Gillray, James. “Meeting of Unfortunate Citizens”. Original antique engraving by James Gillray. From the Bohn edition of 1851, using Gillray’s original copper plates. With later hand colouring.

“Meeting of Unfortunate Citoyens” (subtitled “Dismay of Two Disgraced Patriots”) is a highly expressive political satire originally published by Hannah Humphrey on 12 May 1798.

The print mocks the sudden, humiliating political downfall of two of Britain’s most powerful radical Whig leaders: Charles James Fox and Charles Howard, the 11th Duke of Norfolk. Both men had been stripped of their royal titles and offices by King George III for publicly supporting the ideals of the French Revolution.

The caricature directly responds to back-to-back political scandals that occurred in early 1798.

At a January Whig dinner, the Duke of Norfolk boldly toasted “Our Sovereign’s health—the Majesty of the People!” This direct democratic challenge to the monarchy outraged George III, who instantly stripped Norfolk of his Lord Lieutenancy and his military command of the West Riding Militia.

On 1 May 1798, Charles James Fox deliberately repeated Norfolk’s controversial toast at a Whig Club meeting. The King retaliated within 48 hours by personally striking Fox’s name directly off the Privy Council register.

Gillray captures the two outcasts commiserating on the pavement right outside Brooks’s, the famous St James’s Street gentleman’s club that served as the headquarters for the Whig party:

Both Fox and Norfolk are wearing small, tucked-away French revolutionary bonnets-rouges (red liberty caps) under their hats, marking them as traitorous jacobins.

True to Gillray’s classic depiction of him, Fox appears unkempt, unshaven, and disheveled with his stockings slipping down his legs. He looks on with angry despair while clutching the official paper announcing his dismissal from the Privy Council.

Norfolk stands gesturing in absolute dismay, carrying his ceremonial baton as the hereditary Earl Marshal. He holds a scattered bundle of documents detailing Whig toasts, lists of lost honours, and a paper reading “Income Tax”—a reminder of the financial squeezes imposed on the wealthy by the Tory government.

In the background, outside St James’s Palace, Fox and Norfolk’s fierce political rivals—Prime Minister William Pitt and Henry Dundas—stand at attention as armed palace guards. They watch the ruined Whigs with smug satisfaction, representing the total dominance of the Tory government.

Gillray was one of five children, and the only one to survive to maturity. In 1770 he was apprenticed to Harry Ashby, a London writing in engraver, and five years later W. Humphrey published a few of Gillray’s illustrations including satirical works. By the time Gillray commenced his career satire was old, but personal caricature was in its infancy. Other exponents in this form of art were soon overshadowed by Gillray’s superior craftsmanship.

His figures were full of vitality, titillating and reflective of some political crisis or private scandal. As his popularity increased so did demand by the public to see more of his work. In the rapidly changing politics of the late18th century he would produce a plate in twenty-four hours. Although sometimes overlooked his speech bubbles were elaborate and Gillray would spend considerable time composing and redrafting the text.

Between 1791 to 1807 his career continued successfully in association with William and Hannah Humphrey. There after Gillray’s health began to suffer. He eventually slipped into madness and died shortly before the Battle of Waterloo on June 1st 1815. Hannah, who had a close relationship with him nursed Gillray through out his final years and following his death the copper plates then formed part of Hannah’s estate when she died in 1818.

The executors of Hannah’s estate sold Gillray’s painstakingly worked plates for there second hand copper weight. Hearing of this, the then publisher, Bohn who had previously expressed an interest in buying the plates set about purchasing them from a variety of different sources, eventually acquiring over 500. In 1851 Bohn republished the engravings in a large folio volume, “The Works of James Gillray”.