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The Parish Engine
George Cruikshank
1836
Etching on copper
boz4.5 x 9.2 cm vignetted
Chapter 1, "The Beadle. The Parish Engine. The Schoolmaster" — the first chapter in "Our Parish," by Charles Dickens in Sketches by Boz, First Series (8 February 1836), facing p. 1.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
See him again on Sunday in his state-coat and cocked-hat, with a large-headed staff for show in his left hand, and a small cane for use in his right. How pompously he marshals the children into their places! and how demurely the little urchins look at him askance as he surveys them when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to beadles! The churchwardens and overseers being duly installed in their curtained pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention between his prayer-book and the boys. Suddenly, just at the commencement of the communion service, when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of the beadle. His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently at intervals until the conclusion of the sermon.
Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish beadle — a gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has come under our observation, except when the services of that particularly useful machine, a parish fire-engine, are required: then indeed all is bustle. Two little boys run to the beadle as fast as their legs will carry them, and report from their own personal observation that some neighbouring chimney is on fire; the engine is hastily got out, and a plentiful supply of boys being obtained, and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the pavement, the beadle, running — we do not exaggerate — running at the side, until they arrive at some house, smelling strongly of soot, at the door of which the beadle knocks with considerable gravity for half-an-hour. No attention being paid to these manual applications, and the turn-cock having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst the shouts of the boys; it pulls up once more at the work-house, and the beadle 'pulls up' the unfortunate householder next day, for the amount of his legal reward. We never saw a parish engine at a regular fire but once. It came up in gallant style — three miles and a half an hour, at least; there was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang went the pumps — the people cheered — the beadle perspired profusely; but it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was filled with water; and that eighteen boys, and a man, had exhausted themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing the slightest effect! — Chapter 1, "The Beadle. The Parish Engine. The Schoolmaster," p. 2-3.
Although the frontispiece involves the process whereby the parish council elected its beadle, or chief parochial functionary, this is the reader's first encounter with a social figure whom Dickens satirizes extensively in the character of Mr. Bumble in The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. In that novel, the Beadle is closely associated with the Board of Guardians of the parish workhouse, and as species of local police officer is the official whom the village undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry, summons to chastise Oliver after he has beaten the other apprentice, the obnoxious Noah Claypole. In Oliver's hearing before the Guardians, Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle in full regalia, seems to act as a court bailiff in Cruikshank's Oliver Escapes Being Bound to a Sweep (March 1837). In the following description, the narrator's finding the beadle "splendid" in appearance and "delightful" in discourse is likely ironic:
The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps the most, important member of the local administration. He is not so well off as the churchwardens, certainly, nor is he so learned as the vestry-clerk, nor does he order things quite so much his own way as either of them. But his power is very great, notwithstanding; and the dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it. he beadle of our parish is a splendid fellow. It is quite delightful to hear him, as he explains the state of the existing poor laws to the deaf old women in the board-room passage on business nights; and to hear what he said to the senior churchwarden, and what the senior churchwarden said to him; and what 'we' (the beadle and the other gentlemen) came to the determination of doing. [p. 2]
In his gorgeous state-coat and cocked-hat, the beadle in Dickens is an awe-inspiring figure who, carrying his mace or staff of office, maintains order in the parish and as a civic official carries out duties both religious and educational. As is the case with the arrogant, self-centred Bumble, the beadle in "Our Parish" is a pompous enforcer of parish regulations — the epitome of the pettiness of local politics. The name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "bydel," a herald or messenger from an authority, or a preacher, in Old English the title of the officer responsible for summoning householders to the village council. In the novel, then running in serial in Bentley's Miscellany, Bumble serve as the parish constable, overseeing both the parish workhouse and orphanage.
In the present illustration, the Beadle is discharging the function associated with the parish's fire-engine, essentially a wagon equipped with leather hoses and a manual water-pump. The leading manufacturer of such vehicles was John Morris and Sons, the Balford Fire-Engine Works, Manchester. The cost of maintaining the parish fire-engine would have been born, like that of the orphanage and the workhouse, by the rate-payers. The model which Cruikshank depicts represents the technological innovation of 1822 whereby the pump could draft water from a water source, thereby eliminating the necessity of summoning the buck-brigade to fight a modest conflagration, although the local volunteers would still be necessary in the event of a major fire such as that which occurs at Hatfield House in Oliver Twist. The engine was still pulled by volunteers until the 1840s, when the first self-propelled steam-driven fire engine was built in New York. Pulled on a four-wheeled cart to the fire, the manual pump, manned by a teams of four to twelve men (Dickens increases the number to "eighteen boys," but Cruikshank shows just fourteen), could deliver up to 160 gallons per minute. The four spectators are mildly curious, and Cruikshank shows no sign of a fire at the house on whose front steps the Beadle stands placidly, in contrast to the tugging and pulling of the energetic children. The sketch, originally unillustrated, first appeared in the Morning Chronicle on 28 February 1835 as "Sketches of London, No. 4: The Parish."
As Frederic G. Kitton notes, Cruikshank had to re-engrave this illustration for the Chapman and Hall serialisation, and the subsequent 1839 anthology:
During the following year (1837) Macrone published a Second Series of the "Sketches" in one volume, uniform in size and character with its predecessors, and containing ten etchings by Cruikshank; for the second edition of this extra volume two additional illustrations were done, viz., "The Last Cab-Driver" and "May-day in the Evening." It was at this time that Dickens repurchased from Macrone the entire copyright of the "Sketches," and arranged with Chapman & Hall for a complete edition, to be issued in shilling monthly parts, octavo size, the first number appearing in November of that year. The completed work contained all the Cruikshank plates (except that entitled "The Free and Easy," which, for some unexplained reason, was cancelled) and the following [twelve] new subjects: "The Parish Engine," "The Broker's Man," "Our Next-door Neighbours" [sic], "Early Coaches," "Public Dinners," "The Gin-Shop," "Making a Night of It," "The Boarding-House," "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," "The Steam Excursion," "Mrs. Joseph Porter," and "Mr. Watkins Tottle." — "George Cruikshank, p. 4.
Left: The original Cruikshank engraving of Bumble which likely influenced later illustrators' notions about the figure of the Beadle generally, Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Corney taking tea (February 1838). Centre: Kyd's derivative chromolithograph, Mr. Bumble (1910). Right: The Diamond Edition illustration for the first chapter, The Beadle (1867). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Left: Kyd's Player's cigarette card no. 3, Mr. Bumble (1910). Centre: Harry Furniss's The Election of Beadle, frontispiece and illustration for Chapter 4 (1910). Centre right: Charles Pears' Mr.Bumble and Mrs. Corney (1910). Dickens's "'Then you're a tramp,' he ses. 'I'd rather be that than a beadle,' I ses." from "Tramps," Chapter Eleven in The Uncommercial Traveller (1877). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Above: James Mahoney's 1871 wood-engraving of the fatuous beadle in full uniform consoling the tearful matron of the workhouse, "Don't sigh, Mrs. Corney." [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
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Last modified 1 April 2017