“What Things are Coming to; or, the Boycotted and Land-Leagued Landowner” from “Fun”

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What Things are Coming to; or, the Boycotted and Land-Leagued Landowner

John Gordon Thomson (1841-1911)

Dalziel Brothers, engravers

Fun (1 December 1880): 217

Courtesy of the HathiTrust Digital Library and Princeton University.

Gladstone as policeman catching Parnell and other Irish Nationalists in the act.

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The Irishman, whose hat brim identifies him as a “tenant,” wears what cartoonists used as the national costume of Ireland, which includes a characteristic cone-shaped hat, eighteenth-century breeches, and a cudgel (or shelelagh) while the shabbily dressed figure representing the land owners who were landlords (and who may have been intended as a caricature of William E. Gladstone), wears the kind of sign seen on street beggars as he holds out his hat, begging for rent. The arrogance of the Irish tenant, who jauntily smokes his pipe while threateningly holding his weapon behind his back, makes this obviously a satirical attack on Irish tenants, but the exaggeratedly ragged clothing of the figure representing the landlords — together with his own arrogant pose — suggests this might be a matter of “a curse on both your houses.”

Last modified 12 May 2018