- Museum number
- J,3.86
- Title
- Object: Copenhagen house.
- Description
-
A large and plebeian crowd is being addressed from three roughly made platforms, one being in the middle distance, another in the background. In the foreground (right) a man, supposed to be Thelwall, leans from his rostrum in profile to the left, shouting, with clenched fists, and raised right arm. Behind him stands a ragged barber, a comb in his lank hair, holding out a paper: 'Resolutions of the London Corresponding Society'. Next him, a man with the high-crowned hat and bands of a dissenting minister holds a tattered umbrella over the orator. A man on the steps leading to the platform, wearing a bonnet-rouge (the only one in the crowd) has a vague resemblance to Fox. From the next platform (left) a butcher, supposed to be Gale Jones, bawls at the crowd with raised right arm. Beside him stand a man holding a scroll inscribed 'Rights of Citizens'. The third orator is a tiny figure (Hodgson) with both arms raised.
All the platforms are surrounded by crowds, and hats and arms are being waved by those addressed by the butcher. In the foreground (left) a man sits holding out for signature a document which is supported on a barrel of 'Real Democratic Gin by Thelwal & Co.' Three little chimney-sweepers stand round it, one of whom, holding a pen, has just made his mark on the 'Remonstrance', below the signatures of 'Jack Cade', 'Wat Tyler', 'Jack Straw'. All wear caps with the name of their master on a brass plate (according to the Chimney-Sweepers' Act of 1788); this is 'Thelwall'. A fat woman sells a dram to one of the crowd. Another presides over a portable roulette or E.O. table, a 'teetotum', inscribed 'Equality & no Sedition Bill'; three barefooted urchins are staking their pence. The heads in general do not appear to be portraits, but in the centre of the design, with his back to the woman selling drams, is Priestley, caricatured, standing with folded arms facing Thelwall. There is a landscape background with trees up which spectators have climbed. Beneath the design: '"I tell you, Citizens, we mean to new-dress the Constitution and turn it, and set a new Nap upon it."
Shakspeare' 16 November 1795
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1795
- Dimensions
-
Height: 247 millimetres
-
Width: 348 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VII, 1942)
Two mass meetings (besides an earlier one in June) were held by the London Corresponding Society (see BMSat 9189, &c.) in a field behind Copenhagen House, a popular resort in Islington, one on 26 October at which there were three 'tribunes', the chairman John Binns. It was addressed by Citizens Thelwall, Hodgson, and Gale Jones. It acclaimed an 'Address to the Nation', demanding universal suffrage and annual parliaments, a Remonstrance to the King, and Resolutions against the War, &c. This seems to be the meeting here depicted, except for the inscription on the roulette table, which points to the meeting on 12 November to protest against the Bills against Seditious Meetings and Treasonable Attempts. At this meeting there were six rostra, Citizen Duane in the chair. 'Hist. of Two Acts . . .', 1796, pp. 98-106, 125-34. See BMSat 8701. For the meeting in June see BMSat 8664. For the Bills see BMSat 8687, &c. Cf. a description of a similar meeting on 7 Dec. by Farington, 'Diary', i. 118-19. The popularity of the republican Thelwall's lectures had brought the lecture-room within the Seditious Meetings Act. For the Constitution cf. BMSat 8287.
Grego, 'Gillray', p. 193; Wright and Evans, No. 134. Copy (part only) in Grego, 'Hist. of Parl. Elections', 1892, p. 298.
Additional information: George indexes Hodgson as the radical William Hodgson, author of 'The Commonwealth of Reason'; it is in fact Richard Hodgson, a prominent member of the London Corresponding Society and speaker at the Copenhagen house meeting in October 1795.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1818
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- J,3.86
