Genre:

Illustration, Drollery

Relevant illustrations:

wdct.

Illustrators:

J T *

Subjects:

Railways, Transport, Commerce, Charlatanry, Morality, Crime, Govbernment

    Evidently a response to the Railway Regulation Bill, this illustration shows a masked highwayman riding a horse alongside a railway train whose locomotive is labelled 'Black Bess'. He wields a musket and solicits from a railway director (who sits around the smoke stack of the locomotive) a scroll marked 'Railways Act'. The caption indicates that the highwayman is the 'Ghost of Turpin' who tells the 'Railway Director' that he is 'doing a bit in my line' to which the director quips: 'Your line? Ha! Ha! You were hanged! We rob by Act of Parliament!!!'.