THE DEVIL’S WALK THROUGH COVENT GARDEN; AND WHAT HE SAW, AND WHAT HE SAID, AT THE ELECTION

Apparently unrecorded political satirical broadside relating to the celebrated Westminster Election of 1818.

Published by John Fairburn, 2 Broadway, Ludgate Hill, London, and printed by Macdonald and Son, Cloth Fair, London. Price Two-pence.

The broadside concludes with the“Final State of the Poll, Saturday, July 4, 1818”, strongly fixing its production to the immediate aftermath of the election.

FINAL STATE OF THE POLL

Sir Samuel Romilly – 5339
Sir Francis Burdett – 5238
Sir Murray Maxwell – 4808
Henry Hunt, Esq. – 84

An entertaining and sharply partisan piece of Regency political satire, the verse imagines the Devil visiting the Westminster election at Covent Garden, where the candidates and behaviour of the crowd provide material for a succession of political jokes.

The opening has the Devil pinning on Henry “Orator” Hunt’s red colours before setting off for Covent Garden. The reference is particularly topical: contemporary representations of the 1818 election show Hunt associated with a red favour and red campaign flag.

The satire proceeds through references to Sir Murray Maxwell, Lord Castlereagh and Henry Hunt, culminating in the Devil questioning whether Hunt has surpassed even himself:

“I should like to know,
If I am the DEVIL, or HE.”

Hunt is attacked particularly fiercely. The Devil compares Hunt’s politics with rebellion against Heaven and King, before joking that Hunt would be suitable to represent:

“A rotten borough in HELL.”

The line neatly turns the contemporary language of parliamentary reform against the radical reformer himself. Hunt challenged the more cautious radicalism associated with Burdett and campaigned for universal suffrage; contemporary accounts also associate Hunt with annual parliaments and the secret ballot.

SIR MURRAY MAXWELL & THE “PLUMPER”

One particularly interesting passage describes the Devil deciding to vote for Sir Murray Maxwell:

“I may as well vote as he;
So he gave Sir Murray a plumper.”

This is not simply comic terminology. Westminster returned two MPs, and electors could cast two votes. Giving only one vote to a favoured candidate was known as“plumping”.

There is an especially close contemporary parallel in the 1818 satirical print The Freedom of Election or Hunt-ing for Popularity and Plumpers for Maxwell, concerning the same Westminster contest and showing Hunt and Maxwell at the Covent Garden hustings. The British Museum record describes the print as dated to the Westminster election of 18 June 1818.

An example of that related satire is preserved in the National Library of Scotland’s Crawford Collection of broadsides, shelfmark CRAWFORD.MB.1597.

This provides particularly useful contemporary corroboration for the broadside’s references to Hunt, Maxwell, Hunt’s red colours and “plumpers” for Maxwell.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The 1818 Westminster election took place amid the political and economic tensions following the Napoleonic Wars, when demands for parliamentary reform had become a major issue in metropolitan politics. Westminster in particular was an important centre of London radicalism.

The election itself was conducted at the Covent Garden hustings outside St Paul’s Church, scenes of which survive in contemporary prints showing the crowds, candidates and political banners.

Rather than being merely a later humorous poem, this broadside therefore combines immediate political propaganda, topical election satire and the actual final poll result.

RARITY

Apparently unrecorded.

I have been unable to trace another copy of this exact broadside through readily searchable bibliographical and online resources, and no copy has been located in WorldCat during our research.

The wording“apparently unrecorded” is intentionally cautious: the absence of a presently located copy does not establish uniqueness, particularly with ephemeral single-sheet printing.

Nevertheless, the apparent absence of another recorded example is noteworthy given the survival and cataloguing of other ephemera relating to the same 1818 Westminster contest.

Cheap topical broadsides of this nature were inherently ephemeral. The National Library of Scotland describes historical broadsides as inexpensive single sheets used for news, political controversy, satire and other topical subjects.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Printed on paper with generous, irregular surviving margins. There is a noticeable diagonal tear extending inward from the left edge in the lower half, together with edge wear, minor spotting/soiling and age-related handling marks.

A rare and possibly exceptionally scarce survival of Regency election ephemera: an apparently unrecorded two-penny political verse broadside issued by John Fairburn in connection with the Westminster Election of 1818, satirising Henry “Orator” Hunt and Sir Murray Maxwell and incorporating incidents, campaign colours and electoral terminology specific to the Covent Garden contest.

Provenance: 

From the collection of a long established Richmond-upon-Thames resident, focusing on 17th to 19th century trade ephemera, theatre handbills and Acts of Parliament.