sergeant’s Wife at the English Opera House, The Strand, during the 1827-8 season.

From St Martins Lane he moved to premises in Cheapside, then as now one of the busiest streets in the City of London. From 1828 until 1835 he occupied number 123 on the northwestern corner of Cheapside and Wood Street in one of the four shops built on the old churchyard of St Peter Westcheap. This building has since been demolished and the shop next door has been renumbered 123-124. The John Johnson Collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, has a lithograph drawn by Tregear of his shop at this address in 1829 (See also http://www.fotolibra.com/gallery/509178/wood-street-cheapside-london/ for an image drawn in the 1870s).

Tregearʼs shop front would have looked like any other with prints displayed in the windows providing a free spectacle for pedestrians. Crowded pavements outside print shops were a nuisance to the authorities and the growing popularity of Tregearʼs windows brought him into conflict with them. The Times of 7th May 1832 reports:

On Saturday morning, about 11 oʼclock, as a boy named William Gunton, son of a watch- spring-maker, No. 3 City-gardens, was standing at the corner of Wood-street, looking at a caricature-shop window, a wagon in passing caught his arm between the stump (put up by the city for protection) and nearly severed it from the body. He was immediately taken to St. Bartholomewʼs Hospital, and the arm was amputated. There is every possibility of his recovery. The corner of Wood-street is rendered exceedingly dangerous by the exhibition of caricatures, as it invariably induces a crowd to assemble round the shop. On the Saturday previous, a gentleman named Bragge nearly lost his life, within a few yards of the same spot, and numerous robberies are continually occurring.

Further troubles caused by the crowds outside his shop were reported a month later in The Times. A case was heard at Guildhall concerning a man charged with assaulting a police officer stationed outside Tregearʼs print shop, his friend who then tried to rescue him, and another man charged with trying to excite the crowd against the police there.

At the last sessions, the print-shop in Cheapside, at the corner of Wood-street, was indicted by the city as a nuisance, and a verdict was obtained, but the judgement was deferred till the next session, to give Mr. Tregear an opportunity of abating the nuisance. Not having done this, however, those who have the direction of the city police have stationed four men and a serjeant about the windows, who compel persons who stop to gaze at the pictures to keep moving. On the other, hand Mr. Tregear stands at his door, and tells those that are interrupted by the police that they have a right to stay, and altercations ensue.

The report later states:

Mr. Walters, a solicitor, who attended on the part of Mr. Tregear said, that the stationing of the policemen around the house, to prevent anyone from stopping for a moment at the window, was a monstrous invasion of the rights of the subject, as respected the public, who were driven from the window, and the citizen, whose trade was ruined by the driving away of his customers. It was a fact, that Mr. Tregear used to take 60l. [£60] a week, but since his house had been surrounded with policemen, he had taken only 10s. a day. Mr. Tregear had in fact abated the nuisance, by diminishing the number of prints displayed in his window. His show was formerly of the value of 100l. [£100]; it was now worth but 14s., and was smaller than that of any other print shop in the city. The power assumed by the police was most dangerous, as it was as applicable to a haberdasher, or any other tradesman whose show of bargains might attract a crowd, as to a print shop.

The case was dismissed. Two years later The Times reported on the case of Richard Carlile, a bookseller, who had hung effigies of a bishop and a broker in the window of his book shop thereby causing an obstruction when a crowd assembled:

Some conversation arose whether the complaint was within the magistratesʼ jurisdiction, as in the case of Tregear, the caricature vender, in Cheapside, who was indicted for occasioning an obstruction of the footway, by exhibiting his pictures, the Recorder had so strong a conviction of the illegality of the proceeding, that although the jury convicted him, he was not called up for judgement. It was remarked, upon this occasion, that, upon the same principle on which this conviction was founded, the beautiful daughter of a pastrycook, at the west end of the town, who attracted a mob about her fatherʼs window, might have been indicted as a nuisance.

As well as being a dangerous place to linger, printshop windows also acquired a reputation for places where the pedestrians were likely to be targeted by pickpockets or gropers. In December 1827 Vincent Tregear, one of Gabrielʼs nephews, was indecently assaulted outside a Drury Lane printshop, with the perpetrator being duly imprisoned.

Tregear advertised his wares in The Times and The Morning Chronicle as well as other newspapers. These advertisements are useful when attempting to date a print which has no publication date printed on it (the case for over two-thirds of the authorsʼ collection). With no advertisement available, an approximate guide is the address given for Tregearʼs print shop, although in many cases the address is simply given as Cheapside. The margins of Tregear prints offer the occasional useful snippet, e.g. the 1832 print ʻJust Come From Grass!ʼ has references to ʻTregear’s Humorous Catalogueʼ and ʻBeware of Imitationsʼ and to the right a listing of some of the prints and print series which Tregear has for sale for 1 shilling each. These are: Leaseholder; Living Cheap; Compliments of the Season; Chip of the Old Block; Matrimony; Tragedy and Comedy; Humorous Scraps (6 plates); Tenant at Will; Keeping the Peace; Tregear’s Flights of Humour 16 plates; Black Jokes 12 plates. Thereʼs another tantalizing reference to ʻTregear’s Catalogue of Humourous Printsʼ in the margin of ʻThe Robin Hood Family of Archers of 1833ʼ of which no trace has surfaced.

Tregearʼs location on the busy thoroughfare of Cheapside put him in an ideal position to advertise his printshop as a poste restante address, just as Samuel Fores was described as doing in the Print Shop Windowʼs blog entry of 15th June 2014, and as a location for selling wares unrelated to prints and pictures. For example, The Times of 7th January 1839 shows Fores did not have a monopoly on dodgy medicinal supplies:

TOOTH-ACHE, 57 Pall-mall, and 96, Cheapside. TRACYʼs newly discovered SPECIFIC is mild, innocuous, and soothing, and immediately removes the most acute suffering and destroys all sensitiveness in the nerve without the least pain or injury to the teeth, and now renders the painful operation of extraction unnecessary, by effecting not a temporary but a permanent cure. This wonderful preparation is sold in bottles, price 4s. 6d. and 7s. each, stamp included, at 57, Pall-mall, and at Mr. Tregearʼs, printseller and publisher, 96, Cheapside.

Tregear embraced all aspects of the humorous arts, including the nudge-nudge-wink-wink variety. An 1829 lithograph entitled ʻA Literary Lady displaying her Allbumʼ (above) has the second ʻlʼ in allbum deliberately crossed out. The scene is a stylish drawing room with a young woman, who is holding a book and a fan, with a soldier in the foreground. The woman is wearing a dress with a very large bustle to the rear and a low-cut bodice. The soldier is positively leering at her and obviously referring to her derrière. Another example is ʻMad_m V_____s Legsʼ (left) in which the head and shoulders of two fashionable young men are dreaming with their heads in the clouds. Between them, on a floating board, is the figure of a woman from the hips down wearing a skirt which stops above the knees. On the 3rd of January 1831 Lucia Elizabetta Vestris, proprietress and manager of the Royal Olympic Theatre, opened her tenure with a show which included Vestris playing Pandora in a set named Olympic Revels. The comeliness of Vestris’s legs was the source of much commentary in newspapers of the time.

Optical illusions which allowed a picture to work in two ways remained popular. The ʻBefore Marriage/After Marriageʼ (right) lithograph contain the heads of a man and a woman facing one another with a happy expression, then unhappy faces consequent on marriage.

As mentioned above, Tregear published many series, of which ʻFlights of Humourʼ appears to be the longest, running to 95 prints at least. Number 18 (left) shows a large publican in white apron and waistcoat taking a fighting stance with clenched fists with the caption ʻAs much Punch as you like for Threepenceʼ.

Few of the printers used were named on Tregearʼs print; of those that were, Lefevre & Kohler (52 Newman Street) were often used. As a publisher he was dependent on good working relationships with the printers and artists he used. These relationships were not always smooth ones. In 1832 Tregear sued Auguste Ducôté, a lithographic printer, for printing from one of Tregearʼs lithographic stones stored with him without permission and selling these copies. The case did not appear to go to court, and the authors have not seen any examples of the print which was the subject of the litigation.

Charles Jameson Grant is credited for the design (with Tregear) and the drawing of the splendid ʻBattle Royal Between the Whig National School Boys & the Tory Charity Crabsʼ (right) of 1832. The Whigs on the right of the image, holding the banner of ʻReformʼ (which is held on a pole surmounted by a Phrygian bonnet), are in battle with the Tories on the left. The Tories are led by Wellington, Cumberland and Ellenborough. The Whigs are led by Grey, Brougham and Cobbett. Bricks, cudgels and brooms are all being used as weapons. Other flags are being held which include ʻRotten Borough Placeʼ, ʻKings College Divisionʼ, ʻNewcastle Divisionʼ, ʻDeagle Baring Divisionʼ. The print is considering the position in 1832 where Grey is manoeuvring to force the Reform Bill through Parliament and showing the intense feeling of unrest in the country. On the bottom of the print is written ʻthe only Shop in the World for Caricatures of Real Wit and Humorʼ.

In 1833, or soon after, Tregear quarrelled bitterly with the C J Grant. Grantʼs ʻThe Political Drama. No. 110ʼ contains the following sentence on the bottom right of the print: ʻC. J. G. takes this opportunity of informing the inhabitants of Paris, and itʼs vicinity, that he has no connexion in his capacity as artist with one Gabriel Shire Tregear, publisher, of London, for some time past, and solemnly prays he may never againʼ. Prior to this dispute Grant had been credited as artist with many of the political prints published from 123 Cheapside, and on some of the ʻTregearʼs Flights of Humourʼ, ʻPolitical Dramaʼ and ʻTregearʼs Burstyʼrsidesʼ series. Some other artists were also given credit on his early work, including Henry Alken, Robert Seymour and Isaac Robert Cruikshank. Others were credited only by their initials and often not at all.

W. Newman is credited as the artist on ʻFrontispiece To Useful Knowledgeʼ of 1833 (above). The sheet has 25 small engravings tightly grouped together and while the title would suggest that each is going to illustrate some useful fact, the reverse is the case. Each panel is a pun, a play on words. The centre piece is a caricature of Lord Brougham. The whole thing is conceived as a wry comment on the political and educational movement which is trying to bring information and knowledge to the working classes. It looks very similar to the mock frontispieces done by C J Grant, done partly to make fun of the ʻscrapsʼ phenomenon as well as the worthy politicians like Lord Brougham. However, Tregear would have done well from his prints intended to be cut out and placed in scrap books as well; ʻTregearʼs Scraps 5ʼ from 1830 is one such.

Two further images deserve their own blog entries. ʻThe Italian Boyʼ (left) was the subject of extensive coverage in the newspapers in November and December 1831. Four men, Bishop, May, Williams and Shields, were accused of the murder of a young boy, believed to be an Italian beggar, in order to sell the body for dissection. This case influenced the subsequent passing of the Anatomy Act 1832, which expanded the legal supply of medical cadavers to eliminate the incentive for such behaviour. ʻTregearʼs Black Jokesʼ were described in an advertisement as ʻbeing a Series of Laughable Caricatures on the March of Manners Amongst the Blacksʼ. Number 3 (below right) shows a marriage scene in which a priest is reciting the marriage vows. All of the characters are black and dressed in fashionable clothes. Each character is making a remark about the couple. This print is racist; the tenor of the print is to deride the ceremony and to use the mode of speech to denigrate black people. ʻBlack Jokesʼ had a similar theme to ʻLife in Philadelphiaʼ, Tregear having stolen the idea from American artist Edward Williams Clay.

Although he continued to occupy 123 Cheapside until 1835, some of Tregearʼs advertisements show he used both 123 and 119 Cheapside in 1831. At some time during the 1830s he also appears to collaborate with other printsellers occupying 90 Cheapside; this address was used for the 1834 publication of ʻFemale emigrationʼ, a splendid hand- coloured lithograph describing the perils faced by women moving to the colonies (in the collection of the National Library of Australia, see http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an6589607).

In 1834 he signed a 21-year lease for 96 Cheapside from where he operated until his death in 1841. This printshop was at the northeastern junction of Cheapside and Lawrence Lane; this southern end of Lawrence Lane has been removed since. Towards the second half of the 1830s Tregear advertised fewer prints and more music; it appears that the demand for comic and sporting prints was falling. However new prints were published, particularly of the grand occasions that the accession, coronation and marriage of Queen Victoria warranted; one lithograph depicts a delicate and respectful portrait of the new queen ʻVictoria the Firstʼ. The publishing of series continued; ʻFancy Sketchesʼ, ʻFlowers of Lovelinessʼ, ʻFlowers of Uglinessʼ, ʻIllustrations of Popular Songsʼ, ʻMerry Thoughtsʼ, ʻTregearʼs Flights of Humourʼ, ʻTregearʼs Rum Jokesʼ, ʻTregearʼs Sea Songsʼ, ʻTrip to Margateʼ, ʻWho Are Youʼ, ʻTregearʼs Headsʼ, ʻTregearʼs Sea Songsʼ, ʻTregearʼs Humorous Scrapsʼ, ʻFancy Sketchesʼ, ʻTregearʼs Rum Jokesʼ, and ʻSchool of Designʼ all began or continued their series at 96 Cheapside. They must have been good money-spinners.

On 21st February, 1841, Gabriel Shear Tregear died at 18 Goulden Terrace, Islington, of influenza aged 39. He was buried in the burial ground of St. Martin in the Fields in Camden Town. His estate was valued for probate at £600.

His widow continued to operate the business in partnership with Thomas Crump Lewis after his death under the Tregear & Lewis name, also selling musical instruments. Bankruptcy forced its closure in 1844 after the pair fell out spectacularly and knocked each other over the head with a number of violins.

Ann Tregear brought up the children in much reduced circumstances, and continued to get her name in The Times with further displays of bad temper. Of their thirteen children, five girls and a boy reached adulthood. The boy, Gabriel Tregear, was sponsored by the city and sent to Christʼs Hospital school in Hertford. In May 1864, having accused his wife of infidelity with their lodger (and clearly mentally disturbed) Gabriel Tregear shot himself dead in front of her aged 23. The girls were well enough educated to make their way as governesses and school teachers; two never married and lived to be 89 and 95. Another girl, Caroline Victoria Tregear, married and later emigrated to the United States with her husband where they lived an impoverished life. In old age she gave an interview to a journalist which appeared in newspapers in which she described the circumstances of her upbringing and her relationship with Charles Dickens. She described life in Cheapside:

The great London emporium was a perfect exhibition in itself. My father, sir, was a famous publisher. Sir Edwin Landseer was a great friend of my father and a frequent visitor to his house. It was a noted rendezvous of all the great wits, artists and authors of London. Thackeray, Tennyson, Mark Lemmon, Hood, Thornton Hunt, Edmund Yates, Brontaire OʼBrien, Ernest Jones, Carlyle and men of that literary ilk.

She then goes on to describe a close relationship with Charles Dickens as a child and playing chess with him when aged 16 (about the same time Dickens met and fell in love with the 18 year old Ellen Ternan). While she has no doubt exaggerated the wealth and status of the family while she was a child and the extent of the family connections with the famous, which may have been more in the nature of purely business dealings, the basic facts of the family life bear scrutiny. This is as close as the authors can get to any accounts of Gabriel Tregear as a person.

Given that Tregear was prone to disputes (an assault charge in 1827, suing Auguste DuCôté in 1832 and a public falling out with C J Grant in about 1833), it doesnʼt sound like he was an easy person to get along with, but thatʼs as much as can be said. Maybe a graphologist could determine something from his signature (shown at the top of this article). Unfortunately, no verifiable images of him have come to light, but as the personification of a man whose career was to bring joy into peopleʼs lives, you may care to look at the engraved frontispiece of ‘Tregear’s Scraps’ and gaze at the face of the man who looks back at us from above the title…