- Museum number
- 1862,1217.383
- Title
- Object: Turning off at Tyburn or the Livery, re-spited.
- Description
-
Plate from 'Town Talk', iv, before p. 329. The Lord Mayor in his robes stands on the roof of his ornate gilt coach, which is the chief feature of the design. There are two smaller coaches, behind and to left and right, part of a procession which the Mayor, George Scholey, is addressing. Behind them is a high gibbet inscribed 'Hop Pole', on which the hangman sits astride, saying, "I wish your Lordship would give me a job." The Mayor, directed to the right, his head in profile, his arms flung wide, says: "Gentlemen, as I thought it my duty to keep the peace of the City, I have marched you through St Giles's to Tyburn, & here, by Virtue of my authority, I turn you all off; for you are all Malefactors: which signifies evil doers, & you have done evil to insist on coming at all. I have nothing more to say to you, but to beg of you to go home, put on your aprons, get behind your Counters & mind your business & think yourselves happy that you are not all executed." Inside the coach are an officer clasping a roll of 'Records', the mace-bearer holding the mace, and a third man. A pompous coachman sits on the box, wearing a huge cocked hat and a big nosegay. Four footmen stand behind, one of whom kicks one of the crowd in the face. From the front coach (left), behind which are two footmen, an alderman looks out to ask: "What the Devil is he about?" Two men look from the other coach (right); one says: "Hang him Kick him out of Office," the other: "Give him rope & he'll hang himself." A crowd watches the procession. On the right three well-dressed men stand in conversation; one says: "His Lordship has always had a hankering after this place ever since the affair of the Hop Sacks." Another: "Of what Company does his Lordship suppose us to be—of horsestealers river-pirates, pick pockets, or what else?" A boy or dwarfish man with twisted shin-bones twitches the handkerchief from the speaker's pocket. The rest of the crowd is proletarian. On the left two fighting viragoes fall to the ground and a child falls on its back; a coal-black chimney-sweep gapes at them. Behind them two men fight, one with a hod, the other with a cudgel. A man seated on a braying ass with enormous erect ears gazes up at the Mayor, as does a fat woman with a basket. There are also a very deformed cripple on crutches, an old woman in a cloak, a scavenger, and many heads. Two dogs confront each other aggressively in the centre foreground. A signpost (left) pointing to the right is inscribed: 'New Road from Kensington Pallace to the Mansion House through St Giles'.
1 June 1813.
Hand-coloured etching.
- Production date
- 1813
- Dimensions
-
Height: 245 millimetres
-
Width: 345 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', IX, 1949)
See No. 12038. A satire on the Address of the Livery of London to the Princess of Wales, on the route taken by the procession, and on the Mayor's speech justifying it: 'He had acted in conformity to the sacred oath he had taken ... [to] support the peace and good order of the City.' (His object being to avoid Carlton House.) 'Examiner', 25 Apr. 1813, p. 269. A typical St. Giles's fracas is depicted, to stress the disorderly character of that district. Executions ceased to take place at Tyburn in 1784.
Reid, No. 240. Cohn, No. 802.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1862
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1862,1217.383