C.J. Grant, The Caricaturist, A Monthly Show Up, 1831-1832

Caricaturist No. 8, March 1832

I’m back! The opportunity to sneak a post onto the blog finally appeared in the dying embers of 2022 and so here we are. Whether this becomes a regular occurrence in the year ahead remains to be seen, but for now let’s pour ourselves a festive drop and take a look at C.J. Grant’s first foray into the world of caricature magazines.

The Caricaturist, A Monthly Show Up was a produced by Grant, published by Edward King and sold from the latter’s “news agency office” [1] on London’s Chancery Lane from circa July 1831 until December 1832. Examples are scarce and frequently found in a mutilated state, with the masthead having been trimmed off (as with many of the examples shown here) or even the entire sheet cut up into scraps. As is so often the case with satirical prints from this period, those copies that have survived and found their way into institutional collections are not catalogued in any detail. [2] Nevertheless The Caricaturist is worthy of note for the obvious role it played in influencing the form and content of both of Grant’s most well-known works – The Political Drama (1833 – 1836) and Every Body’s Album & Caricature Magazine (1834 – 1835) – and also as an example of the way in which satirical prints were changing in the second quarter of the nineteenth-century, as new technologies and an influx of middle class consumers displaced the conventions of late eighteenth-century caricature.  

At this point it’s perhaps worth our while to take a short diversion and explain the use of the word ‘magazine’ when talking about the satirical print trade of this era. While we think of a magazine as a glossy periodical consisting of text and pictures, our forefathers applied the word differently and indeed its use seems to have changed somewhat during the first three decades of the nineteenth century. The title ‘caricature magazine’ was initially used as a term of reference for an otherwise unrelated sets of single sheet prints that were bound behind a title page and sold either collectively or on a serialised basis. Its use in this context lent heavily on the military etymology of ‘magazine’ as the word for a place in which arms and ammunition were stored. It does seem coincidental that caricatures themselves had been referred to as ‘squibs’ –  a slang term for a bomb – for a decade or two before ‘magazine’ seems to have crept into general use as a collective noun for sets of such prints.[3]  But from 1825 onwards the word was associated with a specific type of satirical publication; folio-sized sheets carrying several smaller engravings which were published serially under a shared title. The format combined aspects of the humorous scrap album sheets that were becoming extremely popular during the 1820s, with the equally novel appearance of a graphic newspaper. [4] It took off rapidly after 1830 and several different titles were published in London, including most notably McLean’s Monthly Sheet of Caricatures or The Looking Glass (1830 – 1836), The Odd Volume (1834) and the aforementioned Every Body’s Album… It was claimed that the latter title eventually achieved sales figures numbering in the tens of thousands, if true, demonstrates that the most successful caricature magazines were comparable to national newspapers in the size and geographic spread of their audiences. [5]

Caricaturist No. 10, May 1832

From the perspective of a customer walking into a print-shop in the early 1830s, the appeal of the format is self-evident; magazines offered the opportunity to purchase several smaller caricatures for the price of a single old-fashioned copperplate engraving. An advertisement for the first edition of The Caricaturist, which appeared in July 1831, indicates that Grant and King were not only aware of this but made in integral to their marketing. An advertisement for the first number informs us that customers can expect “nearly 30 original Lithographic Designs” arranged on four pages for a price of 1s. 6d. per uncoloured copy, making The Caricaturist “[t]he Cheapest Work of the kind” available. [6] This aggressive approach to pricing ultimately proved to be unsustainable and within twelve months the number of engravings had been cut by half. [7] But by then the magazine had an established viewership and it appears that – whether by accident or design – the earlier editions were effectively ‘loss leaders’ that allowed Grant and King to carve a niche for themselves in an otherwise crowded marketplace.

The Caricaturist offered its viewers a mix of social and political satire in each monthly issue. The social satires frequently reflect the contemporary taste for visual puns and are usually either wince-makingly unfunny or crassly insensitive by today’s standards. Issue No. 8 for example, published when Britain was gripped by the early phases of a global cholera pandemic that would kill several thousand people in London alone within a few months, features a small caricature of death making a pile of coffins as he gloats: “Who says Trade’s Dead”. Another panel from an unnumbered plate contains an engraving of a peg-legged naval veteran attempting to run by “Putting his Best Leg Foremost”. Other topics include the comic mixing of high and low culture, the dubious delights that supposedly await those emigrating to Britain’s antipodean colonies and the popular theatre. Grant had previously attempted to establish himself as a writer of comic theatre and evidence of his continued interest in melodrama and the stage appears in many his caricatures throughout the 1830s. [8]

Caricaturist, No. 14, September 1832

Political subjects dominated though and seem to have accounted for around three quarters of the images engraved for each issue. Unsurprisingly, given Grant’s blossoming association with the Radical movement which called for universal manhood suffrage and sweeping constitutional reform, the editorial tone of the satires is virulently and frequently violently anti-conservative in its outlook. The monarch, the Tory party and the various institutions of church and state that make up the establishment are represented as being engaged in a war against the interests and liberties of the British people. The theme of confrontation is applied literally to a number of frenetic battle scenes, including most notably TO BE or NOT to BE. That’s the QUESTION – A National to be Free She Only Wills It, [Plate 2] in which slapstick violence provides a light-hearted veneer to an otherwise deeply subversive image in which factory workers are shown massacring an army led by the Duke of Wellington. It’s a picture which reflects the radical tone that crept into the later editions of the series. For example, The Slumbering Lion from issue No. 10, shows us a heavily armed John Bull dozing ominously on the front bench of the House of Commons as he awaits the outcome of the second reading of the Reform Bill. Selling Off [Plate 3] sounds a similar warning note in its depiction of John Bull as a street vendor doing a brisk trade in miniature models of revolutionary guillotines. In this respect, The Caricaturist undoubtedly presaged C.J. Grant’s move towards a more uncompromising and aggressive form of satire that would find its fullest expression in The Political Drama.

While it’s impossible to quantify the level of commercial success the magazine enjoyed, it certainly seems to have gained recognition and found an audience. Newspaper commentaries praised The Caricaturist for being “designed with a great deal of whim and broad humour” [9] and called it “droll and full of spirit”, predicting that… “[t]he artist, Grant, is likely to acquire a high distinction”. [10] An anonymous contributor to The Athenaeum even admitted that: “We have laughed heartily over it, and have ourselves dispatched a copy to friends abroad, as likely to give them a good idea of the feelings at home – and we recommend others do the same.” [11] While it’s almost certainly the case that at least some of these commentaries were not genuine, the relative longevity of the title and the rapidly expanding list of provincial retailers willing to act as official distributors of The Caricaturist indicates that a degree of praise – even self-reverential praise – may have been justified. [12]

Plate 1 – Undated copy [masthead trimmed]

This naturally brings us to the question of why The Caricaturist seems to have been discontinued shortly after its 17^th issue was published in December 1832. The simplest and most plausible explanation is that it had ceased to be profitable for its publisher. A review which appeared in The Satirist newspaper published around the same time as the magazine’s final issue suggests a potential decline in its fortunes:

THE CARICATURIST, or Monthly Show-up, boasts its accustomed share of whim. We wonder the artist does not make an effort to curtail the extravagance of his invention; his humour would be more relishable, and the general effect of his wit much heightened. The lithographing of this monthly satire is sadly executed. It would be to the interest of the publisher to place it in the hands of abler artists than those at present engaged upon it. [13]

However, I find this review intriguing and can’t help but wonder if it hints at a more complex story involving a breakdown in relations between Grant and King. The Satirist had made several favourable references to The Caricaturist in 1831 and 1832 before performing a sudden volte to attack Grant. Many of these reviews were little more than thinly veiled advertisements and the repeated use of similar phrases indicates the possibility of them being the work of a single hand – maybe even that of King himself. [14] The incongruous tone of this article, which praises The Caricaturist while simultaneously calling on it’s publisher to sack the artist responsible for producing it, gives the impression of a dispute between the two men being played out surreptitiously in the pages of The Satirist. Grant certainly seems to have had a disputatious temper and would go onto to engage in a very public argument with the printseller Gabriel Shire Tregear in 1835. [15] An advertisement for The Caricaturist which appeared in The Satirist in October 1831 indicates that King may not have been lacking in his capacity to make enemies either, as it ends with the slightly jarring declaration that:

Plate 2 – Undated copy [masthead trimmed]

The encouragement E. King has met with for his first numbers of the Caricaturist will stimulate him to greater exertions; assuring the Public, neither threats nor bribes shall deter him from pursuing that course which had given such general satisfaction. [16]

Whatever reasons lay behind the decision to bring The Caricaturist to a halt, it certainly appeared to mark the end of Grant and King’s commercial relationship. The latter seems to have abandoned the publication of satirical prints altogether after 1832 and chosen to focus on the sale of newspapers. [17] Grant’s career as a caricaturist was still in the ascendant and within 3-4 months he would go onto produce the first plate from The Political Drama series. The publication of another caricature magazine – Everybody’s Album… – followed a year later, arguably marking the commercial and creative peak of his career before he too tumbled back into obscurity.

Louis-Leopold Boilly Radicalism Thomas Dolby

References

Plate 3 – Undated copy [masthead trimmed]

1. Weekly True Sun, 13th April 1834, p.24.
2. British Museum No. 1995,1105.2 for a copy of issue no. 2 and Library of Trinity College Dublin OLS CARI-ROB 1296 for one of issue no. 12.
3. For an early example see the frontispiece to Tegg’s Caricature Magazine (1807)
4. The first such publication was The Glasgow Looking Glass (1825 – 1826)
5. Thomas Dawson, who published the later issues of Every Body’s Album… claimed to have sold 39,000 copies per edition. This compares with an estimated circulation of 10,000 copies for each daily edition of The Times newspaper in 1834.
6. The Age, 31st July 1831, p.7.
7. The Athenaeum, 10th December 1831, pp. 806 – 807 indicates that the price initially remained unaltered but the size of the publication was reduced to “a single folio sheet [with] some twenty or more caricatures”. This did not remain fixed however and although the July 1832 edition was priced at 2s, it’s size had been increased to include a second page of engravings Library of Trinity College Dublin OLS CARI-ROB 1296.
8. For more on Grant’s early career in the theatre and the influence of the popular theatre on his caricatures see M. Crowther, C.J. Grant’s Political Drama: Radicalism and Graphic Satire in the Age of Reform (2020)
9. Ballot, 5th February 1832, p.3.
10. Satirist, 4th September 1831, p6.
11. Athenaeum, ibid.
12. Ibid, 8th January 1832, p. 1. “Recently published by E. King. Chancery Lane, price 1s. 6d., No. V of a singularly novel and moral, graphical and quizzical, caustic and physical, political censorial and pictorial MONTHLY NEWSPAPER, entitled THE CARICATUIST, or MONTHLY SHEW UP… To be hand in Manchester, of C.H. Lewis, bookseller and general newspaper agent, 6 Market-street (by whom trade in this and the surrounding towns may be supplier) and of most printers, bookseller, and newsmen in the Kingdom.” A Mr Nightingale of the “Chronicle Office, Liverpool” became The Caricaturist’s second provincial wholesaler in the summer of 1832 – Ibid Satirist, 5th August 1832, p. 1.
13. Satirist, 9th December 1832, p. 3.
14. Ibid, 23rd October 1831, p.1., 8th January 1832, p. 1. & 5th August 1832, p. 1. The words ‘whim’ and ‘folly’ are repeatedly used in reviews and advertisements for the magazine and the phrase ‘hitting follies as they fly’ appears more than once, see and Athenaeum, ibid. Even if King did not write these reviews himself, his connection with the newspaper trade may have given him influence over their content.
15. https://theprintshopwindow.wordpress.com/2014/06/29/guest-post-they-quarreled-somehow-g-s-tregear-c-j-grant/
16. Satirist, 4th September 1831, p. 1, 30th October 1831, p. 1, 8th January 1832, p.1. & 6th May 1832, p. 1. The frequency with which this statement appears in King’s advertisements is perhaps indicative of a deliberately marketing ploy intended to amplify the impact of Grant’s satire on those who appeared in The Caricaturist.
17. Weekly True Sun, 13th April 1834, p.24.

C.J. Grant, 659 to 36!!, The Conservative Angel and The Society for the Suppression of Conservative Vice: Satirising Politics in the Provinces, 1835 – 37

The artist and engraver C.J. Grant was commissioned to produce prints attacking the Tory candidates standing for the constituency of Bury St Edmunds in the general elections of 1835 and 1837. Together these two prints possibly constitute the only surviving examples of a major metropolitan caricaturist commenting on provincial politics during this period. Of course, satirical prints had been published in relatively small numbers outside London since at least the mid-1700s, but these were produced by local artists and usually dealt with universal subjects – such as fashion, manners and occupations – that would appeal to people living beyond an immediate locale. Satires on local politics were simply too specific and the market for them too small to make the publication of such prints commercially viable. A handful of closely fought elections in the 1820s and 30s proved to the exception to this rule, with campaign funds being used to subsidise publishing costs and reduce the relevance of market forces. This was certainly the case here; the Radicals of Bury St Edmunds reached out to Grant to enlist his help in rendering their Tory opponents ridiculous and thus unelectable. [1]

The publication of both prints is credited to the members of “the Society for the Suppression of Conservative Vice”. No record of the Society survives and indeed the name may be a collective term for a looser conglomerate of Radical activists who subsidised the print’s production costs. Some of these individuals were no doubt the self-proclaimed “Lovers of Reform of Abuses” from which the publication line of the 1835 caricature informs us copies of the print could be purchased. The only individual named in the publication lines is that of Edward Birchinall (fl. 1838 – 1883), a printer and bookseller whose premises were located at 20 Churchgate Street, Bury St Edmunds. Nothing further is known of Edward but his father William Birchinall (1760 – 1827) preceded him in the trade and his name appears on earlier lists of provincial retailers selling copies of works by William Cobbett and Henry Hunt. [2] Edward therefore evidently inherited his father’s Radicalism as well as his business. Grant’s initials appear on both prints and the signature on the earlier of the two plates is followed by the word “London”, suggesting he did not leave the metropolis in order to carry out this commission. Grant must instead have been supplied with sketches or a written description of the individuals he was being asked to caricature by Birchinall or one of his Radical associates. Given the significant differences in the way some of the protagonists are depicted in the two plates, the latter seems more likely the former.   

We don’t know why the Radicals of Bury St Edmunds felt it necessary to go to the trouble and expense of hiring a caricaturist to attack their enemies? When seeking a rationale, one can only point to reports which state that the tone of political discourse within the town was – even by the standards of the day – considered to be particularly acrimonious. [3] The dispute centred around the relationship between the Radicals of the town and the small clique of Tories who dominated the Municipal Corporation. The Corporation was an unelected body responsible for administering civic government and setting and spending local taxes. It had been established by royal charter in the early 1600s and done little to modernist itself in the intervening two centuries. Membership was obtained at the invitation of setting council members and posts were held for life. This lack of accountability turned the Corporation into a cesspit of petty corruption, with civic funds being squandered on lavish dinners for councilmen and parish offices used as sinecures for their friends and family members. The Corporation also exploited its lawful right to appoint the town’s two Members of Parliament – a privilege that was not finally revoked until the introduction of the 1832 Reform Act – by selling the seats to the Earl of Jermyn and the Duke of Grafton. Unsurprisingly, this situation enraged the growing middle class of Bury St Edmunds, whose taxes funded this largesse and who began to gravitate towards the Radical movement during the course of the 1830s. [4]

The earlier of the two plates was published on 4^th January 1835, just two days before the polls in Bury St Edmunds opened. The title 659 to 36!! Great Odds for the OAK Stake, refers to the shifting balance of power between the 36 unelected members of the Corporation and the 659 registered voters in the town. It also punningly refers to the Oakes family – a local banking dynasty who had dominated the Tory faction within Bury St Edmunds for generations – comparing the chances of a Tory victory to those of a longshot win at the Epsom Oaks horserace. Captain Orbell Oakes, a serving officer in the Royal Navy and aspiring Tory politician, pulls at a rope that has been tied to the scales and vainly attempts to correct the balance in the favour of wealth and privilege. The rotten oak tree in the background may be intended to represent his father, Orbell Oakes Snr, or grandfather, James Henry Oakes, both of whom were members of the Corporation. The eagle that hovers above the tree is likely a reference to Francis King Eagle, the Radical candidate for Bury St Edmunds. [5]  

A man crawls out of a giant cheese on the right and complains about receiving three votes in an unspecified poll of some kind. This may be an oblique reference to the election of a new parish guardian in the summer of 1834, in which one of the Tory nominees received only 3 votes out of over 400 that were available. [6] A corpulent man carrying the accoutrements of a pharmacist greets an emaciated undertaker in the corner of the plate below.  The pharmacist is Abraham Gall who was a longstanding and prominent Corporation member, while the undertaker may be Major-General Sir Charles Broke Vere. Broke Vere was standing for the Tories in the county constituency of East Suffolk (which included Bury St Edmunds). As his title suggests, he was an army officer rather than an undertaker, but Grant habitually depicted army officers in the derogatory guise of butchers or undertakers. Alderman Edward Mower appears to the left and is caricatured as a down-at-heel agricultural labourer in reference to his surname.

Three more figures are shown on the left of the plate. Richard Dalton is “Turn Again Dick” a two-faced figure brandishing papers bearing contradictory views on the need for political reform. Dalton was an enthusiastic supporter of the campaign to secure parliamentary reform during the early 1830s and had delivered a stirring speech on the subject at Stowmarket in 1830 which was still remembered years later (a copy of which he holds in his hand). However, once a suitably moderate version of reform was achieved in 1832, Dalton converted to Toryism and began arguing against extension of the franchise to include the working classes. [7] The corpulent figure to his left is John Boldero. He was a poultry farmer and liquor merchant who also sat on the Corporation and served as a magistrate. Several months after this print was published Boldero, Abraham Gall and another Alderman named John Deck were fined £5 in a civil lawsuit brought by a business rival who claimed that the Boldero had abused his powers in order to prevent him selling liquor at the county fair. [8] John Deck is depicted above Boldero. Deck owned the local auction house and is shown selling off the Corporation to the highest bidder, a reference to allegations of bribes being paid to several electoral officials by agents of Earl Jermyn. [9]

The second prints was published without a specific date or title, although it’s often catalogued as The Conservative Angel in reference to the label applied to the uppermost figure. Boldero once again appears on the extreme left of the design, this time being carried by John Deck whose likeness is notably different from that of the first plate. Robert Bevan, a banker and business partner of the Oakes family, dances to their right. Bevan sat on the Central Committee of the West Suffolk Conservative Association and held the office of Sheriff of Bury St Edmunds. A dissenter and a Radical in his youth, Bevan cast off his reforming principles in later life and was dubbed “Jumping Jim Crow” by his former associates. [10] Fredrick Nunn, another Conservative Association member and local sheep farmer appear to the right and is depicted as an ovine nun at prayer. [11] The members of the Bury St Edmunds Municipal Corporation are being plunged into an abyss above Nunn’s head. The Corporation had been abolished by Act of Parliament in August 1835 and replaced with an elected local council in which the Whigs and Radicals held a majority. Whig councilman George Creed stands at the side of the pit and watches his predecessors’ departure with glee. Creed was a surgeon who held the dubious distinction of having removed the skin from a notorious murderer following execution and used it to bind a copy of a pamphlet detailing the man’s crimes. [12]

William Atmer, the landlord of The Angel Inn, flies along the top edge of the image. Atmer benefited heartily from his connection with the Tories, receiving generous contracts to supply food and drink for civic functions and Conservative Association dinners. [13] The printer Henry Gardener and a local tailor named Mr Andrews are caught in the “Conservative Rat Trap” beneath him. The former was married to the latter’s daughter and both were active in the Conservative Association but the specific reasons for their appearance in the print are unknown. The title of the book in Gardener’s hands – “Bridgewater’s Treatise £50” – refers to the recent by-election for the nearby constituency of Bridgewater in which the Tories were alleged to have engaged in the widespread bribery of voters. [14]

The banker and Conservative Association member George Browne sits at the bottom of the plate. He holds a leg of mutton and eats a pair of boots. The mutton refers to a trivial spat between the Radicals and the Tories over the question of whose political club was the oldest. The Radicals dismissed Tory claims to precedence by arguing that the Conservative Association had started life as a mere dining club and mockingly referred to the Tories as “the Mutton Club” thereafter. [15] Patrick Macintyre was the Secretary of the Association at the time of the print’s publication. He appears to Nunn’s right and is depicted in a manner which is typical of anti-Scottish satires of the mid-eighteenth century. Heavily inebriated and dressed in tartan, Macintyre leans against a scratching post to relieve himself from the effects of an infestation of fleas. He drunkenly proposes a toast to the Duke of Argyll, which is possibly an inaccurate reference to John Stuart, the 3^rd Earl of Bute (1713 – 1793), who was both the first Scot and the first Tory to hold the office of Prime Minister following the Act of Union in 1707. Bute was a nephew of the 2^nd Duke of Argyll but was not connected with the family politically. Indeed the Argylls had long been Whigs, with the 5^th Duke holding a minor office in the Cabinet of Lord Melbourne. 

Abraham Gall snoozes in a chair in the far right corner of the image. Gall had been ousted from office when the Municipal Corporation was abolished by Act of Parliament in 1835 but had peevishly refused to hand over the official insignia and plate to the new town council until forced to do so be writ of court. He is shown dreaming of the hearty dinners he had enjoyed at the Corporation’s expense and these are represented by the gaggle of animals that surrounds him. [16]

The three vignettes that fill the upper right corner of the plate are the difficult to decipher. “Don Diego De Carle_os lie-ing in state” is presumably another attack on Major-General Sir Charles Broke Vere, who is now depicted as a Spanish conquistador and accused of lying to the electorate in some way. The fish emerging from “The Pond of Corruption” are two local Conservative activists whose surnames were Gudgeon and Haddock but the specific nature of their role in the election is unclear. Haddock owned a pawnbroker’s shop and it is presumably the door of his premises which the Whig and Tory candidates are shown entering with their election pledges hanging from their back pockets. [17]

I would welcome any further insight that readers may be able to offer on the characters and events depicted in either of these two prints.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

References

1. For example, the Alnwick election of 1826 and the Northumberland county elections of 1832 resulted in the publication of caricatures supporting both the Whig-Radical and Tory candidates. https://www.abebooks.co.uk/Coloured-Cartoons-Alnwick-Election-Cover-Title/1596838265/bd
2. H. Hunt, Correspondence; consisting chiefly of Letters and Addresses on the subject of Radical Reform, (London, 1820), p. 48. Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, vol. 57 no. 13, 25^th March 1826, p. 25.
3. An editorial in the Suffolk Chronicle, 9^th July 1831, p. 4, lamented that “a spirit of the bitterest party feeling” prevailed throughout the county and this continued in the years following the introduction of the Reform Act. Charles Dickens, then a young reporter with The Morning Chronicle newspaper, visited Bury St Edmunds in January 1835 to cover the elections. The events he witnessed are thought to have given birth to the fictional town of Eatanswill which appears in the early chapters of The Pickwick Papers (1836). Eatanswill is a town riven by perpetual petty feuding between the supporters of ‘the Blues’ (Tories) and ‘the Buffs’ (Whigs).
4. For general background on politics in the town see Proceedings at the Election of two Burgesses for the Borough of Bury St. Edmund’s, (Bury St Edmunds, 1835) and https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/constituencies/bury-st-edmunds
5. The Bury Radicals attacked Captain Oakes for drawing a salary from the Corporation while he was abroad serving with the Navy. See Bury and Norwich Post, 1^st July 1835, p. 3.For commentary on the relative merits of Francis King Eagle and other members of the Oakes family, see Speech delivered at the nomination of candidates in Bury St Edmunds, (Bury St Edmunds, 1835) p. 6.
6. Suffolk Chronicle, 30^th August 1834, p. 4. The candidate’s name is given as “Mr Howe”.
7. One Radical described Dalton as “A Gentleman whose political… opinions have assumed the colours of a harlequin’s vest, professing from Radical to Whig-Radical, and from Conservative to Ultra-Tory… The party who thrust him forward, must have been influenced by some sinister motives.” The Suffolk Chronicle, 27th June 1835, p.3.
8. The plaintiff’s statement included sarcastic references to Boldero’s weight that caused laughter in the public gallery. The Suffolk Chronicle, 1^st August 1835.
9. The allegations of bribery on the part of the Tories continued to circulate for several months after the election. Bury & Norwick Post, 13^th May 1835, p.2.
10. Suffolk Chronicle, 29^th April 1837, p. 4.
11.  A list of the Association’s committee members can be found in Ibid, 22^nd July 1837, p. 3.
12.  The book, along with remnants of the condemned man’s scalp and ear survive to this day: https://www.culture24.org.uk/places-to-go/london/art44179
13. For an account of a gathering of the West Suffolk Conservative Association’s committee at the Angel Inn, see Suffolk Chronicle, 22nd July 1837, p. 3.
14. Notice of the wedding appeared in the Bury and Norwich Post, 23^rd August 1837, p. 4. Allegations of Tory bribery in the Bridgewater by-election can be found in the Ipswich Journal, 27^th May 1837, p.5.
15. Bury and Norwich Post, 14^th January 1835, p 4., Suffolk Chronicle, 17^th June 1835, p4 and 27^th May 1837, p. 3.
16. “The old corporation was substantially in debt and the last Alderman, Abraham Gall, (1835-36) actually refused to hand over the insignia and plate to the new Council. Gall wanted to sell the assets to pay off the old corporation’s debts. Eventually a judgement was obtained to enforce this transfer.” http://www.stedmundsburychronicle.co.uk/Chronicle/1813-1899.htm
17. Haddock’s name appears in the Suffolk Chronicle, 22^nd April 1837, p. 3. The article also mentions that he accompanied F.G. Calthorpe, Early Jermyn’s Tory running mate, on his canvas of the town. R. Gudgeon helped to organise an illumination that the Bury Tories staged to celebrate the coronation of William IV in 1831. Bury and Norwich Post, 14^th September 1831, p. 3.

C.J. Grant’s Political Drama – An Online Talk

I’ll be giving a short talk about my book on the caricaturist C.J. Grant at 2pm (GMT) on 9th December 2020. The event will be hosted by the Working Class Movement Library as part of their series of online lectures for lockdown. 

The talks are free and open to everybody, so do feel free to pop along to say a virtual hello. You can go to the event page by clicking HERE. A registration link will be added to that page in the coming days (I’ll try and remember to add it here too) and registered guests will receive an email with a Zoom link shortly before the talk begins.

New book: C.J. Grant’s Political Drama: Radicalism and Graphic Satire in the Age of Reform

You might have noticed that things have been rather quiet around here for the last year or two? There are a lot of reasons for this: I have a family and a job like many of you, but I’ve also been spending most of my spare time writing a book about the caricaturist C.J. Grant and I’m very pleased to announce that it’s now finished.

C.J. Grant’s Political Drama: Radicalism and Graphic Satire in the Age of Reform provides a detailed look at Grant’s life and his most significant work as a satirist – the substantial series of wood-engraved radical political satires that was published under the collective title of The Political Drama. For those of you who don’t know Grant, he was a caricaturist who briefly dominated the lower end of the market for humorous imagery in London during the latter half of the 1830s. His popularity was such that by 1838 the author William Makepeace Thackeray felt moved to complain that his “rude wood-cuts” adorned every cheap newspaper that one encountered on the streets of London. “…[A]lmost all [are] from the hand of the same artist”, Thackeray harrumphed, “Grant, by name. They are outrageous caricatures; squinting eyes, wooden legs, and pimpled noses, forming the chief points of fun.’ If the impression these images conveyed was to be believed…one would imagine that the aristocracy of the country were the most ignorant and ill-educated part of its population – the House of Lords an absolute assembly of ninnies – the Universities only seminaries where folly and vice are taught.’

The Political Drama set the tone of many of the prints that Grant was to produce during the latter part of his career and was to cement his longstanding association with the Radical movement and its demands for democratic reform. The image of late-Hanoverian England that leaps from the pages of The Political Drama is one of a society defined by its iniquities. In which the self-proclaimed elite shamelessly feather their nests at the expense of the public purse while the poor are left to fester in abject squalor. It is a world where politicians are corrupt, the king is a hen-pecked old fool, the Church is debased and the forces of law and order exist solely to protect the privileges of the powerful. Even John Bull, so often the doughty hero-figure of contemporary caricature, is a times vilified as a dupe and a dullard, the deserving victim of his own docility and excessive deference. This story is told in a series of visually impactful wood-engravings which borrow heavily from chapbooks and the lurid street literature of the day.

And yet The Political Drama, like much of Grant’s work, remains largely forgotten today. Complete editions of the series are rare and difficult to access, and images of most of the individual prints cannot be found online. C.J. Grant’s Political Drama: Radicalism and Graphic Satire in the Age of Reform aims to rectify this situation by providing a fully illustrated guide to The Political Drama as well as an overview of Grant’s life and career. The book includes a foreword by Professor Brian Maidment and images of each of the prints in the series, accompanied by an explanation of the individuals and events being satirised. By including photographs of all of the 131 prints in the series, it is my hope that the book will appeal to those with a general interest in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century caricature, as well as those with a particular interest in Grant or the politics of his era.

Thanks are owed both to the trustees of the Working Class Movement Library and Professor Brian Maidment for helping me with my work.

C.J. Grant’s Political Drama: Radicalism and Graphic Satire in the Age of Reform by Mathew Crowther is available to purchase now from Amazon. 

C.J. Grant, Twelfth Night Characters, 1833

The 5th January marks the arrival of Twelfth Night and the end of Christmas. Although barely acknowledged today – other than by the dour reminder that today is the day on which we must take down our Christmas decorations in order to avoid a run of bad luck – for centuries Twelfth Night was actually regarded as the climax of the festive period, an occasion for feasting, drinking and raucous behaviour.

Things had calmed down a bit by the early nineteenth-century but Twelfth Night was still considered to be a time of parties and merry-making. Twelfth Night celebrations in the early 1800s were characterised by the consumption of a rich fruit cake (inventively dubbed the Twelfth Night Cake) and the playing of a parlour game entitled Twelfth Night Characters. Players of Twelfth Night Characters were invited to draw a piece of paper from a hat. The paper carried the image of a humorous character accompanied by a few lines of verse which the player was expected to read aloud in the manner of their character whilst other players tried to guess who they were imitating.  The game had become so ubiquitous by the turn of the nineteenth-century that printed sheets of Twelfth Night Characters were often sold alongside Twelfth Night Cakes in London’s bakeries and pastry shops. The author William Hone described these sheets of cheap, playing-card sized, caricatures as being “commonplace or gross” but considered them preferable to the more expensive versions that were peddled by the fashionable printshops of the West End, which he dismissed as “inane”. 

In December 1833 the caricaturist C.J. Grant used the familiar theme of Twelfth Night Characters as the basis for a political satire attacking members of the establishment. The print was issued as plate No. 31 in a sprawling series of woodcut-engraved political prints published under the collective title of The Political Drama between 1833 and 1836. Grant’s characters are: “King Blubberhead” (William IV), “Queen Addle-head” (Queen Adelaide), “Uncle Grab-all” (Lord Grey), “Chancellor Humbug” (Lord Brougham), “Paddy O’Killus” (Duke of Wellington), “Old Lawyer Bags” (Lord Eldon), “The Bishop of Bloatbelly” (a stereotypical Anglican bishop), “Ratcatcher Bob” (Sir Robert Peel), “Marchioness of Cunningham” (Lady Conyngham), “‘Fudge’ Hunt”, (Henry Hunt MP), Gaffer Gridiron” (William Cobbett), and “Our Queen Wot is to be” (Princess Victoria).

Grant was a supporter of the Radical movement which advocated democratic political, social and economic reform of the nation. Most of the individuals he caricatured were arch-conservatives who had been opposed even to the very limited extension of the electoral franchise introduced by the Reform Act of 1832 and the fact Grant chose to mock them requires little in the way of further explanation. What is perhaps more interesting is that he also pokes fun at some of his fellow reformers – namely William Cobbett and Henry Hunt. Both men belonged to an older generation of reform-minded politicians who had been regarded as Radicals in their youth but who were growing  uncomfortable with the movement’s drift towards democracy and a membership which was increasingly drawn from the ranks of the working classes. Younger Radicals like Grant and his associates showed little sympathy for the reformers of yesteryear, regarding them as vainglorious old men who were too fond of prevarication and half-measures. Both Hunt and Cobbett were duly mocked for their pretensions to elder statesman status and their unwillingness to wholeheartedly embrace the philosophies of their younger associates. It is in this division that we see the seeds of the factionalism which would eventually undermine the Radicals and their successors the Chartists in the fight to make Britain a more democratic nation. Democracy would come but at a pace that was largely dictated by the ruling classes and it was not finally secured until after the mass slaughter of the First World War.

I’m particularly fond of this print as it’s an unusual example of a caricature which has been produced with an overtly tactile purpose. It was designed to be handled, cut-up and played with. Transforming an innocuous and traditional festive pastime into an act of subversion by encouraging players to mimic and thus mock the mannerisms of the Royal Family and leading politicians of the day. Using entertainment and visual humour as a means of stealthily spreading the Radical credo. It’s also one of the rarer prints in the series, presumably because so many copies were cut into pieces, played with and then thrown away.

A picture of this caricature and the other 130 prints in The Political Drama will appear in an annotated catalogue to the series which I am hoping to publish later this year.