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GUL, Sp Coll, Northern Looking Glass

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Coloured cartoon from the Northern Looking Glass 9 January 1826, the fourth in a series of cartoons depicting events in Glasgow at Hogmanay. Entitled "Return Home" it follows our well-to-do dinner party guests as they make their way home through crowds of drunken revellers at 1 am.

"On their return home some of our party fall in with a few not very sober personages of the lower order, who claim the right established by custom of a salute from all the ladies found in the streets in the morning of New Year, and our sketch represents them enforcing these rights, which appear to be most unwillingly submitted by the ladies; whilst their accompanying Beaux, aware of the superiority of the rude invaders, do not deem it prudent to exercise their gallantry in the rescue of the distressed damsels. One lady alone seems exempt from this annual toll and we are in doubt whither this anger expressed in her countenance proceeds from the insulting neglect shown to her or the rudeness of the assaults made on the lips of her younger companions."

"The party in the coach are not even exempt from this custom - the doors are open on both sides and the exulting toll-gatherers mount in one side, take their dues in passing through and exit through the other side, making room for their laughing and obstreperous successors. The coach driver is too drunk to offer any assistance or perhaps privately enjoys the fun, whilst the footman behind takes a quite nap undisturbed by the screams of the ladies or the noise of the crowd...".

Reference: Sp Coll Bh14-x.8

Glasgow University Library, Special Collections

Keywords:
cads, coaches and horses, coachmen, disorder, drinking, drunkenness, drunks, fashions, Glasgow Looking Glass, Hogmanay, kissing, lithographs, neds, New Year's Day, Northern Looking Glass, street lamps, street parties, streetscenes, women



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