and “Works connected with Fine Arts & c .”,38 he was most notable for being George
Cruikshank’s principal publisher for much of the decade, as well as for importing prints, including many caricatures, from France. He also published a number of Henry Heath's ‘Scrapsheet’ collections and important illustrated annuals such as
Hood's Comic Annual (1831-34) and The Comic Almanack {^S35-53, the very first
plate of which contains a depiction of both shop and proprietor by Cruikshank, (fïg .11)). The broad range of his activities during the ‘30s is representative of the expansion of graphic satire beyond the confines of the single sheet print.
Based just around the corner from Tilt's shop, Edward King of Chancery Lane was another specialist in copies of Heath's ‘Paul Pry’ prints (as well as some of his more recent works), but is more noteworthy for his publication of The Caricaturist,
an early imitation of The Looking Glass illustrated by C.J. Grant. Costing only half the price of its model, however (1s.6d plain), it was explicitly marketed - in direct contrast to McLean's ideals - as “the cheapest work of the kind” and is illustrative of the way in which established formats were increasingly being adapted to satisfy the expectations of different audiences.
Perhaps more important in this regard was John Kendrick, the one publisher who - geographically - falls outside the established pattern. His shop in Leicester Square was closer to the exclusive dealers of the West End than it was to the centres of radicalism and cheap fiction further east (being almost literally just around the corner from McLean’s shop on Haymarket). His publications constituted a kind of mid-point between the two, demonstrating moderate radical tendencies and imitating popular forms such as novelty almamacks. His chief contribution to the period was Every Body’s Album & Caricature Magazine (1834- 5), another multi-panel lithographic periodical in The Looking Glass mould (again by Grant) which survived for 39 fortnightly issues. Kendrick, however, was only able to publish the first twenty-four issues before he died in December 1834, at which point his stock and the greater part of his business interests were taken over by Dawson, who had previously been based in Paternoster Row.
The area in which the graphic satire trade now had its focus was - significantly - also one of the principal centres of metropolitan radicalism (the other being Finsbury to the north). Having been in decline throughout the 1820s, radical
culture was being actively revived in the early ‘30s by the prospect of electoral reform, and would be carried on to the end of the decade by the emergence of the Chartist movement, before the focus of radical activity shifted decisively to the industrial centres of the n o r th .39 Many of the most prominent figures of radical
society operated in this milieu: Robert Weddeburn held profane mock services at his ‘Infidel Chapel’ in White’s Alley, just off Chancery L ane^o; Henry Hetherington
was based in Kingsgate, H o lb o rn 4 i; John Cleave, the prominent Chartist publisher,
had a bookshop in Shoe Lane, between Fleet Street and Holborn; William Benbow, one of the most extreme members of the National Union of the Working Classes had a bookshop on Castle Street, adjacent to Leicester Square, and a coffee shop at Temple Bar; while the Rotunda was located close to Blackfriars Bridge, just south of the point where Fleet Street meets Ludgate Hill.42 Described as, “one of the great theatres of popular radicalism in the early 1 8 3 0 s ,’’43 it was
here that Benjamin Cousins and many other young pressmen of the Unstamped served their political apprenticeships, while Hetherington and James Watson used it as a base to organize the NUWC. The notorious republican, atheist, and radical printer Richard Carlile preached infidel sermons there with the Rev. Robert
T a y lo r,4 4 and Eliza Macaulay and Eliza Sharpies regularly used it as a forum for
their lectures on feminism.
It was in this milieu that many of the period’s graphic satirists and publishers were moving. The publications of Drake, Chubb and others directly reflect the influence of this area of radical culture and society, which often had a direct relationship to the images they produced. As will be seen in Chapter Eight, radical caricature - especially during the mid 1830s, when the ‘War of the Unstamped’ was at its peak -
39 h.T. Dickinson, ‘Radical Culture’ in Celina Fox, ed., London: Wortd City, 1800-1840, (1992)pp. 209-24, esp.
pp. 223-4. see also McCalman, op. cit. pp. 181 -231 for a detailed discussion of metropolitan radical society
and print culture during the reform era.
40 An ex-Methodist and one of the most notorious Spencean radicals, who styled himself as th e Devil’s Chaplain’ and Primate of All Hell’.
41 Founder of The Poor Man’s Guardian, (1831-35) one of the most important of the unstamped papers, and a
rallying point for the cause of press freedom.
42 The symtx)lic centre point of radical and republican activity in the period between the July Revolution of 1830 and the Great Reform Bill of 1832.
43 McCalman, op. cit., p.231
44 Taylor was one of numerous Spenceans, deists, republicans and freethinkers who made an Impact in metropolitan radical circles: he was a former Anglican vicar, who lost his faith (although he did not share Carlile’s atheism), and began to organise theological and political discussions, criticisms and blasphemous
services’ at the Rotunda amongst other places. Along with Carlile he was imprisoned for his activities in 1831, after which they quarrelled and Taylor allied himself with Benbow, who became his publisher. Gareth
developed a strongly self-referential character, both as a source for emotive and powerfully resonant subject matter, but also as a means of fostering a sense of community within radical society itself.45 The representation of real events, and the frequent references to familiar publications, lent a renewed sense of veracity to this form of graphic satire, and linked it directly to the publishers of the Unstamped.
Several publishers within this milieu also formed a link between the worlds of popular radicalism and pornographic literature. While the majority of ‘respectable radicals' - foremost among them being Francis Place - condemned the publication of pornography, several prominent publishers of obscene and scandalous works also issued political prints in the years around the Great Reform Bill. Some of these had been active in the radical press for a decade or more, having been important players in the drama surrounding the Queen Caroline affair of 1820-21. Fairburn, Duncombe and Chubb, in particular, were instrumental in carrying on the tradition of scandalous and titillating literature which had thrived during the Regency period and the 1820s, publishing numerous shilling editions of prurient ‘memoirs’ of courtesans (generally either plagiarised or fictitious).46 a number of young radical printers and publishers of the ‘20s were agents for the numerous bawdy and sensationalistic ‘bon ton’ and ‘crim. con.’ periodicals, which carried the tradition of scurrilous radical journalism of the Regency period into the early Victorian era. 47 Chief amongst these were Strange and Cousins, the first of whom was especially prone to issuing obscene works, and as late as 1857 was prosecuted for selling prurient periodicals such as Women of London and the latest incarnation of Paul Pry (works which the presiding judge, Lord Campbell, described as “obscene and disgusting.’’),48 Similarly, men such as Jack ‘Mad’ Mitford (the gin-soaked down-and-out radical intellectual, hack writer, and Regency-era pornographic journalist), J. L Marks and William Benbow, lived and worked in the area well into the 1830s.49
Marks (whose earliest prints date from 1814) had been one of the most interesting
45 Celina Fox has drawn attention to this ^ p e c t of radical satire In her article, 'Political Caricature and the
Freedom of the Press’ In G. Boyce. J. Curran and P. Wingate eds., Newspaper History (1978), pp.226-46.
46 McCalman, op erf ,pp. 205-6, 222.
47 Ibid, pp. 219-221.