Cruikshank's The Bottle and The Drunkard's Children
By Cameron Norrie
George Cruikshank, caricaturist and illustrator (of Charles Dickens' Sketches by Boz and Oliver Twist) produced two narrative series of prints that were morality tales advocating temperance. The Bottle (1847) and The Drunkard's Children. A Sequel to The Bottle (1848) were a series of prints reproduced from etchings by means of "glyphography," an inexpensive form of graphic reproduction.1 The Bottle followed the story of a father's descent into alcoholism and how it destroyed is family, forcing them to loose their home, beg in the street, his violence that led to the drunken murder of his wife, and his eventual incarceration in an insane asylum. The Drunkard's Children follows the story of his children, similarly affected by drink. The son gets involved in a robbery, is arrested and dies on a ship as he is being deported. The daughter is led into prostitution, is present at her brother's trial and commits suicide. According to Michael Wynne Jones, author of George Cruikshank: His Life in and London, the series was hugely popular: more than 100,000 copies [of The Bottle] were sold in a few days, it was exported to America and Australia, dramatized at eight London theatres simultaneously, transferred on to lantern-slides, moulded into waxworks, and adapted into a penny-novel.2
While Charles Dickens disagreed with the message, believing poverty had more to do with the misery of the working class, and that drunkenness was a symptom, not a cause he did believe that The Bottle was "very powerful... the last two plates most admirable."3 Of course, to contemporary eyes and attitudes everything about the series is laughable, or wrong. Melodrama, morality tales, and specifically temperance works are certainly out of fashion. The representational narrative form is also out of fashion, though to some extent it could be said to be gaining popularity through comic or "graphic novels." The tone and content of course is certainly different; current orthodoxy dictates against any concept of temperance, especially amongst the graphic novel set, who are against criticism of any kind against alcohol and even more so about drugs.
Dickens was right; poverty and inequality have more to do with the suffering of the working-class than alcohol. However, there is a tendency today to completely dismiss the effects of alcohol and drugs. It is actually rather touching to read about a writer and illustrator who are passionate in reforming society and hoping that their works can help people. Our modern age has come up with a solution to avoid any kind of discussion of social problems or reforming an unequal society. One can simply say with great scientific authority it is "in the genes" (fill in the blank: alcoholism, poor saving skills, intelligence, etc etc) - and presto! - nobody has to do anything.
1. Richard A. Volger, Graphic Works of George Cruikshank (New York: Dover Publications, 1979) p. 159.
2. Michael Wynn Jones, George Cruikshank: His Life and London (London: MacMillan London Ltd., 1978), p. 87
3. Ibid.