[Manuscript] Six Comic Illustrations as given on very many occasions, Gratuitously for charitable and other purposes at Readings, Concerts &c. including 'the Midland Institution for the Blind', 'the Lunatic Asylum' (Sneinton) & 'the Union Workhouses', Nottingham. always attended with success, approbation and much applause.

Bookseller Notes

Six comic skits and monologues, inscribed in full declamatory style, as they were performed in the late nineteenth century in a number of Nottingham institutions, illustrated with highly characterful caricatures. The most striking piece is the last, 'The Humours of a Country Fair', which includes the charabanc, Mr. Creepy's cart loaded with be-hatted pleasure-seekers on their way to the fair; 'the tallest Giant in the whole world... of such extraordinary proportions, that he can put is right leg in shrop shire & his left leg in Lankee shire!'; a Scotch Lion merrily munching an English bulldog; and the Wild Beast Show, featuring 'the Ryonocery from the deserts of Saarah ann! fed on Bamboo and macaroni!', the Larfing Hyena which 'cried in the night... like a human being in distress and then devours all wot goes to his assistances', and the ostrich who hides his head in the sand 'and because he can't see nobody, he thinks nobody can't see him!' The other sketches include the rhyme of Jack Robinson, illustrated with deserting sailors and a rowing boat, a burlesque on marriage, accompanied by detailed sketches of armchairs and cigar smoke, and a burlesque on the law with carefully drawn wigs and judicial expressions.Asylum entertainment, particularly comedy and music, had, by this stage, become an accepted part of treatment and institutional life for both the rich, and, in this case, the poor; Sneinton Asylum was the first county asylum in England, opening in 1811, financed by voluntary subscription and the local authority, and by the 1870s was home to the poorer inmates, the richer having migrated to the Coppice Hospital. (J.S. Alexander, Mapperley Hospital and George Thomas Hine, Warwick University, 2019) J.H. Wardle remains an elusive figure: a similar sketchbook is held by the National Library of Ireland; and it appears that a printed edition of this title was issued by the Shepherd Brothers, (Angel Row, the Market, Nottingham), in the 1880s - one copy appears in OCLC, held by Louisiana State University.