Samuel De Wilde
The Reformers’ Dinner
London, S Tipper, 1st. June 1809
Etching
200 x 360 mm
Repairs to old folds
£140
An after-dinner orgy of toasts, resolutions, and drunkenness. A long trestle table extends across the design; the space in front is strewn with prostrate bodies, overturned chairs, tankards, glasses, bottles, &c. It is the grand Reform Dinner at the ‘Crown and Anchor’ on 1 May. The space behind the table is crowded. Lord Cochrane, wearing cocked hat and trousers, mounts on an anchor to slash at the crown with his sabre, the sign of the tavern (with the inscription The Crown and Anchor). Near him sits (?) Peter Finnerty waving a tankard and grasping the hand of a ruffian seated on the table. Burdett stands, waving a full glass and a bonnet rouge. Next him sits Wardle, holding a Plan for a New Government, to which a grinning chimney-sweep, decked out in the cocked hat and gold paper epaulets of May-day (cf. No. 6740), points. On the near side of the table, a man in back view, evidently Cartwright, stands on a chair, holding up one end of a long scroll headed Resolution 1. A man standing beside him (right), resembling Madocks (see No. 11334), holds up the other end, on which is Resolution 14; in his left hand is a paper: Accusation of Ministers; in his pocket is a paper: More Plans to blow up the Ministry. On the left Bosville hands out coins to a group of eager ruffians (cf. No. 11081). The other guests are proletarian or disreputable. A butcher makes a speech, holding out a paper: The Wae Ow too Rifform the Parl[iament]. A ragged bare-legged ruffian sits on the body of a drunken man, ecstatically waving his hat. BM 11335
