The Roadside Inn

"Mr. Hall, Chief Magistrate at Bow Street, cannot discover any 'inconvenience' in the present working of the Act, but recommends that the poor Sunday excursionist should 'Strap a Knapsack on his Back, with Two or Three Bottles of Beer, and the Child to boot, sooner than the Sunday should be desecrated by Opening the Public-House'."

Wood engraving

Punch (28 July 1855): 36

Punch's depiction of the plight of the respectable working classes is the magazine's response to "Lord Grosvenor's Revenge," a parliamentary bill intended to prohibit the sale of beer on Sundays.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham

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