‘The Poor Man’s Friend’, by John Leech

[Victorian Web Home — Visual Arts —> Illustration —> John Leech —> Next]

The Poor Man’s Friend

John Leech

Wood engraving by Joseph Swain

9½ x 7 inches

Punch 8 (January–June 1845): facing 92.

This image typifies Leech at his most outspoken, representing the magazine’s social critique of the living conditions of the poor in the 1840s. Leech travesties the conventions of the ‘good death’, showing how representations of the gentle passing are sentimental and misleading. Instead, he shows the physical privations and despair of the unemployed working classes. [See below for commentary.]

Click on image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Although the character prays to God, his pleading is met only by the grotesque and unforgiving figure of Death; housed in a hovel and starving, the man’s transition is from suffering to further suffering, with no promise of salvation. Leech sums up the agonies of the poor in the early Industrial Revolution and makes an uncompromising appeal to the conscience of the journal’s middle-class readers.

Bibliography

Punch 8 (January–June 1845).

Created 19 April 2021