Imagining John Bull, Part 2: The Victorian Age and Beyond

During the 19th century, John Bull featured in many publications. In 1820 the first of several periodicals named John Bull appeared. Its  orientation was Tory or old-style conservative, and it survived until 1892. Others followed in the 20th century, the last ceasing publication in 1964. 

From its inception in the 1840s, the popular humor magazine Punch featured many images of  John Bull. The main artists were John Leech and John Tenniel. The Punch cartoons developed what we might call the mature Victorian John Bull, a tamed version of the hard-drinking, gluttonous, somewhat crude Georgian farmer. 

The Victorian Bull is a matter of fact fellow, more middle class, who dresses respectably in a long-tailed jacket, waistcoat, boots, and a low topper (top hat).

In 1859, Leech drew Bull reacting to exaggerated rumors of a possible French invasion. In response, the English Volunteer Movement arose, which led to the creation of rifle corps, a kind of Home Guard of volunteers. 

Here, Bull is speaking to a Volunteer. He says his bulldog is a weapon the "poodles" (French) should fear. The bulldog soon became a common feature of Bull cartoons and in itself another British symbol.

Leech's younger colleague, Sir John Tenniel, is best known today as the artist responsible for the illustrations in Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. He was also the first cartoonist to receive a knighthood. 

Punch cartoons portray John Bull as a calmer, more thoughtful fellow than the Bull of the Georgian era. He exudes the  "common sense" of the day. Georgian John Bull had generally reflected hard Tory views. Punch's Bull, like the magazine itself, was basically liberal and reformist at home. 

Like Uncle Sam, Victorian John Bull remained firmly patriotic. As the empire expanded, he became increasingly imperialistic in outlook. He also reflected the ethnic prejudices and racialist views of the day. 

An example is "Moonshine" (1883) by J. Proctor. John Bull, with suitably subservient Scots and Welsh supporters, confronts simianized and violent-looking Irish "poll watchers" pressuring people to vote for Irish Home Rule, or autonomy.

Cartoons of Bull did not portray all the Irish as primitive, ape-like creatures. They showed the "loyal" Irish as hearty, clean cut specimens of "Anglo-Saxon" humanity. We can see this in Tenniel's "A Hint to the Loyal Irish"(1868). Bull is wearing a police uniform. He is recruiting special constables to combat the radical Fenians, who had resorted to terrorist acts, including bombings. 

The man facing policeman Bull asks him to "give us the oath (of allegiance to the UK) and some of them sticks. There's hundreds of the boys is ready to help ye Sor." 

Bull was a cheerleader for imperialism in the late Victorian period. Tenniel's "Never Say Die" (1900) shows Bull countering defeatist sentiments by pointing at a poster announcing recent reverses in the Boer War in South Africa. The "reverses" are in fact recent British successes. 

During World War I, Bull became a recruiter for the British military, pressuring young men to "do their bit for God and Country." He now sported a Union Jack vest to buttress his patriotic credentials. 

In 1906, Tory MP Horatio Bottomley revived the John Bull magazine as an unashamedly nationalistic tabloid. After a few difficult years, it became highly profitable. During the First World War, Bottomley's journal denounced the "Germ-Huns" and attacked British residents with German-sounding surnames as potential subversives. By the autumn of 1914, the magazine claimed to have "the largest circulation of any weekly journal in the world."

The enormous carnage of World War I tarnished John Bull's image. As the bodies piled up in their millions, many people rejected the idea that Bull represented the common Briton. Rather, they viewed him as a recruiter of cannon fodder for an establishment responsible for the slaughter. 

In 1937, W.H. Auden wrote in a poem that Bull "passed away at Ypres and Passchendaele," the names of bloody battles on the Western Front. Not quite. But Bull's popularity as a symbol of Englishness or Britishness began to fade. 

In the following decades, Britain gradually became less imperialistic, less boastful, more focused on a peaceful domestic existence. The 1960s, with its youth culture and rebellious anti-imperialistic, anti-war outlook, sent Bull to the dustbin of history. The last John Bull magazine closed down in 1964. 

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Grave Robbing and Murder in Georgian Britain

 Astley Cooper (1768-1841) was one of the most innovative surgeons and anatomists of the early nineteenth century. He pioneered several significant operations and added much to knowledge of the body and pathology. There is a darker side to his story, however, one which reveals much about the relationships between power and poverty.

Cooper, who hailed from Norfolk, had an amazing ability to secure bodies for dissection, for himself and his medical pupils. He once bragged before a parliamentary inquiry into the body snatching trade that he could get anyone's body to dissect if he wanted it badly enough. 

Cooper' main providers were known as resurrectionists, or sack 'em up men. They could earn good money stealing corpses from graves or securing them otherwise before burial. (Image: "The Resurrectionists," c.1775, by Thomas Rowlandson).

In some cases, we don't know how many, the body snatchers didn't wait until the subjects were dead. The most famous murdering body snatchers were Burke and Hare in Edinburgh, who gave us the word "burking" for the procedure. (Image: Burke and Hare smothering a victim -- one of 16 people they murdered).

Less well known than Burke and Hare are the trio of Bishop, Williams, and May. They are known as the "London Burkers." Their operation was uncovered in 1831 after the notorious case of the so-called Italian Boy. The number of their victims is unknown. Bishop and Williams were hung, May died on board a prison ship awaiting transport to Australia. (Image: the London burkers in the dock at their trial)

Several other burkers were executed, and it is likely others were never caught. Cooper got most of his bodies from an organization known as the Borough Gang. They operated out of Southwark, near Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals, where Cooper was a surgeon and anatomist. If you have visited Borough Market, you have been in their heartland. 

Some of the Borough Gang members were or had been hospital porters, dissection room assistants, grave diggers, workhouse officers, and church sextons. Their jobs and experience made them useful to the task of acquiring fresh "subjects." 

Snatched bodies could of persons recently buried. In some cases, the corpses were stolen before burial, from poorhouses, graveyard watch houses, morgues, or houses. Watch houses were created to prevent body snatching from the ground, but the watchmen sometimes looked the other way for a fee. 

(Images: Rotherhithe Watch House, next to the burial ground of St. Mary's Rotherhithe, 1824, and historical plaque. This is likely to have been one of the places the Borough Gang got bodies from due to its proximity to Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals)

 

Body snatching was not even a crime until 1778. It then became a misdemeanor punishable by a fine and at most a few months in prison. It seems odd that a society that hanged people for petty theft would punish corpse stealing so lightly. But the main focus of the Georgian criminal law was to protect property. A dead body was not considered to be property. (Image: Resurrectionists, by Phiz, 1841)

The illegal source of Cooper's "dissection material" did not much hurt his reputation. His income rose to princely sums. He even operated on a king, removing a sebaceous cyst from the head of George IV in 1820. His Majesty rewarded the surgeon with the baronetcy that made him Sir Astley Cooper, Bart.

The Burke and Hare and Italian Boy scandals did lead to a law that gradually put the resurrectionists out of business. In 1832, Parliament passed the Anatomy Act, which permitted the anatomy schools to acquire the bodies of paupers who died in a workhouse if no one claimed them within three days.

The law infuriated the working classes, those most likely to end their days in a workhouse. The fury increased after Parliament added the Poor Law Act of 1834, which made admission to the workhouse a requirement for receiving poor relief (welfare). 

The New Poor Law was designed to make the workhouse environment as unpleasant as possible, to discourage requests for public assistance. Families were broken up, recipients forced to wear uniforms and fed a spare diet. The poor saw themselves as being criminalized. Previously, the only bodies that could be legally dissected were those executed for murder. (Images: Women and men paupers separated in Victorian workhouses)

Curiously, the Wikipedia article on Sir Astley Cooper does not even mention body snatching.

Further Reading: 

Sarah Wise, The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London

Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute

Druin Burch,  Digging up the Dead 

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Environmentalist Robert Burns: On Mice and Men

"The best-laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley." This line from Robert Burns' "To a Mouse," published in 1786, has become internationally famous. (Image: Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, 1828)

Burns wrote "To a Mouse" like many of his poems, in a Scots dialect many people find hard to follow without a bit of translation. The relevant line from the poem is often rendered into "standard" English as "The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry." 

Burns' poem got a major boost from the success of John Steinbeck's Depression Era novel Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck projects Burns' theme onto the lives of George and Lennie, two down-and-out farm laborers seeking work and a better life. Their plans of buying a little farm with rabbits and settling down "gang agley" in a tragic denouement.

The climate crisis, environmental disasters, and wars in Ukraine and Gaza, make Burns' rumination on the fates of mice and men as relevant as ever. Such events may be likened to the destructive force of Burns' plough. 

In the poem, Burns, an Ayrshire farmer, apologizes to the mouse. His plough has destroyed the "wee beasties'" home. However humble, the mouse had labored hard to make his house secure for winter. 

In addressing the mouse, Burns sounds like a modern environmentalist. He pointedly stresses the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world:

I'm truly sorry Man's dominion,

Has broken Nature's social union,

An' justifies that ill opinion

Which makes thee startle

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion

An' fellow mortal!

Burns goes on to compare the mouse's predicament to his own. He was in financial difficulties at the time (and reaping the consequences of relentless womanizing). In a way, he suggests the mouse is better off because it lacks a sense of the past and future:

Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!

The present only toucheth thee:

But Och! I backward cast my e'e

On prospects drear!

An' forward, tho' I cannot see,

I guess an' fear!

Many of us have had our plans ripped apart by various events. Holidays abroad, business trips, and visits to families and friends churned up and away like the soil under Burns' plough. 

But those are minor disruptions. Things could be worse, much worse. Ask the Ukrainians, the people of Gaza, Pakistan, Turkey, Sudan, and other countries hit by recent disasters. 

Meanwhile, tour companies are advertising great trips for 2024 and beyond. Life must go on. We need to dream, to have something to look forward to, to plan ahead for good or ill. But we can be forgiven if we sometimes feel like the mouse with Burns' plough bearing down on us. 

PS. Burns was looking for new opportunities around the time he wrote "To a Mouse." One of the jobs he nearly took was that of overseer on a Jamaican sugar plantation, which sits in stark contrast to the anti-slavery and egalitarian themes of many of his later poems. 

While preparing for the voyage to the West Indies, he sent his poems to a publisher in Kilmarnock. The volume was published to great acclaim. It is known today as the "Kilmarnock Edition." (Image: Title page to Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, 1786)

The success of the book led Burns to abandon the Jamaican plan. He decided to stay in Scotland, left his Ayrshire farm to his brother, and headed for the bright lights and smoky air of "auld reekie" (Edinburgh). 

He would find further success and wider acclaim in the clubs and salons of the Scottish capital. Before long, he soured on genteel society. He alienated many influential men through his outspoken support for the American and French Revolutions and for political reform in Britain. 

Burns returned to his native Ayrshire and became an excise officer. He died in 1796, possibly from rheumatic heart disease aggravated by hard work. He was 37. (Image: Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787)

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Anatomy and Body Snatching in Georgian Britain: William Hunter

London's Soho district has long been notorious as a place where bodies are for sale. Living bodies. Less well known is its connection to the sale of dead bodies. If you walk along Shaftesbury Ave. to the Lyric Theatre, and turn onto Great Windmill Street, you will find this blue plaque on the side wall of the theatre:  

William Hunter (1718-1783), who once lived and worked here, was one of the most renowned (and often reviled) anatomists of the 18th century. He was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University under William Cullen, then moved to London to train in anatomy and obstetrics at St. George's Hospital under William Smellie. Dissecting decaying bodies was indeed a smelly business, but the name was merely coincidental.  (Image: William Hunter, by Allan Ramsay)

 

Like all anatomists, Hunter needed dead bodies -- for his own research and for teaching anatomy. The number of legally available bodies, then restricted mainly to persons executed for murder, fell far short of the growing need. The number of anatomy schools, especially in London, was increasing, and with it, the demand for fresh corpses. 

For Hunter, the difficulty of obtaining bodies was compounded by the fact that much of his research was in obstetrics. His most famous work, The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus (1774) involved the dissection of a lot of recently deceased pregnant women. 

Few if any of these bodies could have been obtained through normal legal channels. Executed murderers were not numerous enough, and in any case, pregnant women were rarely executed. They did, however, sometimes commit suicide out of a sense of shame or desperation. 

Most anatomical "subjects" had to be illegally "snatched," often from recent burials, sometimes before burial. In the cartoon at the top of this post, an anatomist, almost certainly Hunter, is shown fleeing after a watchman (at left) has discovered him with a woman's body. 

In 2010, Don Shelton argued that some of the women whose bodies Hunter acquired must have been murdered. Cases of people killing to acquire bodies to sell did occur, most famously that of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh in the 1820s, but there is no evidence that Hunter obtained corpses in this way.  

Anatomists and their students sometimes did body snatching themselves, but gangs of "resurrectionists" or "sack 'em up men" increasingly took over that task during the late 18th century. They took bodies from cemeteries, poorhouses, hospital morgues, and probably just found some lying in the streets or floating in rivers. 

Hunter's anatomy school in Great Windmill Street was a mecca for aspiring surgeons and physicians. A certificate of attendance at his courses was highly valued. Many of the most famous surgeons and anatomists of the next generation trained with William Hunter, or his younger brother John. [Image: Certificate of Attendance at William Hunter's lectures.]

Artists were highly interested in Hunter's work. His friends included famous painters and sculptors. In the painting below by Johan Zoffany, Hunter is pictured at the Royal Academy of Arts, next to Sir Joshua Reynolds (holding his ear trumpet in his arm).

Hunter's work and the source of his research material aroused much suspicion and derision. Cartoonists of the day sometimes made him their subject. The top one here shows Hunter with the mangled bodies of his "resurrected" subjects. The bottom image, by Thomas Rowlandson, shows a scene at Hunter's school. A man, possibly Hunter, is looking at a list of prices for bodies, male, female, and infant.

Further Reading:

Wendy Moore, The Knife Man (London: Penguin, 2006)

Don C. Shelton, "The Emperor's New Clothes," Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2010: 103: 46-50

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Imagining John Bull: Part 1: The Georgian Age

Not so long ago people in much of the world would have easily recognized the image below as John Bull, a symbol of the British nation, much like the USA's Uncle Sam or France's Marianne. But he did not always look like this guy. He evolved for more than two centuries before he was allowed to go to his rest.

John Bull began life as a literary creation rather than an image. He was "born" in 1712 as a character in two of Dr John Arbuthnot's political satires, Law is a Bottomless Pit and The History of John Bull. Ironically, Arbuthnot was a Scot whose character evolved into a personification of Englishness. 

The name "Bull" from the beginning invited comparisons with the animal of that name, especially its virility, strength and stubbornness. Bull also alluded to English fondness for roast beef. The French often called the English les rosbifs.

During the Georgian period, caricaturists provided John Bull with a visual image, or rather a variety of images. He was sometimes portrayed as a bull rather than a man, as in James Gillray's, "John Bull Triumphant" (1780). 

The figure the bull is tossing into the air represents Spain, which had recently joined France and the fledgling United States in war against Britain. The frightened looking figures at the right are France (in blue and pink) and the USA (the Native American!). A farmer in red and buff looks on in satisfaction at the bottom left. Or is he John Bull the man? 

In the cartoon from 1814 below, Bull is pictured as a man with a bull's head. "Johnny Bull and the Alexandrians," however, is by an American. It is commenting on the British attack on Alexandria, Virginia during the War of 1812. The anthropomorphic Bull did not catch on. He was destined to be a man.

The Georgian era John Bull was English, but not necessarily British, in outlook. He was insular in his views. He distrusted "foreigners." That distrust extended to Scots (or North Britons), despite the fact that England and Scotland had been united into Great Britain since 1707.

The cartoon below, Sawney Scot and John Bull (1792) illustrates but seems to condemn the age-old animosity between the Scots and the English. With Britain heading to war with revolutionary France,  the artist was perhaps saying, "let's bury the prejudices that divide us." It would take some time, but John Bull would come to be a British as well as an English symbol. 

During the French Revolution and Napoleonic periods (1789-1815), John Bull emerged into the national limelight as a patriotic, no-nonsense opponent of revolution and then of authoritarianism. 

Two great Georgian caricaturists, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, played significant roles in shaping the image of Bull around the turn of the 19th century. 

An example is Gillray's "French Liberty/English Slavery" (1792). Although Gillray does not name the English figure here, he parallels the image of John Bull he and other artists were developing. 

The "liberated" Frenchman wearing a tricolor cockade is emaciated and attired in rags. He is dining on raw scallions and snails. In contrast, the English "slave" is stout, comfortable, and well dressed He is tucking into a meal of roast beef and ale, his wig at his side. 

The skinny Frenchman is praising the new French republic as a paradise. The portly Englishman is complaining that high taxes are starving him to death. The irony could hardly be missed.  

British caricaturists of the revolutionary period generally drew Bull as a yeoman farmer. He is a man of the earth -- honest, hale, hearty, and rough in manner. Neither rich nor poor, he is a man of simple tastes and strong principles, pugnacious and ever ready to fight Britain's enemies. 

He was also a man of voracious appetites. Gillray's 1798 print, "John Bull Taking a Luncheon, or British Cooks Cramming Old Grumble Gizzard with Bonne Chere" shows Bull gorging on French naval ships. The cooks are British admirals. The one on the right is Admiral Nelson, who had just won a major sea battle against the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile. 

Artists of the time often drew Bull in a long coat and buff trousers (as above), or in a farmer's smock, as in this 1791 Gillray print, "Alecto." 

"Alecto" is a satirical jab at Whig leader Charles James Fox, who had expressed sympathy for the French Revolution. Fox, on the right is pictured as a recruiting sergeant, trying to enlist John Bull into support for the revolution. No hope for that. 

During the 19th century, the farmer's smock disappeared. The long coat and buff trousers became standard in colored prints, often with a red waistcoat. The coat was often blue, perhaps because blue and buff symbolized the two major political parties of the time, the Tories and the Whigs. 

After 1800, the cartoons tend to portray Bull as a sporting countryman who loves dogs, horses, hunting, and English ale. He has little use for intellectualism and European high culture. 

An example is Rowlandson's 1811 print "John Bull at the Italian Opera." While others are enjoying or pretending to enjoy the music, Bull, up in the box, cannot disguise his irritation, or boredom. Away with that foreign stuff! 

John Bull appeared frequently as the nemesis of Napoleon Bonaparte. A common theme was "Come on Boney, we dare you to attack us!" Gillray drew an especially grisly Bull holding the head of Napoleon in "Buonaparte 48 Hours after Landing" (1803)

In "John Bull Making Observations on the Comet" (1807) Rowlandson tells the comet (Napoleon) that he will never reach the level of the sun (King George III). British naval ships on the horizon explain why. 

In "Conversation Across the Water" (artist unknown), 1803, Napoleon declares he will invade Britain. John Bull, looking a bit like Bilbo Baggins, dares him to try. He also points to Royal Navy ships on the horizon. In many of the prints of this time, Napoleon appears as a pint-sized dictator dwarfed by his hat and boots: "Little Boney."

In "John Bull Arming the Spaniards," (1808) Rowlandson portrays Bull as the British emissary bringing aid, arms, and ammunition to Spain in its struggle against Napoleonic conquest. 

In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, Bull was enlisted in other causes, some of them repugnant today. In "John Bull Taking a Clear View of the Negro Slavery Question" (1826), Robert Cruikshank uses Bull to undermine the arguments of the growing antislavery movement. 

The abolitionists (in black) are raving about the terrible conditions of the enslaved in the West Indies. Bull, in blue and buff, peers through the telescope and "clearly" sees them enjoying feasting and dancing. A few years later (1833) the abolitionists succeeded. Parliament abolished slavery in the British Empire. 

By the 1820s, John Bull was maturing as a personification of the British nation. Victorian caricaturists would give him a fashion makeover, and employ him to represent a variety of opinions.

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Masters of Caricature: George Cruikshank

"Please Sir, I want some more." If you have read Dickens' novel Oliver Twist, or seen the musical Oliver! that line is probably familiar. Perhaps you may even have seen the illustration from the novel, shown below. It depicts the famous scene when the half-starved orphan Oliver dares ask Mr. Bumble for more gruel.

The artist who drew that illustration, and many others for Dickens and other authors, was George Cruikshank. His father Isaac was a leading caricaturist of the late Georgian era. Isaac was born in Edinburgh but moved to London where George was born, in 1792. 

Young George originally made his name as a caricaturist, along with his brother Robert. They produced hundreds of works of social and political satire during the Regency period. Many of George's works focused on what he called the "monstrosities of fashion" and hedonistic Regency "dandies." 

In 1819, the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester inspired "Britons, Strike Home!" It depicts the local yeomanry (militia) attacking a peaceful crowd of demonstrators for parliamentary reform. Eleven were killed and hundreds injured. The title and scene were meant to invoke a contrast with the charge of British soldiers at Waterloo four years before. 

George Cruikshank soon gained particular notoriety from political prints attacking the royal family and leading politicians. At one point he received a bribe of £100 (a lot of money then) to refrain from ridiculing George IV. 

Previously Prince of Wales and Regent, he was an easy target: extravagant, gluttonous, massively obese, and a collector of mistresses. Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson had also produced prints of the man some people called "The Prince of Whales."

Cruikshank drew the cartoons below at the time the prince succeeded his father as king, in 1820. The first depicts George IV contemplating himself in a mirror. He sees a ghost from the past, his estranged wife Caroline of Brunswick. She had returned from exile in Germany to claim her lawful right to be Queen. Cruikshank quotes Hamlet: "To be or not to be."

George detested Caroline. He tried to prevent her from becoming Queen. He brought a bill to Parliament to dissolve their marriage, alleging adultery, something he had often committed himself. The affair generated a huge scandal for the monarchy, which only began to recover under Victoria. 

In the next cartoon, Cruikshank portrays George and Caroline wrapped in large green bags. The bags are green to reflect the fact that the evidence he presented against her was taken to the court in green bags. They are large because there was a lot of documentation and of course because the pair were large. George is considerably larger. He weighed in at 240 pounds at the time. 

The words at the bottom of the print mock their incompatibility and physiques: "Ah, sure, such a pair was never seen so justly form'd to meet by nature...Dedicated to Old Bags."

The government withdrew the Pains and Penalties Bill when it became clear that it would never pass the House of Commons. It had also aroused a huge uproar in an already badly divided country. 

Much of the public and especially radicals demanding political reform supported the Queen. The scandal soured any remaining affection most people had for the king. He was fortunate that Caroline conveniently died a few months later.

Cruikshank's prints were not confined to exposing the follies of the fashionable rich, royals, and Tories. He lampooned politicians of all parties, and reformers of various stripes. Some of his works were blatantly racist and misogynist. 

In 1819 Cruikshank produced the now infamous "New Union Club" portraying a dinner held by the  Society for the Abolition of Slavery. The cartoon portrays a scene of chaos and intimacy between whites and blacks. Among the people Cruikshank represented was William Wilberforce, a major leader in abolitionist movement, at far left.  

Cruikshank also ridiculed women who joined the abolitionist movement, portraying them as unfeminine and grotesque. In a book on the Irish Rebellion of 1798 he drew the rebels as simian-like beings. He gave the Chinese similar xenophobic treatment. 

In the 1820s, Cruikshank embarked on a new career as a book illustrator. One of his most successful early efforts were illustrations for the 18th century novel by Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, done in (1832)

Around that time, Cruikshank became friends with Charles Dickens, and illustrated several of his early works, including Sketches by Boz and Oliver Twist. One of his illustrations for the Twist novel is shown below, of the criminal fence Fagin in prison before being hanged. 

In the late 1840s, Cruikshank embarked on yet another career, as a propagandist for the temperance movement and teetotalism. Once a heavy drinker and smoker, he gave up both and became an advocate of teetotalism, or complete abstinence. As early as 1829 he attacked the evils of cheap gin in "The Gin Shop." Here Death is stalking the customers. 

Cruikshank produced several illustrated books focusing on the evils of alcohol, most notably, The Bottle (1847) and The Drunkard's Children (1848). Below is one of the prints from The Bottle, in which the drunken husband is beating his wife while his children look on and try to stop it.

Cruikshank's advocacy of complete abstinence from alcohol led to a break with Dickens, who favored moderation. After Dickens' death in 1870, Cruikshank claimed to have been the originator of the plot of Oliver Twist. 

In his later years, Cruikshank, a fervent British patriot, became heavily involved in the Volunteer Movement. It began 1859 in response to a diplomatic crisis between France and the UK, and a exaggerated fear that Napoleon III was planning an invasion of England. Cruikshank organized a couple of Rifle Volunteer Corps in Surrey and Middlesex. 

He developed palsy in his final years and died in 1878. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. 

*Cruikshank was not exactly innocent of adultery himself. He married twice but also kept a mistress, a former servant, with whom he had eleven  children.  

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