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Young George originally made his name as a caricaturist, along with his brother Robert.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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The Peterloo Massacre, 1819: British Soldiers Attack Peaceful Protesters

On 16 August 1819, a huge crowd of men, women, and children, estimated at between 60,000 and 80,000, assembled at St. Peter’s Fields near the rapidly growing industrial city of Manchester.

According to historian Joyce Marlow, the meeting is believed to have been the largest to date in British history. The purpose was peaceful, to hear speakers promoting a much-needed reform of Parliamentary representation.

At the time, most men and all women were denied the right to vote or run for Parliament. The legislature and the government were controlled by a tiny fraction of the population, mostly aristocrats and their clients. Since the defeat of Napoleon, the masses had suffered from high unemployment. Food prices had skyrocketed, in part a result of the recently enacted Corn Laws. These acts placed high tariffs on imported grain, in a bid to keep domestic prices up. 

Radicals blamed the dire conditions in the country on a government that represented narrow landed (aristocratic) interests, hence their call for a reform that would make parliamentary representation more democratic. 

A pro-reform organization, the Manchester Patriotic Union, organized the mass demonstration at St. Peter’s Fields. For their headline speaker, they chose a popular radical, Henry Hunt. He had been an outspoken advocate of parliamentary reforms for years, but he favored tactics of mass persuasion rather than violence. His Tory enemies mocked his reputation as a speaker, calling him “Orator” Hunt.  The name stuck.

The clamour for reform, added to the unrest in the country, had long alarmed the authorities. They feared (or claimed to fear) that Britain was headed for a revolution similar to that in France in 1789. Hunt's popularity added to their concern.

On the day of the Manchester meeting, the local militia and regular soldiers were out in force. Hundreds of heavily armed cavalry and infantrymen surrounded the meeting place. Contemporary accounts claim that the crowd was well behaved, and included families dressed in their Sunday clothes.

As Hunt got up on the platform to speak, the crowd erupted with a huge roar of approval. The head of the local magistrates issued a warrant for Hunt’s arrest. 

The man charged with serving the warrant requested military assistance. The upshot was that cavalry charged into the crowd, wielding sabers to clear the way and disperse the crowd. As they became entangled among the mass, more cavalry rode into their rescue. Before the melee finished, they had killed about a dozen people and injured about 700. One of the dead was a two year old boy, Joseph Fildes.

The actions of the soldiers sparked immense outrage throughout the country, especially in the popular press. In pointed, shameful contrast to the victory at Waterloo, it soon became known as Massacre of Peterloo. Among other things, it led to the foundation of the radical Manchester Guardian and inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley to write his oft-quoted poem, The Masque of Anarchy.

Peterloo was the subject of many contemporary prints. The one below was published only a few days after the event and depicts the moment of Hunt's arrest. 

Perhaps the most famous image of Peterloo was that produced by George Cruikshank, who later illustrated some of Dickens' writings.

Peterloo did not have any immediate effect on reform. In fact, the terrified Tory government quickly passed a series of acts designed to repress the radical movement, the infamous Six Acts.

The acts were not rigorously enforced, however, and the reform movement continued to attract popular support in the wake of Peterloo. Fears of popular revolt grew again after another French Revolution deposed King Charles X in 1830, but on this occasion the British government conceded some of the popular demands. 

In 1832 a Whig dominated Parliament passed the Great Reform Act. Ironically, the ministry that drew it up it was the most aristocratic in British history. (The Prime Minister, Earl Grey, later had a bergamot flavored tea named after him.)

Far from democratic, the Great Reform Bill did extend representation to many new voters, mostly from the middle class. It also eliminated many corrupt electoral practices. It was followed by other reform bills in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries that gradually extended political rights to all men and then women. In that sense, Peterloo was stage on Britain's evolution into a democracy.

Further reading: Joyce Marlow, The Peterloo Massacre, 1969.