Images Dated 2018 June

'Gin Lane', 1751. Artist: William Hogarth

'Gin Lane', 1751.The scene is the St Giles slums. A child falls to its death from the arms of its drunk mother who sits with ulcerated legs. A skeletal figure holds an empty glass. Goods are being pawned in order to buy gin, a baby is being fed with gin, a corpse is put into a coffin in the background.The pawnbroker, distiller and undertaker are the only well-off and successful people in the neighbourhood. Third of four states of plate. This print was published in support of a campaign directed against gin drinking among London's poor. Consumption of cheap spirits by the poor had soared in the early eighteenth century, with dire social consequences. Gin inspires violence and careless inebriation. Addiction to spirits leads to negligence, poverty and death

© London Metropolitan Archives (City of London) / Heritage-Images

'A Rake's Progress', 1763; plate VIII of VIII. Artist: William Hogarth

'A Rake's Progress', 1763; plate VIII of VIII. True to his nature Tom Rakewell has run through a vast fortune through indulgence in all the luxuries of modern living. He has lived riotously, both gambling and whoring. He has married a rich old widow and been ruined a second time. Now the rake is raving mad and shackled for his own safety in Bedlam, the London lunatic asylum. He is comforted by Sarah Young, the poor girl that he had seduced with a false promise of marriage while he was a student at Oxford. Behind two fashionable women have come to view the hospital's inmates

© London Metropolitan Archives (City of London) / Heritage-Images

'Dick Dock, or the Lobster and Crab', 1806. Artist: Anon

'Dick Dock, or the Lobster and Crab', 1806. Scene outside an alehouse by the River Thames. A Greenwich Pensioner with a wooden leg takes the hand of a soldier. The verse beneath describes a sailor (crab) insulting a Chelsea Pensioner (lobster) and then becoming reconciled on learning that the lobster had once saved his life

© London Metropolitan Archives (City of London) / Heritage-Images