print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.12612
- Title
- Object: The school of projects
- Description
-
Plate from the Satirist, v. 313; explanatory text, pp. 313-17. Various persons associated with the floatation of joint-stock companies. On the right on a low dais a well-dressed man (Brown) sits, as if for his portrait, holding a Plan for Brewery. His left elbow rests on two books on a writing-table: Brown's Devices. On the seat of his chair are papers: Lunatic Company and Project. Under his feet are others: Chimney Sweepers Company; London Bank; Cattle Insurance Company. Beside him (left) is a well-dressed man in top-boots, wearing the apron, over-sleeves, and steel of a butcher. He leans forward, holding a large fat ram by the horn, feeding it with a paper inscribed Vauxhall Bridge Str . . In a niche behind the two men is a life-like statue of Hope looking down at Brown. In the centre of the design stands a receptacle shaped like a truncated obelisk and inscribed Patent Gas; from a broken panel large flames issue. To it is attached a flexible pipe ending in a (lighted) triple gas-burner resembling those in London street lamps (see No. 11092). This is held up by a man, wearing a hat (evidently Winsor) who regards the flames in astonished terror. In his pocket is a paper: Patent Gas Company. On the ground is a rough trough inscribed Patent Timber Mould. On the left, a single-span timber bridge, much arched and lit by lamps, connects two globes, supported on posts rising from a low platform. Two men are gouging a tunnel in one of the globes just below the bridge; from their pockets project respectively Gravesend Tunnel Plans and Strand Bridge Plan. The three designs are connected by juxtaposition and by a boarded floor.
1 October 1809
Etching and aquatint
- Production date
- 1809
- Dimensions
-
Height: 199 millimetres
-
Width: 365 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VIII, 1947)
A satire primarily on William Robert Henry Brown, promoter and manager of the Golden Lane Brewery, and also Chairman of the Hope Insurance Company (founded 1807 with a capital of £1,000,000), and promoter of a Cattle Insurance Company, cf. No. 11511. The man holding the ram is one George Leybourne, a supporter of the last scheme, said to have had a plan for making a sheep grow as large as an ox. An engineer (Ralph Dodd) is said to have conceived a plan for building a bridge from the earth to the moon (a model of which is depicted), and for tunnelling the globe in connexion with this scheme; both tunnel and bridge were to be lit by 'the patentee of the gas lights', i.e. Winsor, see No. 10798, &c. This is an attack on Ralph Dodd's scheme for a dry tunnel from Gravesend to Tilbury (an anticipation of the Thames Tunnel eventually carried out by Brunel), and also on the Strand Bridge, for which Dodd procured an Act of Parliament in 1806 (opened as Waterloo Bridge, 18 June 1817). Subscribers to his Tunnel scheme are (correctly) said to have lost their money (Satirist, v. 369). He also published plans for Vauxhall Bridge (built 1811-16). Winsor applied unsuccessfully in 1809 for an Act to incorporate his gas undertaking, but obtained one in 1810. At this time joint-stock companies with transferable shares were subject to 'the Bubble Act', 1719 (repealed 1825), prohibiting such companies unless incorporated by Charter or Act of Parliament. Dodd had incurred proceedings under the Act in 1808. He was an able but unfortunate engineer, see D.N.B. For company floatation in 1809 (a year of speculative fever preceding the boom of 1810) see also Nos. 11440, 11441, 11606.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.12612
