File:The butchers of freedom. (BM J,2.131).jpg

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The butchers of freedom.   (Wikidata search (Cirrus search) Wikidata query (SPARQL)  Create new Wikidata item based on this file)
Artist

Print made by: James Gillray

Published by: Hannah Humphrey
Title
The butchers of freedom.
Description
English: An election mob in which Townshend and his supporters, as butchers, are violently attacking the populace with cleavers and marrow-bones. They wear aprons with butchers' steels dangling from the waist. George Hanger (right), his hat decorated with three ostrich feathers and the coronet of the Prince of Wales, raises a cleaver in both hands and threatens two constables with staves who fall backwards, wounded or terrified. He is in violent action, one foot rests on the unconscious body of a sailor whose face is gashed and bleeding. In the sailor's hand is a flag with a ship and the words 'Royal Navy'; on this Townshend, who uses his marrow-bone and cleaver as a musical instrument, not as weapons, is trampling. Behind Hanger, Fox, climbing above the crowd, is violently smashing the sign of 'The King's Head' (a bust portrait of the King) which is over a door inscribed 'Martin'. In the foreground a woman half-lying on the ground tries to protect her screaming infant from a cleaver and bone brandished by Sheridan. On the extreme left Lord Derby attacks a kneeling sailor with a wooden leg. Behind Sheridan, Burke raises a cleaver in both hands, and behind him the Duke of Norfolk waves a flag inscribed 'Townsend and Liberty'. Behind is a dense crowd brandishing cleavers and bones, while others attempt to escape. On the right are houses inscribed 'James Str[eet]', the houses of Covent Garden are indicated on the left. July 1788
Etching and aquatint
Depicted people Associated with: Edmund Burke
Date 1788
date QS:P571,+1788-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
Medium paper
Dimensions
Height: 254 millimetres
Width: 355 millimetres
institution QS:P195,Q6373
Current location
Prints and Drawings
Accession number
J,2.131
Notes

(Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VI, 1938) One of many satires on the Westminster by-election of 1788, see BMSats 7339, &c, at which the riots were said almost to equal those of 1784. The butchers and chairmen formed mobs for the Foxite candidate, while sailors supported Hood, see BMSat 7353, &c.

This affair is explained in a Whig hand-bill dated 19 July 1788 in which Timothy Martin of the King's Head, James Street, Covent Garden, refuses to continue to harbour sailors (engaged by Hood) on account of an affray caused by the sailors, who had sallied from his house and attempted to pull down the flag of the opposite party at Wood's Hotel. Martin had been admonished at Bow Street on account of the disturbance, and was there ordered to refuse to harbour the sailors. B.M. Add. MSS. 27, 837, fol. 15. See also Laprade, 'William Pitt and Westminster Elections', 'American Hist. Rev.' xviii. 271-2. For allegations of republicanism against Fox cf. BMSat 6830, &c.
Source/Photographer https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_J-2-131
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 © The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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current21:13, 12 May 2020Thumbnail for version as of 21:13, 12 May 20201,600 × 1,142 (648 KB)Copyfraud (talk | contribs)British Museum public domain uploads (Copyfraud/BM) Satirical prints in the British Museum 1788 #6,197/12,043

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