Genre:

Illustration, Drollery

Relevant illustrations:

wdct.

Illustrators:

J Leech *

Subjects:

Railways, Commerce, Charlatanry

    A parody of a scene from William Shakespeare's Macbeth, this shows Mac-Bull, a Scottish incarnation of John Bull, standing before a steaming cauldron, while the backdrop is a gloomy industrialized landscape rather than a Scottish heath. Around the cauldron sit three craggy witches, whose cloaks indicate that they are the seedy directors of the Great Western Railway Company, the North Western Railway Company, and the London and South Western Railway Company. The railway witches drop 'evil remedies' into the cauldron—specifically, 'No Return Tickets' and 'Higher Fares'.