A Showman (Hyde Park Corner)

Image of a showman with a wooden leg, presenting his show-box at Hyde Park Corner. Published as part of a series of thirty-one prints after drawings by William Marshall Craig and engraved by Edward Edwards. See Summary at record 35.96.
Itinerant Traders of London. Description of the Plates, representing the itinerant traders of London in their ordinary costume, with Notices of the remarkable places given in the background. London, 1804: This amusing personage generally draws a crowd about him in whatever street he fixes his moveable pantomime, as the unemployed persons or children who cannot afford the penny or halfpenny insight into the show-box are yet greatly entertained with his descriptive harangues, and the perpetual climbing of the squirrels in the round wire cage above the box, by whose incessant motion the row of bells on the top are constantly rung. The show consists of a series of coloured pictures, which the spectator views through a magnifying glass, while the exhibitor rehearses the story, and shifts the scene by the aid of strings. These showmen carry their box on their backs and frequently travel into the country.