"Come Sir! Remove me to my vile dungeon. Where is my mouldy straw?"

Edward G. Dalziel

Wood engraving

13.5 cm high by 10.6 cm wide

Dickens's "Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy," p. 156, in Christmas Stories.

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The overly melodramatic dialogue between Joshua Lirriper and the sheriff's men who have come to arrest him for debt is realized in this rather static three-quarter-page woodblock in which Mrs. Lirriper's brother-in-law theatrically plays the role of the victim of a merciless legal system.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham

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