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Spencers

• Object type

  • satirical print
  • print

• Museum number

  1851,0901.782

• Title (object)

  • Spencers

• Description

  A ragged street musician, playing a pipe and tabor to a troupe of five dancing dogs, stands (left) in profile to the right. The dogs, one dressed as a woman, all wear spencers or short coats of slightly varying patterns. He wears a spencer, or ragged coat with a broad collar, cut short below the hips, the tattered tail of another coat hanging below it. The spectators who watch the dogs are similarly dressed: a fat man, full-face, clasping his sides, wears a half-coat over a tail-coat. The woman next him wears a short spencer over her high-waisted dress, as do two others who walk away. On the left is a young blood, similarly but more extravagantly dressed, with cropped hair, deep swathed neck-cloth, half-boots with deep tops; he holds a bludgeon. His curiously drawn and much caricatured companion (right) is dressed like the other women, all of whom wear tall feathers in their turbans or bonnets. Beneath the title are twelve lines of verse beginning:

  'Dont think my puppies stand alone
  If you will make the search Sir
  Puppies at the Bar you'll find
  And Puppies in the Church Sir!
  Half coat pups and booted pups
  And. pups without their hair Sir.' 13 March 1796
  Hand-coloured etching

  More 

• Producer name

  • Published by: S W Fores

• School/style

  • British

• Date

  • 1796

• Materials

  • paper

• Technique

  • hand-coloured
  • etching

• Dimensions

  • Height: 245 millimetres
  • Width: 343 millimetres

• Inscriptions

  • • Inscription Content

      With stamp 'S.W.F'
      Lettered: 'Pub March 13 1796 by S W Fores N° 50 Piccadilly the Corner of Sackville St Folios of Caracature lent out for the Evening - Prints & Drawings lent out on the plan of a Circulating Library'

• Curator's comments

  (Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VII, 1942)
  For the spencer see BMSat 8192 (1792).

• Bibliography

  • BM Satires 8903

• Location

  Not on display (Satires British 1796 Unmounted Roy)

• Subjects

  • satire

• Acquisition name

  • Donated by: William Smith, the printseller

• Acquisition date

  1851

• Department

  Prints & Drawings

• Registration number

  1851,0901.782