Bunkers Hill, or America’s Head Dress, 1776

Matthew Darly, Bunkers Hill or America’s Head Dress, 1776.

Caricatures such as this were a common feature of British printshop windows in the 1770s. Printsellers such as Carington Bowles, Sayer & Bennett, William Humphrey and Matthew & Mary Darly, all began turning out designs which poked fun at a prevailing trend among fashionable women for wearing large and elaborately decorated hairpieces. The Darlys’ seem to have a particular fondness for this curious sub-strata of English caricature, publishing around twenty different plates on the subject between 1776 and 1779 alone. The caricature shown here was originally part of a pair which, when joined by its companions Noddle-island or how are we deceived, gave the impression of two young women wearing wigs so large that they could comfortably accommodate detailed models of the rebel entrenchments around the city of Boston, Massachusetts.

Some historians have turned to gender politics when interpreting the meaning of these designs, arguing that the mockery of female tastes constitutes an attempt to assert masculine authority over feminine forms of material culture. Others see them as a political statement, part of a wider cultural backlash against a decadent strain of cultural effeminacy which many conservative commentators held responsible for undermining Britain’s ability to successfully prosecute the war against the American colonies. Few however have considered that they may actually offer a literal depiction of the way in which wealthy women may have dressed. Historians have long supposed that such images merely offered a grossly exaggerated burlesque of the trend for applying padding, hair extensions and copious quantities of animal fat to ones hair or wig.

We now know that this is not the case and that caricatures such as the one shown here became so popular that they actually began to influence forms of dress. Diana Donald alludes to this phenomena in her book on English caricature in the reign of George III, noting that caricatures were often executed with “a scale and panache which conveyed the fashionable ‘look’ far more effectively than the frozen and timid manner of contemporary English fashion plates”. Donald also includes a reference to an article which appeared in the Lady’s Magazine of 1773, which describes a lady stepping out in a huge wig which was based on an image which had appeared in one of the Darlys’ caricatures. The date and the brief description given in the article, which mentions the wig being large enough to accommodate and entire stepladder within its tresses, suggests the design was based on Ridiculous taste or the ladies absurdity (1771) [1].

The Printshop Window has recently uncovered another article which proves that Bunkers Hill or Americas Headdress was also taken up and used as the basis for an actual hairpiece. The account, published in the Ipswich Journal, describes the principle attendees at a masquerade that took place in London’s Pantheon in early May of 1776.

Masquerade. Above 1000 persons were present on Monday evening at the pantheon; among others the Dukes of Cumberland, Devonshire, Ancaster and Manchester; Lords Pembroke, Carlisle, March, Beauchamp, Lyttelton, Falmouth, Edward Bentinck and several others of distinction. There were a great many fine women, fine jewels and fine dresses, with some character masks. The best of the latter were a haymaker from Kingswood and his wife, (Mr Dodd and Mrs Baddeley) who were uncommonly happy in supporting their characters, and afforded an abundant share of merriment, particularly Mr Dodd, who joined with the singers, led a catch [song], and had something to say to every mask who came near him. A parson silent as a bishop; a long-tailed spiritless devil his companion; a tiddy-doll; a German quack; a huntsman; an angler; two pilgrims, one the exact resemblance of Oystericus; a pilgrimess; five cantabs, some in noblemen’s gowns; a grand sultan with a female slave, as elegant in form and as beautiful in person as can be conceived; they were the finest pair in the room both as to dress and figure; a highland officer; a highland soldier; a French bagatelle seller; a Jew pedlar, remarkably well in the Duke’s-place dialect; a blackguard tatterdemalion ballad-singer, perfect master of the St Giles’s slang; three watchmen, one particularly noisy with his rattle; a Hecate; a Merlin; two old women; a young butcher, doatingly [sic] fond of a smart orange-girl; a prize-rower; a female volunteer; two circketeers; two harlequins; and one in a silk dress, all three flimsy and pert, than agile in characteristic; two Sybils, Mr and Mrs Sheridan; two sailors; a fencing-master; a match woman; a black-eyed bunter, by the same character at every masquerade this season; a fat Turk; a city alderman; a newsman with a horn, crying the Morning Post, distributed a printed paper stuffed with witless jests upon government, a lady with her head dressed agreeable to Darly’s caricature of a head, so enormous, as actually to contain both a plan and model of Boston, and the provincial army on Bunker’s Hill &c. &c… The supper, desert and wines were plentiful and good; but the decorations were rather puerile.

Sources such as this provide an indication of the degree to which written and visual satire had begun to permeate material culture in this period. The trauma of civil war with the American colonies and a full-blown conflict with the major powers of Europe had sparked an unprecedented degree of interest in satirical reportage and commentary. In the account above we find reference to at least two outfits which were directly inspired by satirical prints – Darly’s Bunkers Hill… and the “female volunteer” who regularly appeared in caricatures on the militia encampments in southern England – as well as third guest who was dressed in the guise of a newsman handing out copies of a satirical edition of the Morning Post [3]. It is therefore clear that there were times in which caricatures and other forms of printed satire were capable of taking on a degree of importance which stretched far beyond the confines of the printshop window itself.

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Notes

1. D. Donald, The Age of Caricature…, 1996. pp. 86 – 89.

2. Ipswich Journal, 11th May 1776.

3. Ibid. The paper purports to rely the contents of a letter to a cabinet minister from a British officer serving in North America. The note conveys the impression of an idle and decadent ruling class which was happy to indulge its own selfish pleasures while the nation was being led to humiliation and ruin. After apologizing for interrupting the minister’s “mince-pye eating, and other important duties of the season”, our correspondent reports on a series of military maneuvers which include attending dances, visiting tea shops and undertaking pleasure cruises off the American coast with colleagues from the Royal Navy. He then concludes by praising the efficiency of the British army’s latest “cunning retreat” from the rebel forces.

The Beverley Ghost Story, 1834

Woodward & Rowlandson, Terrour or Fright, plate 18 from the series Le Brun Travested, or Caricatures of the Passion, published by Ackermann, 1800.

Another ghostly post, this time in honour of Halloween. The following article comes from the Poor Man’s Guardian of 22nd March 1834.

The Beverley Ghost Story

For some days past the inhabitants of Beverley have been greatly amused by the earnest relation of the following account: – Stephen Brown, a farmer, residing at Skidby, near Beverley, on a Saturday night, a short time ago, was preparing to leave a public-house in Beverley, where he had indulged himself until a late hour; and being asked by one of the company how he durst go home alone so late, with much surprise said “What have I to fear, never having seen either ‘witches or warlocks,’ or anything more frightful than myself, at any hour of the night? I have been to various parts of the world, having sailed to Russia and traveled much in that country, as well as other parts of Europe and never, in my recollection, saw either ghost or hobgoblin”. Having said this, off he went on him way home, with all the flow of spirit imaginable, until he walked about half a mile on the road, when he observed something like an animal quickly advancing towards him, and in a trice it stood erect before him in the shape of a twenty stone pig with a long bushy tail! Having eyes glittering like diamonds, its hair shining like silver and beautifully white, its formidable and uncouth appearance created a terror, which at once alarmed his conscience and roused his fears. After repeatedly striking with a thick stick manfully at this terrific object, without making any sensible impression, Stephen deemed it expedient to make a hasty retreat back again to Beverley. The tollbar not being far from where he was, he thought by passing through the small gate, and closing it after him, he should leave grunter behind him; but lo! To his surprise and utter astonishment, it was through the gate as soon as he; therefore to distance piggy, he put his best leg first and when he had arrived, almost breathless, at the Bee Hive Inn, in Beverley, Stephen and his companion, the pig, were distinctly seen together by an aged couple who had been sitting up with a sick person, and who were then going home, about two o’clock in the morning. Thinking all was not right at the that time in the morning with the man and the pig, they communicated their suspicions to the watchman, and they all quickly followed Brown and the pig, whom they soon overtook, and on accosting Brown he was so alarmed that he could scarcely speak; but having recovered, related to them the whole of this mysterious circumstance. The watchmen, rather alarmed, yet nothing daunted, made a bold attempt to take porky into possession by surrounding it, but to their astonishment it suddenly vanished. The above persons persist in the truth of this odd story, and if any of them are contradicted or laughed at, are highly offended. So much for credulity and the force of imagination in the 19^th century.

William Holland’s Last Bath, 1815

 Portrait of William Holland from Richard Newton’s A Peep into the State Side of Newgate 1793 (detail).

In Covent Garden at the Hummums, now
I sit, but after many a curse and vow
Never to see the madding City more;
John Wolcot, Ode of Condolence, 1816

William Holland was among the most well-known purveyors of satirical prints in late eighteenth-century London. A patron of Gillray, Rowlandson, Newton and Woodward, as well as a skilled caricaturist in his own right, Holland’s name ranks alongside that of Hannah Humphrey and Samuel Fores in the list of those printsellers who were to define much of what is commonly thought of as the golden age of British caricature.

It is possible to construct a brief biographical sketch of Holland’s life from the snippets of information gathered together in catalogues and histories of satirical prints, as well as contemporary newspapers and magazines. Born in 1757, he began selling prints, pamphlets and music in the early 1780s and was to remain active in this field for upwards of thirty years. He was a political radical during his early years, serving a twelve month prison sentence for distributing the works of Thomas Paine in 1793 and also being brought before a civil court on a charge of libeling the governors of Gloucester jail over their treatment of the inmates there. He continued publishing satirical prints following his release from jail, eventually moving to larger premises at 50 Oxford Street. The backroom of the new shop was transformed into a gallery space in which Holland would frequently stage displays of dozens of his latest satirical designs. Patrons were asked to pay a shilling to enter the “Laughing Lounge”, the price of admittance being deductible from the price of any prints purchased therein [1].

It’s commonly assumed that Holland continued in this vein right up to his death in the summer of 1815, but in fact it would appear as though he had already decided to abandon printselling several months earlier. In February 1815 he placed the following advertisement in the Morning Post:

Cheap Caricatures and Other Prints. The large stock of caricatures and other prints of W. Holland, No. 11 Cockspur-street, to be sold at reduced prices. Going to remove into another line of business. Ladies and Gentlemen have now an opportunity, at a cheap rate, of decorating screens, dressing rooms &c with caricatures of genius, wit and humour, by the first caricaturists from Gillray to Williams [2].

A portion of his stock may have been purchased by a perfumer named E. Brooks, who issued a handful of caricatures of the royal scandals of the post-war years and described his wares as being “late[ly of] Holland’s” [3]. What happened to Holland himself is not known, as the next time his name appeared in the newspapers was in a short obituary that appeared in July 1815, bluntly stating that the printseller had died “suddenly” of unspecified causes. A second and slightly more substantial obituary was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine at the end of the year, which read:

At the Hummums, Covent-garden, a few minutes after coming out of the warm bath, aged 58, Mr William Holland of Cockspur-street, formerly of Oxford-street; an eminent publisher of caricatures… He was himself a man of genius, and wrote many popular songs and a volume of poetry, besides being the Author of the pointed and epigrammatic words which accompanied most of his caricatures [4].

The Hummums (above) was a name which would have been familiar to most fashionable eighteenth-century Londoners. It referred to a large bath-house, or ‘bagnio’, located at the south-eastern corner of the piazza in Covent Garden. The unusual name of the establishment being derived from a mispronunciation of the Turkish word for a bath-house, a ‘hammam’. London was littered with bagnios, many of which provided nothing more than a venue for polite bathing, relaxation and rejuvenate treatments such as cupping and the application of poultices. However in many instances the title bagnio was almost entirely honorific and used as a polite form of labeling for high-end brothels. The German traveler Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz wrote of such establishments after visiting London in the late 1780s:

… a certain kind of house, called bagnios, which are supposed to be baths; their real purpose, however, is to provide persons of both sexes with pleasure. These houses are well, and often richly, furnished, and every device for exciting the senses is either at hand or can be provided. Girls do not live there but are fetched in chairs when required… A girl who is sent for and does not please receives no gratuity, the chair alone being paid for.

The Hummums was one of a number of a bagnios in the Covent Garden area which acted as discreet venues for prostitution and carousing. Dr Johnston famously claimed it as the setting for the riotous drinking scene in Hogarth’s A Midnight Modern Conversation (1732) and more unusually, also stated that the building was haunted by the spirit of his cousin, a grossly intemperate parson who died in the midst of a drunken debauch [5].

Although there’s no direct evidence to indicate that William Holland met a similar fate, the location and manner of his passing certainly raises the possibility that his death was not entirely respectable. Reading between the lines of his obituary, one could speculate whether the description of him having expired “a few minutes after coming out of the warm bath” was designed to explain away the fact that he wasn’t wearing any clothes at the time of his death. Holland had a widow and a large circle of friends who would have been keen to ensure that any embarrassing details surrounding the death were kept quiet. The management of the Hummums would also have been willing to collude in any cover-up, the conventions of the day dictating that even the most louche establishments should contrive to appear respectable. As Archenholz explained, this even resulted in some brothels fitting elaborate baths and forcing their customers to go through the rigmarole of preparing to bathe, even if they had no intention of actually doing so:

The English retain their solemnity even as regards their pleasures, and consequently the business of such houses is conducted with a seriousness and propriety which is hard to credit… In every bagnio is found a formula regarding baths, but they are seldom needed [6]. 

So it’s possible that there may have more to William Holland’s death than initially meets the eye. I certainly like to think that someone who was responsible for producing hundreds of prints celebrating the rollicking, roistering nature of London’s high and low life might have met a more appropriate end than merely collapsing after emerging from a hot bath.

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Notes

1. Morning Post 19th May 1802.

2. Morning Post 16th February 1815.

3. Brooks had been selling perfumes and toiletries from a substantial shop located at 16 Panton Street, Haymarket for at least a decade before he began publishing caricature prints. The premises were advertised for let in the Morning Chronicle of 30th September 1806 and described as being “a substantial brick-built dwelling house, 3 stories high, containing 2 servants rooms, 3 chambers, dining room, parlour, and shop, with modern sash front, two kitchens, washhouse, with paved yard, coal cellars &c.”, available at a cost of £30 per annum. Brooks moved into the site sometime during the following six months, as an advertisement of his published in the Morning Post on 11th March 1807 gives 16 Panton Street as his business address.

4. Gentleman’s Magazine, 85(ii), p.380.

5. Johnson’s cousin was a parson named Ford, he recalled how a waiter at the Hummums, “in which house Ford died, had been absent for some time, and returned, not knowing that Ford was dead. Going down to the cellar, according to the story, he met him; going down again, he met him a second time. When he came up he asked some people of the house what Ford could be doing there. They told him Ford was dead. The waiter took a fever, in which he lay for some time”. See http://www.literarylondon.org/london-journal/march2008/maclauchlin.html

6. Quoted in Dan Cruickshank, The Secret History of Georgian London…, 2009.

The Ghost Detected – the Cat Acquitted

The Ghost or Poor Paddy and the Black Cat, Laurie & Whittle, 1801

The subject of ghosts and the supernatural is one which appears again and again in satirical prints of the long eighteenth-century. This may have been the age in which the principles of rationalism and scientific enquiry first came to fruition, but it was also a time in which the superstitions and folk-lore of the early modern age continued to hold sway over the vast majority of ordinary Britons. Theirs was a world in which magic charms, peculiar home remedies and omens were features of everyday life and in which even the most trifling of setbacks could be attributed to the intervention of some supernatural agency.

London’s caricaturists mocked and despaired at the archaic beliefs of their less well-educated countrymen in equal measure. William Hogarth’s famous print Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism (1761) makes it eminently clear what the great artist thought of notorious supernatural hoaxers such as Mary Toft and William Kent and those who were foolish enough to be taken in by them. Such attitudes became a recurring theme in British satires, with caricaturists such as Richard Newton, Thomas Rowlandson and Isaac Cruikshank all producing images in which a stereotypical figure of fun – the country bumpkin, the Irishman or the pompous clergyman – flies into fits of terror after mistaking some innocuous item for a supernatural being.

In 1801 Laurie & Whittle published The Ghost or Poor Paddy and the Black Cat, in which an incredulous Irishman is frightened by a shadow in his room at night, only to find that it is in fact a stray cat. Oddly the print seems to have prefigured an actual series of strange events which were to take place in London some twenty-six years later and were subsequently reported in the newspapers under the title. The Ghost Detected – The Cat Acquited! It’s a story which could have almost stepped straight off the pages of a contemporary caricature print.

During the winter of 1827, rumours began to circulate around London of a strange spirit that was said to be plaguing a family who lived in a tenement located in the narrow confines of Rose Alley in the City. The residents of 17 Rose Alley ate a modest breakfast of bread and butter together each morning and then set off to work, being careful to secure the remains of their meal in a kitchen cupboard to serve as supper upon their return in the evening. One Tuesday in mid-November the family returned home to find the bread and butter missing, but the cupboard was still closed and fastened and the house was otherwise undisturbed. Thinking the incident odd but not knowing exactly how to respond, they replaced the missing produce, retired to bed and left for work again as usual the next morning. They returned home that evening to find their food had once again vanished from inside a closed cupboard. At first they assumed that their pet cat had somehow being breaking in to the kitchen cupboard and helping itself to their dinner. Fortunately for the cat, this theory was discredited when one of the more sensible residents of the house pointed out that a cat was unlikely to break into a cupboard, eat its owners dinner and then careful lock the door behind itself. Rats or mice were suspected next, but a thorough search of the cupboard revealed no holes through which even the most determined of vermin could have gained access to the food.

The perplexed occupants of number 17 then began to suspect that they had been the victim of a professional burglar, and even went so far as to begin approaching their neighbours to ask if they had seen anyone breaking into the house during the day, or making off with a half-eaten loaf of bread and some butter. An old lady who lived directly opposite swore blind that she had seen no-one entering the house during the days on which the thefts had occurred, noting that the narrowness of the alleyway made it impossible for someone to enter the house in question without passing directly in-front of her own window. She also questioned whether a professional picklock would bother breaking into a house in order to relieve its occupants of the half-eaten remains of their breakfast.

Things began to taken an even more sinister turn when the family members found themselves being woken in the dead of night be the sound of shuffling footsteps and doors being opened and closed in the darkness. Convinced now that they were being haunted by a powerful supernatural force, the residents of 17 Rose Alley sent for a local fortune-teller to try and make contact with the restless spirit, but finding her away from home they turned to the only available substitute – A local man whose ability to perform basic magic trick qualified him as the local expert on otherworldly matters. The magician arrived at the house, was appraised of the situation and immediately carried out an inspection of the premises. He paused over the fireplace for some moments before reaching up inside the chimney and removing a handful of lime plaster which it appeared had recently been dislodged from the inside of the flue. He then asked who lived next door and on learning that the premises had stood empty for several months, immediately insisted that the landlord was fetched and that a search of the premises be conducted.

On searching the abandoned house the magician and his companions found traces of bread and butter leading to a large linen cupboard. Throwing open the doors of the cupboard they were confronted by the earthly and decidedly recalcitrant features of a small boy of about nine or ten years old, who had clearly been eating and sleeping there for some time. The ‘ghost’ was duly dragged off to the local magistrate’s where he admitted under questioning that he had been living in the empty house for a number of days, ever since he had run away from his parent’s house in Cooper’s Gardens, Hackney.

Magistrate: “And how did you support yourself”

Boy: “I was in the waste house and eat [sic] the bread and butter”

M: “How did you contrive to get the bread and butter and what brought you into the cupboard?”

B: “I went up the chimney of one house, and down the chimney of the other, and brought the bread and butter with me the same way back, and slept in the cupboard for fear of the Bogeys”

M: “Who are the Bogeys?”

B: “The ghosts”

The magistrate, concluding that such a boy would be “a very dangerous instrument in the hands of a regular home breaker” decided to immediately dispatch him to the workhouse at Bethnal Green, from whence he would be returned to his mother and father in Hackney. The parish Beadle was called for but immediately smelt a rat, knowing the area quiet well he claimed that he was not aware of any young boy’s that had lived in Cooper’s Gardens for upwards of twenty years. The boy quickly offered to settle the issue by having the elderly caretaker of the workhouse escort him home to his father immediately. The Beadle acquiesced and ordered his assistant to convey the wayward child to Hackney and either discharge him into the care of his parents or bring him back for immediate punishment and consignment to the workhouse. When the pair arrived at Cooper’s Gardens and the parish caretaker asked his young charge to point out his father’s front door, the boy responded by sticking two fingers up to the astonished old man and running off at full tilt back towards the City. Thus the apparition of Rose Alley vanished without a trace.

CFP: ‘James Gillray@200: Caricaturist without a Conscience?’ Oxford, March 2015

Gillray exhibition… Ashmolean Museum… chance to explore the latest scholarship…satirical print geek overload! Be there and be square.

Romantic Illustration Network

http://www.new.ox.ac.uk/james-gillray200-caricaturist-without-conscience

James Gillray@200: Caricaturist without a Conscience?

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford & New College, Oxford present:
A one-day symposium to be held at the Ashmolean Museum
Saturday 28 March 2015

CFP deadline: 15 November 2014

Programme will be announced: 21 November 2014

James Gillray’s reputation in the two centuries since his death has been as varied and layered as his prints. Trained at the Royal Academy, he failed at reproductive printmaking, yet became, according to the late-eighteenth-century Weimar journal London und Paris, one of the greatest European artists of the era. Napoleon, from his exile on St Helena, allegedly remarked that Gillray’s prints did more to run him out of power than all the armies of Europe. In England, patriots had hired him to propagandize against the French and touted him as a great national voice, but he was an unreliable gun-for-hire. At a large public banquet, during the heat of…

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