"Messrs. Cruncher and Son" — Barnard's sixth illustration for Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities" (1874)

Messrs. Cruncher and Son

Fred Barnard

1874

13.8 cm by 10.5 cm (5 ½ by 4 ¼ inches)

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham

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Jerry, messenger and part-time medical supplier (read "grave-robber") is seated next to his son, young Jerry, the relationship made immediately manifest by the similarities in their clothing, posture, and physiognomy.

Passage Illustrated: Introducing Tellson's Comic Odd-Job-Man and Grave-robber.

Outside Tellson's — never by any means in it, unless called in — was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image. People understood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The House had always tolerated some person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church of Houndsditch, he had received the added appellation of Jerry. [Book the Second, "The Golden Thread," Chapter II, "A Sight," 24]

Commentary

Waiting to be called to deliver a letter for one of the bank's employees, the pair are leaning against the wall outside Tellson's in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book the Second, "The Golden Thread," ch. 1, "Five Years Later." (The picture is positioned on p. 28, but references a passage in an earlier chapter.)

Jerry Cruncher, as his cacaphonic name implies, is every inch the eighteenth-century "bully boy" straight out of such Hogarth compositions as Chairing of the Candidate, complete with rough-hewn cane suitable for street fighting. Jerry is of a much burlier, more robust and physically intimidating species of private messenger (the Victorian penny-post being many years in the offing as A Tale of Two Cities opens during the Seven Years War) than the gentle Trotty Veck, the humble ticket-porter of The Chimes (1844).

Other Illustrated Editions (1859-1910)

Related Material

Bibliography

Allingham, Philip V. "Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Illustrated: A Critical Reassessment of Hablot Knight Browne's Accompanying Plates." Dickens Studies. 33 (2003): 109-158.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Phiz. London: Chapman & Hall, 1859.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman & Hall, 1874.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly. (21 May 1859): 325.

Dickens, Charles, and Fred Barnard. The Dickens Souvenir Book. London: Chapman & Hall, 1912.

Created 15 February 2011

Last updated 18 December 2025