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

“Betty Canning Revived: – or – a peep at the conjuration of Mary Squires, & the gypsey family” was first published in March 1791.

It uses one of the 18th century’s most notorious true-crime hoaxes to satirise a contemporary aristocratic sex and forgery scandal involving the Gunning family.

To understand Gillray’s satire, reference needs to be made to the Elizabeth Canning Case of 1753, when a young maidservant named Elizabeth “Betty” Canning vanished for a month. She reappeared emaciated, claiming she had been kidnapped, starved, and held captive in a brothel by an old Gypsy woman named Mary Squires. Squires was initially sentenced to death, but a deeper investigation proved her alibi. It turned out Betty had fabricated the entire kidnapping story; Squires was pardoned, and Canning was convicted of perjury and transported to America.

Gillray “revived” Betty Canning’s story to mock a massive elite scandal happening in 1791. Elizabeth Gunning (the daughter of General John Gunning) was desperate to marry into higher nobility. To make it happen, she and her mother fabricated and forged romantic letters from prominent suitors, including Lord Blandford (the Marquess of Blandford) and Lord Lorne.

When General Gunning discovered his daughter’s massive web of lies and fake letters, he threw her out of the house. Just like Betty Canning decades earlier, Elizabeth Gunning stubbornly swore under oath that she was completely innocent and that the letters were real.

Gillray beautifully mirrors the two scandals by dressing the Gunning family as the deceptive “Gypsy family” from the Canning trial.

General John Gunning is depicted on the left dressed as an old Gypsy woman (representing Mary Squires), but still wearing a military coat and sitting on a military drum. He is actively sealing one of the forged letters addressed to the Duke of Marlborough (Blandford’s father).

Elizabeth Gunning is shown on the right, holding a deck of cards up to her lips. Instead of swearing an oath on a Holy Bible, she is kissing the Ace of Spades while swearing her innocence. Her dialogue bubble reads: “I Swear that I never wish’d or tried directly or indirectly to get a Coronet…”

On the wall behind them hangs a paper titled “Affidavit of Eliz. Cannin,” directly linking Elizabeth Gunning’s lies to Betty Canning’s historical perjury. Through an open door, a signpost points “TO BLENHEIM” (the ancestral home of the Duke of Marlborough), showcasing the aristocratic prize they were scheming to catch.

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”.