print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.3581
- Title
- Object: The Lamentable Fall of Madam Geneva Sepr 29 1736
- Description
-
Satire on gin and the Act of 1736 taxing retail sales. A crowded street where a platform has been raised on which lies "Madam Geneva", in a drunken stupor her clothes in dissaray, she holds a glass in one hand and a bottle in the other and on either side stand a weeping woman holding a broadside ballad lamenting that "This Act will starve us all" and a man waving a gin bottle and holding the "2nd Part" of the ballad celebrating gin drinking. In the foreground, is a crowd of gin drinkers, mostly drunk: a tinker pushing his barrow with a large bellows accompanied by a chimney boy; a vomiting woman is supported by another woman who slaps her on the back and a man who offers a bottle of "A Cure for the Cholick"; a barefoot ballad-seller with a basket on her arm holding a child; a woman pleading with a watchman holding a staff; a fishwife with a basket of fish on her head and an oyster-knife at her waist; a bearded, one-legged man seated on the ground holding up "A Subscription for 2 Gallons"; a street-sweeper with a spade and bucket holding a "Petition". In the background, on the left, is a public house, with the sign of a gin still obscured by the lettering, "No more Gin by retail Parsons Entire Butt" (a reference to the beer brewed by Humphrey Parsons) and a chequerboard above the door, outside which a number of jolly men raise tankards beside a dray loaded with barrels; on the right, is another public house, with the sign of a child Bacchus astride a barrel and a bunch of grapes, outside which a group of merry wine-drinkers, one sitting on a barrel, raise a standard lettterd, "Vivitur Baccho melius" and decorated with wine flasks, a glass and a bunch of grapes. Three columns of verse beneath with a reference to Joseph Jekyll who sponsored the Act. 1736
Etching and engraving
- Production date
- 1736
- Dimensions
-
Height: 307 millimetres (image)
-
Height: 346 millimetres (trimmed)
-
Width: 295 millimetres (image)
-
Width: 295 millimetres (trimmed)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.3581