Dartmoor Life Museum: Mystery Item No 4

Dartmoor Life Museum: Mystery Item No 4: Here it is, this months Mystery Item. Up for one week only, so get your guesses in quick!

The Politics of Pleasure: Excessive Consumption as Depicted in the Satirical Prints of the 1784 Westminster Election

This essay is from back in April 2010 (explains the first paragraph!). If you would like me to upload any other prints from the election, just let me know.

All over Britain election candidates are currently campaigning in an attempt to win over voters. Since Gordon Brown set the date of the upcoming election, the party leaders have embarked on a nationwide tour in order to gain as many of the six-hundred-and-fifty parliamentary seats as possible. The politicians have canvassed in places as diverse as supermarkets, museums and recycling plants.[1] Cartoonists, such as Steve Bell, Martin Rowson and Chris Riddell amongst a host of others, are quick to react to the leaders’ actions.  An examination of these cartoons is useful for gauging contemporary opinion of the politicians and their policies through the satirical lens of the cartoon. The cartoons, by and large, satirise the candidates by either ridiculing their policies such as in Appendix 1 and 2, their appearance, or by revealing what they believe to be the hidden agenda of the party as in Appendix 3. 

The electioneering practices of politicians over two-hundred-years ago, before the Great Reform Act of 1832, were in some ways very similar – door-to-door canvassing was equally, if not more, prominent. For example, in 1784 Charles James Fox personally went from door-to-door to canvass for votes and issued an apology in the press to those which he did not have time to meet.[2] Aside from the actual workings of the electoral system, canvassing was also remarkably different; voters and the community as a whole ‘always needed to be courted and wooed’.[3] This was much more involved than making speeches from the hustings platform. It was expected that candidates would provide feasts (with liberal amounts of alcohol) and entertainment,  erect public buildings, settle local grievances, patronise local businesses and donate to charities to show support for the community.[4] Figure 1 graphically (in both senses of the word) illustrates what this essentially entailed. Fundamentally, voters could be won by satisfying their hearts, heads, egos, or, most efficiently, their bellies. Thus pleasure and consumption were integral components Georgian politics. There is also another important element that needs to be considered; by the 1780s the rise of an English nationalism which valued sincerity in its leaders meant that a politician’s reputation was founded on their moral reputation.[5] Voters still expected material benefits from their candidates at election times, but for them to display any forms of excess would damage their credibility.

 Figure 1. BMS.6572 (etching) Anon, A new way to secure a majority; or no dirty work comes amiss. London: William Wells, 3 May 1784.

 Modern cartoons also display many similarities to those of 1784; they are equally anti-ministerial, allusion-packed, colourful designs, with a healthy disrespect for political correctness.[6] Yet the differences are equally important. Firstly, in 1784 they were called prints, not cartoons. Secondly, the prints were not as ephemeral as modern cartoons; they were expensive, carefully crafted designs, sold on individual sheets of canvass in print-shops. Accordingly, the prints’ consumers, until at least the 1790s, were to be found mainly in the highest ranks of society and the content of the majority of the prints was political.[7] Even Queen Charlotte used to enjoy perusing prints with her breakfast, until she was shocked by those of the 1784 election.[8] Thirdly, prints often displayed a nationalistic bias. Lastly, and the most importantly in regards to this essay, is that prints were far more likely to satirise the politician on a much deeper level than their physical appearance or policies. From the 1780s the rising influence of nationalism and caricature in these prints ensured that designs were ‘crueller, more freely expressive and aggressively personalised’ than they had ever been before.[9] From the 1780s until the medium’s demise during the 1820s, artists commonly caricatured the personal characteristics, ambitions, follies and vices of figures in the public eye.[10] One observer in 1784 opined that ‘the prints ... are in general abusive, destitute of merit, wit and humour ... unmanly, base, and infamous’.[11] Visual satire increasingly served to draw the scurrilities, real or fictitious, of politicians’ private lives into the public sphere of politics.

This newfound purpose of political prints exploded into life in 1784, the annus mirabilis of the medium, with over four-hundred-and-ten satires released that year alone.[12] Just over a quarter of these appeared during the forty days of the Westminster election, and even more subsequently alluded to it. The important parliamentary borough of Westminster was contested by Charles James Fox, Sir Cecil Wray and Lord Hood. The two politicians who attracted the most approbation in satirical prints, however, were Fox and another who did not even have the right to vote – Georgiana Cavendish, the fifth duchess of Devonshire, who was a prominent Foxite (allied to Fox).[13] These attacks were not limited to prints; the forty days of election saw an ‘orgy of squibs, lampoons, songs, bill-posting [and] newspaper paragraphs’ take up the same cause.[14] During the election Fox was satirised, as he had been for a decade, by making references to his politics – depicting him as Carlo Khan, an actor, Oliver Cromwell or simply as a lunatic.[15] Similarly, the duchess was mocked for her radical fashion sense.[16] 

But what stands out in the 1784 Westminster election are the number of prints which denigrate these two figures for partaking in electioneering activities which were actually commonplace in Georgian Britain: plying potential candidates with drink and money. The duchess and her female friends, likewise, were derided for their role in the man’s world of politics, although in reality women regularly partook in electioneering.[17] In addition to these attacks on canvassing methods, satirists attacked the personal vices of Fox and Georgiana: Fox for his love of gambling and the duchess for her presumed sexual promiscuity. The prints ridicule and revile the politicians for their personal excessive consumption as well as for treating voters excessively. At a period where moderation was all-important in politics, the prints contend that the Foxites neglect this principle.[18]

The range of people (and newspapers) that Fox had to win over was diverse:

          

          Dukes, Lords and Butchers, Chairmen, Players, Priests!
          Chronicles, Heralds and Advertisers!
          Sweeps, Sharpers, Swindlers, Duchesses and Punks![19]

Anti-Foxite propaganda argued that the Foxites won these over by a combination of deception, misleading rhetoric and:

           

          Mountains of Provision, Floods of Liquor!
          Fit Bribes for Beggars, Drunkards, Misers, Fools!
          And Gold for Knaves! and Lechers what they love![20]

 The application of monetary bribes had been a common complaint throughout the eighteenth century and ten prints appeared in the 1784 election to this purpose.[21] All of these are anti-Foxite but, interestingly, not one represents Fox handing over money. The closest that a print comes to depicting Fox providing financial rewards is in The Coalition Party Beating Up For Recruits where Fox, attempting to ‘recruit’ a voter, promises ‘Present Pay, good Quarters and a handsome Landlady’.[22] The scarcity of representations of Fox dispensing money is largely due to the fact that he was well-known to not have any, as is discussed below; instead his canvassers are depicted carrying out the bribery on his behalf. The West—tr Candidate Coming North About the Geese (Figure 2) depicts Lord North, a Foxite, feeding coins from a bag labelled ‘treasury grant’ to geese.[23]

Figure 2. BMS.6480 (etching) Anon, The West-tr candidate coming north about the geese. London: S.W. Fores, 31 March 1784.

While Doctor Barnacle Driving a Load of Spittalfields Weavers to Poll for Westminster portrays a man holding a large coin in the air exclaiming ‘Fox and the Constitution!’.[24] Yet the majority of prints which illustrate financial bribes are those which contain Georgiana and her coterie of female canvassers. On 3 April 1784 the first two prints relating to this group was published: Female Influence; or, The Devons---e Canvas (Figure 3) and Two Patriotic Duchess’s on Their Canvass.[25]

Figure 3. BMS.6493 (hand-coloured etching) Samuel Collings(?), Female influence; or, the Devons—e canvas. London: William Wells, 3 April 1784.

The first depicts one of the duchess’s friends kissing an artisan whilst simultaneously depositing a purse into his grasping hand.[26] The latter print is of the same theme but the briber is Georgiana herself and the beneficiary is a butcher.[27] After these two prints the suggestions of financial bribery are less blatant, but no less obvious.[28] On the 13^th of the same month The Dutchess Canvassing For Her Favourite Member (Figure 6) was published depicting a female Foxite offering a butcher a bag inscribed ‘Bett no bribe’.[29] This is in response to a rumour that the Foxites were betting people, ten guineas to one, that they would not vote for Fox – the obvious result being that if the voter chose Fox they would ‘win’ ten guineas.[30] The third ploy by which the Foxites were believed to be administering cash was by paying pounds for products that were worth pennies, as was depicted in Wits’ Last Stake or the Cobling Voters and Abject Canvassers (Figure 4) and Every Man Has His Hobby Horse.[31] While the depiction of cash bribery was an important part of the Westminster satires, what is remarkable about the Westminster elections is the amount of prints which expose the excessive use of drink and female influence in the election.

The provision of alcohol to prospective voters was not as morally reprehensible as the direct application of cash bribes, indeed it was an expected component of any successful election campaign. This role was carried out by Sam House, a bald and eccentric republican publican, who kept open house for Fox in Wardour Street.[32] One of his earliest appearances in a Westminster election print depicts him holding aloft a foaming tankard with ‘Sam House’ etched onto it and a slip of paper in the other hand which reads ‘Sure Votes’.[33] The tankard with ‘Sam House’ appears frequently throughout the prints, implying that the drinker’s support had been obtained. Yet not all of these prints suggest that giving out alcohol was morally reprehensible; Foxite propaganda, such as Procession to the Hustings After a Successful Canvass, No.14, demonstrates that his role of plying voters with booze could be publicly acceptable.[34] However, the Foxites were still attacked by satirists on these grounds.[35] This point is perhaps best typified by Figure 4. 

Figure 4. BMS.6548 (etching) Thomas Rowlandson, Wit's last stake or the cobling voters and abject canvassers. London: 22 April 1784.

In this print, published on 22 April, House is forcibly plying drink onto a voter who, in drunken oblivion, shakes hands with Fox.[36] The insinuation here is that votes gained in this manner are invalid because the vote was a drunken mistake rather than a logical decision; it was believed that ‘Intemperance ... destroys a Man’s Reason, Honour and Conscience at once’.[37] This line of reasoning is continued in Doctor Barnacle Driving a Load of Spittalfields Weavers to Poll for Westminster where one member of a cartful of illegal voters cries ‘Alehouse forever - Huzza’. It is important to remember that the dispensing of beer was a legitimate canvassing strategy; one only has to look at Hogarth’s Beer Street to see that the consumption of beer was socially acceptable, and even desired, in society.[38] Yet in 1784 Fox and his canvassers were publically attacked for this very activity. The satirist’s pen swiftly alters the provision of beer from a virtue to a vice; the Westminster election prints suggest that the Foxites were not staying within the bounds of moderation. Instead, they are depicted giving out alcohol with impolitic excess.

The third, most common and most virulently attacked method of canvassing in the Westminster election was that done by women. Women’s involvement in politics was not unusual, especially in elections, and visual satirists had not seen fit to remark on the involvement of specific women before 1784.[39] The Foxite prints of the duchess, comparable to those of Sam House, did not hide women’s participation in the election. In fact, they attempted to portray it as virtuous such as in Figure 5, where the duchess embodies Female Patriotism who is being introduced to Britannia by Liberty and Fame.[40]

Figure 5. BMS. 6599 (etching) Thomas Rowlandson, Liberty and Fame introducing Female Patriotism to Britania. London: 25 May 1784.

During the 1784 election, influenced by prints that were being bought by anti-Foxites to freely distribute in public places, some argued that ‘the female interest daily making for Mr. Fox, only serves to expose the wretchedness of his course’.[41] The majority of prints follow this train of thought. Why they attacked the canvassing of Georgiana Cavendish is, arguably, because she, as an ardent Whig, was motivated by political rather than familial reasons – canvassing in Westminster which was not her family borough.[42] Yet the duchess and other female canvassers were continually depicted fondling, kissing and flirting with butchers to win votes.[43] While Fox was aiming to achieve the moniker ‘man of the people’, if Georgiana was to take the feminine version of the title it would imply that she was a prostitute.[44] The prints are all remarkably similar, the duchess is sexually involved with butchers in prints that vary only in their lewdness; in some prints, such as BMS.6493, 6532 and 6541 and there exists only a suggestion that Georgiana is kissing plebeians; in BMS.6494, 6520, 6533 and 6565 the contact is more direct; while the contact is most luridly expressed in The Dutchess Canvassing For Her Favourite Member (Figure 6).[45]

Figure 6. BMS.6527 (etching) William Dent, The Dutchess canvassing for her favourite member. London: J. Carter, 13 April 1784.

Littered throughout these propagandist prints (historical research suggests that while kisses were exchanged for votes by female Foxites, Georgiana herself did not take part) are allusions to promiscuity influencing the election.[46] So the prints, in line with those against the use of drink and money in canvassing, do not attack women for being involved in politics – but instead imply that female influence is being used excessively by the Foxites, in particular by the duchess of Devonshire.

The prints do not stop at depicting the body politic being corrupted by bribes from the Foxites; in true late-eighteenth-century fashion the characters of Fox and Cavendish are shown to be corrupted by their own manners of consumption. The accepted satiric image of Fox was that of a politician who was both financially and morally bankrupt; this was largely due to his reputation as an inveterate gambler.[47] This representation in graphic satire of Fox was, unlike the accusations made against the duchess, undeniably true. Fox’s rakish behaviour had rendered him bankrupt twice before 1784 and his friends and family found it necessary to pay off numerous debts throughout his life.[48] Seven prints appeared during the Westminster election that emphasised Fox’s money troubles.[49]

In graphic satire his recurring debts and addiction to gambling became his distinguishing mark very soon after entering politics.[50] The association of Fox with gambling was so well known that by 1784 dice-boxes, dice, E.O. tables (the precursor to roulette) and playing cards were incorporated into anti-Fox prints to remind people of this less-than-exemplary quality (for example see Figure 7).[51]

Figure 7. BMS.6503 (etching) Anon, A new weather cock for St Stephens Chapel. London: John Wallis, 6 April 1784.

Other prints assaulted Fox for his gambling addiction more directly; The Gamester Bes—t, or, a New Way to Win Money depicts Fox making a bet at Brook’s, his favourite gaming house, while Returning From Brooks’s shows him leaving the club arm-in-arm with a worse-for-wear Prince of Wales.[52] In Fox in a Trap and the Constitution Preservd, dated 20 April (when Fox’s defeat in the polls seemed certain) the duchess is depicted as alluding to Fox’s gaming character by mourning:

           

          Alas! poor Fox your die is Cast,
          You’re trap’d with all you Triks at last.[53]

One of the most popular prints attacking Fox’s gambling habits was Thomas Rowlandson’s The Covent Garden Night Mare (Figure 8), also from 20 April.[54]

Figure 8. BMS.6543 (hand-coloured etching) Thomas Rowlandson, The Covent Garden Night Mare. London: William Humphrey, 20 April 1784.

The satire was a parody of Henry Fuseli’s sensational 1782 painting The Night Mare of a woman lost in an erotic nightmare induced by medicine on her table which is likely to have been laudanum.[55] The Covent Garden Night Mare, by contrast, depicts Fox’s political nightmare induced by the gambling apparatus on the table.[56] Phyllis Deutsch even goes so far as to argue that this print captures the ‘disgust and opprobrium of Britons fed up with the emotional lassitude and moral effeminacy of a gaming aristocracy’.[57] While this may be overstretching the point, Deutsch is essentially correct that private vices – in this case gambling – clearly had an effect on the public and therefore political reputation of the ruling elite.

Georgiana Cavendish was also a renowned gambler, but what portions of the public found more outrageous was that she was one of the leading politicians of the Whigs.[58] The duchess ‘challenged eighteenth-century notions of femininity’ by politicising independently of the family sphere. [59]  Contemporaries reacted to this in two distinct ways – by depicting Georgiana as either masculine or as sexually deviant. The majority of prints on the duchess’s supposed promiscuity can be seen in the ‘butcher-kissing’ prints, so need not be reiterated.[60] In The Soliloquy of Reynard! a rhyme from the ‘Devonshire Lamentation’ emphasises the contrast between the perceptions of how women were supposed to behave in elite life, and how the duchess was believed to be behaving:

          

          Did I the Tongue of Calumny defy,
          And o’er the Bounds of Delicacy fly?
          Forget my Sex’s Softness, to Defend
          The sinking Cause of my politic Friend.[61]

A plethora of other prints contend that the duchess was acting in a typically masculine manner.[62] The first method of satirising this was by simply drawing her in menswear or a typically masculine stance, such as [Fox and Burke as Hudibras and Ralpho] and Reynard Put To His Shifts.[63]Another popular technique was by suggesting that she was abandoning her female familial duties for her masculinist love of politics, as in Figure 9 where Georgiana breastfeeds a fox (of the ‘Charles James’ species) while neglecting her own wailing child.[64]

 

Figure 9. BMS.6546 (etching) Thomas Rowlandson, Political Affection. London: John Hanyer, 22 April 1784.

The most striking connotation of Georgiana as a man appeared on May 10 in A Political Shaver (Figure 10) where Fox acts as a barber shaving the duchess’s face.

Figure 10. BMS.6577 (hand-coloured etching) Anon, The Political Shaver. London: J. Moore, 10 May 1784.

Georgiana’s instistence of the righteousness of her cause was riduculed in prints; the ‘Devonshire Lamentation’ declares:

           

          Who (fir’d with public Spirit) scorn’d the Rules
          Of hamper’d Decency, and modest Fools.[65]

The prints of the duchess continually emphasise that her political role was outside the bounds of normality and moderation, and therefore subject to derision by the public through the medium of satirical prints.

Despite the profusion of prints and other propaganda against Fox and Georgiana, Fox managed to win a parliamentary seat at the Westminster election. The prints that appeared against Fox and the Foxites during the election of 1784 reveal a world where pleasure and consumption mixed freely with politics. It was not sufficient to win over the populace with political rhetoric. Prints both for and against Fox illustrate that voters could expect to receive alcohol and female attention. Yet by the 1780s, the British public – influenced by nationalism amongst other things – were becoming disillusioned with the excessive practices of the ruling elite. Thus prints attempted to discredit Fox by suggesting that the votes gained were deemed corrupt because the voters had been won through an unfair use of excessive influence. This theory of excess was also apparent in the personal attacks on Fox and the duchess who were both visibly affected by the allegations against them. Amanda Foreman argues that these attacks on Georgiana had ‘not only discredited herself but her method of canvassing’.[66] Likewise, Fox claimed that ‘caricatures had done him more mischief than the debates in Parliament or the works of the press’.[67] Nevertheless, influencing voters by satisfying their carnal desires remained an integral component of politics in the eighteenth century, as Charles Churchill affirmed:

           

          We form our judgement in another way;
          And those will best succeed, who best can pay:
          Those who would gain the votes of British tribes,
          Must add to force of Merit, force of Bribes.[68]

---

[1] Paul Torpey and Emma Sax, ‘Election 2010: Where are the Party Leaders?’ [Online] Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/interactive/2010/apr/06/election-2010-leaders-brown-cameron-clegg [Accessed 13.04.10]

[2] Mary Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, vol.vi (1784-1792). London: British Museum, 1938, pp.72-3.

[3] H.T. Dickinson, The Politics of the People in Eighteenth-Century Britain. London: MacMillan Press, 1995, p.16.

[4] ibid, pp.22-31.

[5] Gerald Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism: A Cultural History, 1740-1830. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997, pp.128-218.

[6] The return to these qualities has only appeared quite recently as the cruelty and bitterness of the medium of Georgian graphic satire was muted in the Victorian Age; like most other things they became more respectful. Vic Gatrell, The City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London. London: Atlantic Books, 2006, pp.415-83.

[7] Eirwen E.C. Nicholson, ‘Consumer and Spectators: The Public of the Political Print in Eighteenth-Century England’, History: The Journal of the Historical Association, vol.81 (1996), p.12. Although a great number also dealt with social issues, others still dealt with both simultaneously. Cindy McCreery, The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004, pp.9-10.

[8] J. Hartley, History of the Westminster Election, containing every material occurrence. London: 1784, p.233.

[9] Gatrell, City of Laughter, p.259.

[10] ibid, pp.259-73.

[11] Hartley, History of the Westminster Election, p.336.

[12] John Brewer, The Common People and Politics 1750-1790s. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1786, p.30.

[13] Hood was barely satirised, while Wray was attacked because of claims that he would tax serving maids and reduce the pensions of war victims. See: British Museum Prints and Satires Catalogue Number (Henceforth ‘BMS’): 6474, 6475, 6491 and 6502.

[14] M. Dorothy George, English Political Caricature to 1792: A Study of Opinion and Propaganda. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959, p.183.

[15] For example see BMS: 6495, 6496, 6497, 6498 and 6588. The same tactics are still in use today, see Appendix 2.

[16] For example see BMS: 6527, 6533, 6555, 6565 and 6595.

[17] Judith S. Lewis, ‘1784 and All That’, Amanda Vickery (ed.), Women, Privilege and Power: British Politics, 1750 to the Present. California: Stanford University Press, 2001, pp.89-92.

[18] Lawrence E. Klein, ‘Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century’, The Historical Journal, vol.45, no.2 (December, 2002), p.874; Also see ‘Enthusiastical’ and ‘Fanatick’ in Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language. London: 1755-6.

[19] BMS.6512.

[20] ibid

[21] BMS: 6480, 6484, 6493, 6494, 6512, 6527, 6544, 6548, 6566 and 6575.

[22] BMS.6484.

[23] ibid. Geese were commonly used as a zoomorphic representation of what politicians desired; in this case they represent voters.

[24] BMS.6575.

[25] BMS: 6493 and 6494.

[26] BMS.6493.

[27] BMS.6494.

[28] BMS.6539 is the exception.

[29] BMS.6527.

[30] George, Collection of Political and Personal Satires, vol.6, p.97.

[31] BMS: 6548 and 6566.

[32] Brewer, The Common People and Politics, pp.34-5.

[33] BMS.6487.

[34] BMS.6564.

[35] BMS: 6479, 6487, 6512, 6527, 6536, 6544, 6548 and 6575.

[36] BMS.6548.

[37] Josiah Woodward, The Soldier’s Monitor. Being a Serious Advice to Soldiers, to Behave Themselves With a Just Regard to Religion and True Manhood, 13^th edn. London: 1823 (First published in 1701), pp.13-4 cited in Paul E. Kopperman, ‘”The Cheapest Pay”: Alcohol Abuse in the Eighteenth-Century British Army, Journal of Military History, vol.60, no.3 (July 1996), p.452.

[38] BMS.3126.

[39] Although using female influence (mainly with prostitutes) for votes had been depicted before. See BMS.3298. Elaine Chalus, Elite Women in English Political Life c.1754-1790. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005, pp.192-227.

[40] BMS.6599. Also see BMS: 6521, 6524, 6564, 6573 and 6597.

[41] Hartley, History of the Westminster Election, pp.254, 233.

[42] Amelia Rauser, ‘The Butcher-Kissing Duchess of Devonshire: Between Caricature and Allegory in 1784’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol.36, no.1 (2002), p.30.

[43] BMS: 6484, 6493, 6494, 6520, 6527, 6532, 6533, 6536, 6541 and 6565.

[44] Chalus, Elite Women in English Political Life, p.354.

[45] BMS: 6493, 6520, 6527, 6532, 6533, 6541, 6565 and 6494.

[46] Amanda Foreman, Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire. London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1999, p.144.

[47] Phyllis Deutsch, ‘Moral Trespass in Georgian London: Gaming, Gender and Electoral Politics in the Age of George III’, The Historical Journal, vol.39, no.3 (September 1996), p.639.

[48] L. G. Mitchell, ‘Fox, Charles James (1749–1806)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oct 2007 [Online] Available from: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10024  [Accessed 21 March 2010]

[49] BMS: 6497, 6500, 6539, 6540, 6549, 6558 and 6624.

[50] For depictions of Fox’s gambling habit pre-1784, see BMS: 4859, 4943, 5010, 5424, 5548, 5962, 5964, 5969, 5972, 5983, 5989, 5997, 6013, 6119, 6179, 6191, 6254, 6257, 6264, 6281 and 6387. For Fox’s poverty/indebtedness, see BMS: 6044, 6213, 6227, 6230, 6235, 6239, 6240, 6279, 6369 and 6458.

[51] Also see BMS: 6514, 6517, 6523, 6535, 6543 and 6575.

[52] BMS: 6580 and 6528. Also see BMS: 6513 and 6523.

[53] BMS.6542.

[54] BMS.6543.

[55] Gatrell, City of Laughter, pp.275-8; Anon, ‘The Nightmare: Fuseli and the Art of Horror’ [Online], Available from: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/19c/Workshop%203,%20item%203%20-%20press%20release.pdf [Accessed 22.03.10].

[56] BMS.6543; Diana Donald, The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III. London: Yale University Press, 1996, pp.70-1.

[57] Deutsch, ‘Moral Trespass in Georgian London’, p.655.

[58] Amanda Foreman, ‘A Politician’s Politician: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and the Whig Party’, Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus (eds.), Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities. London: Longman, 1997, p.179 (pp.179-204); Gillian Russell, ‘“Faro’s Daughters”: Female Gamesters, Politics, and the Discourse of Finance in 1790s Britain’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol.33, no.4 (Summer, 2000), pp.481-2.

[59] Foreman, ‘A Politician’s Politician’, p.185.

[60] For non-butcher-kissing prints which portray the duchess in a derogatory sexualised light, see BMS: 6522, 6555, 6557, 6559 and 6560.

[61] BMS.6512.

[62] McCreery, The Satirical Gaze, pp.141-3.

[63] BMS: 6540 and 6551.

[64] Also see BMS: 6529 and 6625.

[65] BMS.6512.

[66] Foreman, ‘A Politician’s Politician’, p.187.

[67] L. H. Cust, ‘Sayers , James (1748–1823)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [Online] Available from: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24771 [Accessed 23 March 2010]

[68] Charles Churchill, The Rosciad. London: 1761, p.2.