A scene of urban desolation with gin-crazed Londoners, notably a woman who lets her child fall to its death and an emaciated ballad-seller; in the background is the tower of St George's Bloomsbury; in this state, the child's face has been changed so that the face is wizened and the eyes sunken.
A coach stopped by highwaymen, one bowing to the women inside, who plead or faint, others going through the luggage, one playing a pipe on the left, the gentleman sitting bound near him, watching glumly as the chief highwayman, Duval, sweeps a flourishing bow to one of the young women, who stands in front of the coach, curtseying; after Frith; scratched-letter proof. 1863
Kidd was tried at the Old Bailey, London, in May 1701. He was found guilty of murder and piracy and was hanged at Execution Dock. Kidd's body was then suspended on a gibbet at Tilbury Point on the lower reaches of the Thames.
Bänkelsänger in Basel, in front of the "Wirtshaus zur Henne" on the Nadelberg. The sung pictures show the earthquake of Basel 1356 and the floods in Hölstein 1830.
Autolycus was a thief disguised as a pedlar who appears in Shakespeare's play A Winter's Tale. He is shown here selling cheap goods and sensational printed ballads to gullible country folk. Leslie based the background sky and the ash tree at the right on studies supplied by his friend, the landscape painter John Constable. Source: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O80881/autolycus-oil-painting-leslie-charles-robert/
A room at the Rose Tavern, Drury Lane (after the painting at Sir John Soane's Museum); to l., Tom, surrounded by prostitutes and clearly drunk, sprawls on a chair with his foot on the table; one young woman embraces him and steals his watch, another spits a stream of gin across the table to the amusement of a young black woman standing in the background, another woman drinks from the punchbowl, another is removing her clothes in order to perform "postures"; to right., a harpist and a door through which enter a man holding a large dish and a candle, and a pregnant ballad singer holding a sheet lettered "Black Joke"; on the walls hang a map of the world to which a young woman holds a candle and framed prints of Roman emperors, all (except that of Nero) damaged.
