- Museum number
- 1868,0808.12277
- Title
-
Object: France. Sporting intelligence.
-
Object: Brougham & his Highland host.
-
Object: Last day's news.
-
Object: Military Gazette. Infantry officers. | Regulation patterns.
-
Object: Edinburgh | Revd. Alexander Fletcher, exhibition 1st. The distribution at the tavern.
-
Object: Exhibition 2nd. The holding forth on the Calton Hill.
-
Object: Essay on modern medical education continued.
-
Object: Consumption of smoke.
-
Object: A fact.
-
Object: No: 1. Life of a soldier.
-
Series: Vol. 1. - No. VIII. Northern Looking Glass.
- Description
-
Caricature magazine of four folio pages, the last covered in letterpress text, in the form of a (fortnightly) newspaper. 26 October 1825
Etchings as follows:
Page 1.
FRANCE. SPORTING INTELLIGENCE. (14796)
Charles X (1.) and the duc d'Angoulême (r.) fire from a carriage and pair. Wellington stands between them; he peppers a gendarme, who runs off, a fox speared on his bayonet. The King, in crown and robes, fires a blunderbuss at close range at a cock, duck, owl, &c. The Dauphin kills a young pig; the sow scampers off. A second gendarme, mounted, decapitates a duck with his sword. In the foreground a little post-boy in vast milk-churn boots holds a mule laden with game: a stag, geese, &c. In the background a soldier stands in a tree waving two rattles.
BROUGHAM & HIS HIGHLAND HOST. (15065)
Brougham, draped in a sheet, a big pistol in each hand, stands in a ramshackle bedroom over the kneeling and terrified man, innkeeper of Stornoway. The text, from the Edin. Observer, describes a brutal practical joke played by Brougham (before 1820).
LAST DAY'S NEWS. (14797)
Figures scattered on the northern hemisphere. A Greek soldier sits in precarious triumph astride a see-saw balanced above the globe ; from the opposite end Ferdinand VII, with a mule's head, falls backwards, losing his crown. A monk sits on Ferdinand's chest holding up a cross and about to place a fool's cap on his head. John Bull, smoking, and Charles X stand in the middle distance, mere spectators. Scales hang unevenly from a cloud: a Jew stands in the upper scale, bales of cotton fall from the lower one. In the foreground a black man thrusts an officer (Lord C. Somerset) head first into a bag. Behind, the House of Commons is represented by the Speaker in his Chair and a few members; above them a hand issues from a cloud, holding a giant extinguisher.
MILITARY GAZETTE. INFANTRY OFFICERS. | Regulation Patterns. (15066)
Six types of uniform are caricatured. A man wearing the tartan trews of a Scottish Lowland regiment. A tiny fusilier in a towering bearskin. Two other fusiliers, the shorter wearing a projecting plume from the front of his shako, the taller, drooping cock's feathers. A Highland officer in back view. An officer in undress, wearing flat round cap, sword, and cape to the knees, with spurred Hessian boots. They are without moustaches. See No. 15058.
Page 2.
EDINBURGH | REVD ALEXANDER FLETCHER, EXHIBITION 1ST. THE DISTRIBUTION AT THE TAVERN. (15067)
Scene in the large room of a tavern (Commercial Inn). Fletcher (1.), wearing a gown, stands above a dense crowd of respectably dressed men and women who fight desperately for books which he scatters among them. Tables are overturned.
EXHIBITION 2ND THE HOLDING FORTH ON THE CALTON HILL. (15068)
Fletcher declaims from a chair placed on a table to a sourly appraising crowd. Seated on the table at his feet is a young woman in a fashionable riding-habit and top-hat, her hands sanctimoniously together. The vast crowd tails away in the distance, surrounding the contours of the hill. Collectors at key-points hold out hats, pans, &c, for money, without visible success.
Page 3.
ESSAY ON MODERN MEDICAL EDUCATION CONTINUED. (15069)
'Preparing for Practice. N° 7.' Young practitioners watch while one elderly doctor operates on a ram's head mounted on a pole; another disembowels a live cat. In the foreground are a dog with two wooden legs and a monkey with an arm in a sling. Behind are skeletons of large animals, one a walrus. 'Actual Practice. No 8 [signed] W H'. The amputation of a leg with an axe. The patient is strapped to a table, supported by a horrified man. Three others watch, one covering his eyes. Two coffins lean against the wall. 'Practical Results. | At Home N° 9' Interior of a hospital ward (cf. No. 12142). A doctor who is a clothed skeleton holding his tasselled cane, stands with his back to the grisly scene. An old woman, skull-headed like the others, hands a steaming bowl to a patient who is dead or dying. Another dead patient has fallen from his bed. Behind, a skeleton-apothecary uses pestle and mortar, the mortar resting on a stand made of bones. 'Abroad. N° 10 [signed] W H'. Scene on a battlefield. One surgeon, in uniform, has just amputated a leg above the knee. Another holds up the decollated head of an officer, whose trunk is supported by a third. See No. 15054, &c.
CONSUMPTION OF SMOKE. (15070)
Two designs. [1] 'Present'. A factory building almost hidden in clouds of smoke, which billows from a tall chimney placarded 'Mem Pos Jacobs Watt'. Pedestrians are distressed at the smoke ; a tree has lost almost all its leaves. [2] 'Future'. The same buildings without smoke, and surrounded by trees. A bird has nested on the top of the chimney. Pedestrians admire the scene.
A FACT. (15071)
Watched by an amused Scot, an Irishman crawls through a gap in dilapidated railings surrounding the grass-plot of George Square. Beside him is a placard: 'Notice—Any Person or Persons going over the Railing of the Square will be prosecuted according to Law'. See No. 15023.
N° 1. LIFE OF A SOLDIER. (15072)
A smart recruiting sergeant, with a sinister smile, holds out the King's shilling to a yokel whose foot rests on a spade. Two bandsmen with drum and fife stand behind. Cf. No. 8328 by Gillray. See Nos. 15088, 15089, 15094, 15104, 15312, 15322, 15335.
- Production date
- 1825
- Dimensions
-
Height: 404 millimetres (approx. page size)
-
Width: 277 millimetres (approx. page size)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- From No. VIII the pages are numbered consecutively, beginning with 26; the last page (in No. XVII) is 65.
(Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', X, 1952)
Notes to 'France. Sporting intelligence.' (14796):
Illustration to a paragraph (p. 4) from 'a Paris paper' on a royal hunt in the forest of St. Germain in which Wellington (cf. No. 14499) took part, and the Dauphin fired 1,200 shots. No. 14797 is from the same issue.
'Last days news' (14797):
Illustration to a quotation (p. 4) from the Glas. Free Press, Sept. 10. 'There is very little [news.] Greece appears to be looking up; Spain to be looking down, and France and Britain to be looking on. The funds are getting better, and the Cotton markets worse. Lord Somerset has been making a summerset in the currency of the Cape of Good Hope. . . . Parliament, some say, is to be immediately dissolved.' Somerset, the incompetent Governor of the Cape, 1815-25, was already recalled. See R. Donkin, Letters on the Government of the Cape of Good Hope . . ., 1827. The dissolution was postponed to 1826.
'Edinburgh | Revd Alexander Fletcher' (15067):
The text: Fletcher, see No. 14700, &c, on his recent visit to Edinburgh, see No. 15068, announced that he would distribute gratis copies of a book 'containing we believe, some of his love letters' (i.e. A. Fletcher, An Appeal to Public Opinion, 1824); a great crowd collected, and books were distributed in the manner depicted.
'Exhibition 2nd' (15068):
The crowd is estimated at 20,000. The collection for the building of 'his chapel', see No. 14703, is said to have been about £40.
'Consumption of smoke' (15070):
Text: Mr. Cleland, indefatigable in the interests of Glasgow, has turned his attention to Smoke Consumption (unattained A.D. 1950, though in 1821 M. A. Taylor secured an Act (2 Geo. IV, c. 41) for forcing factories using steam-engines to consume their own smoke).
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.12277
