"All the world's a stage..."
More information
"All the world's a stage..."
p5428719 (Collage 18252)
London Metropolitan Archives: Satirical Print Collection
Illustration of a group of performers at the corner of Golden Lane, including a fiddler, two people on stilts, a juggler, a gymnast and a street organ player. On the ground is a cloud containing the word ‘Reminiscences’ and a sign reads ‘Notice to vagrants’, which is probably an allusion to the Vagrancy Act, 1824. On the left a person wearing a prosthetic leg, is likely to be Billy Waters, a street musician. He became so well known he gained the title ‘The King of Beggars’. Waters was one of the London characters depicted in William Thomas Moncrieff's Tom and Jerry, or Life in London, an unauthorised stage adaptation of Pierce Egan's Life in London, or Days and Nights of Jerry Hawthorne and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom, in 1821. He was so popular that he was immortalised as a Staffordshire Potteries figurine.
Copyright London Metropolitan Archives, all rights reserved. Provided for research purposes only. For commercial and other uses please contact us via support@londonpicturearchive.org.uk
London Metropolitan Archives. Please cite document title, reference and collection.