Saturday August 17, 1839

 

In “Papers for the People, a Study of the Chartist Press”, edited by Joan Allen and Owen R Ashton is a reference to the above cartoon of Mayor Thomas Phillips.

 

The article, by Ashton, “The Western Vindicator and early Chartism” looks at the powerful but short lived newspaper published and edited by Henry Vincent. It was published in the West Country and distributed widely in south Wales. Vincent continued to influence the editorial content even whilst incarcerated in Monmouth Gaol in May of 1839.

 

The paper argues Ashton was innovative and powerful and the messages were reinforced by Vincent “who was able to stamp his personality” by a series of arduous "missionary" tours throughout the West Country and South East Wales valleys. The meetings attracted 10s of thousands of people in many cases. The Vindicator also published radical journalism and content from a wide range of men and women and even on a few occasions in the Welsh language.

 

The paper was a great success and sold more than 3,000 copies of each edition and was estimated to reach as many as 60,000 Chartists. The power of the Vindicator argues Ashton is evident by the attention paid to it by the government and opponents of Chartism. The arrest of Vincent in May was hoped to curtail the Chartist message desiminated so widely by the paper and the authorities were quick to shut it down after the Newport Rising in November 1839.

 

The paper only contained two illustrations during its short life. One of William Lovett and one of Thomas Phillips as an Ourang Outang. The Previous essay in this book by Malcolm Chase explores the visual content of the Northern Star and how Feargus O’Connor, its editor was aware of the growing importance of this and published a series of prints of key radicals.  The highly imaged based Punch Magazine began in 1841 and The London Illustrated News appeared a year later (1842) and the growing industrial mass market soon led to the expansion of both news illustrations and adverts as the century progressed. The Chartists of course used a variety of graphic means extensively in the promotion of the movement. Flags, posters and pamphlets as well as music, drama and poetry.

 

Ashton concludes that the Vindicator was a “unifying force” for Chartism and radical journalism. It lampooned their “Old Corruption” enemies but also provided a forum for the “new evils of capitalism”.

 

The Ourang Outang: Mayor Thomas Phillips

The following extract from the Western Vindicator was published in August, 1839, whilst Vincent was incarcerated in Monmouth Gaol. It is a scathing attack on Thomas Phillips that may say more about the Newport Mayor than any biography could.  Such visual political satire was not new of course and this case the image is gentle compared to the text.  The visual battering of recipients in the works of William Hogarth(d.1764)and George Cruikshank(d.1878 )make this image quite tame by comparison but the vituperative text more than makes up for this. The Vindicator lasted just 10 months. In Wales the Udgorn, in Welsh, and the The Advocate and Merthyr Free press continued the mission for a short time but one wonders how much the Vindicator would have developed both its visual content and scurrilous assault on the establishment if it had continued.

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THE WESTERN VINDICATOR

A bold, uncompromising, advocate of the people of Bristol, Bath, Trowbridge, Bradford,Frome, Wotton-under-edge, Newport, Pontypool, Caerleon, Cardiff, and other towns and villages in the West of Wngland and South Wales.

 

Edited and Conducted by Henry Vincent,

now resident in Monmouth gaol.

 

 

Vol I.—No. 26.  SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1839.

 

​

"The above will be allowed by all who know him to be a tolerable likeness of that remarkable specimen of zoology, by which Nature has connected the human with the brute creation - the Ourang Outang, alias the Chimpanzee.

 

The animal is an aboriginal of Borneo, Ceylon, Isle of Java &c., in the East Indies, but the present subject of our memoir was whelped at Monmouth about 25 years since. His Dam was a great traveller, having been frequently seen at Spithead, and was known to be constantly all over Greece* and likewise was brought up a-far.

His adopted, or rather putative papa (the law terming such as our hero, fillius nullus (1) or fillius populi:(2) so that strictly speaking our subject must be either the son of nobody or the sons of everybody) paid vast attention to his early education but malgre (3) all the applications posteriori, by the way of counter irritation could never whip a classical education into his obtuse cranium ., and he was returned home again, as a hopeless blockhead, to his disconsolate parents.

 

When that celebrated prime minister, the Chancellor Oxentstiern, (4) called his son to behold with what little wisdom it required to manage kingdoms, he did so on the principle of our hero’s papa, placing as a juvenile law luminary to shine as a lucus a non lucendo (5) - a legal paradox - a lawyer being void of law, or common sense. Orange Outing was smuggled through hi examinations, before the new rules came into operation, requiring a strict examination of the candidate’s qualification: forthwith blazed forth on the astonished world a (illegible! LOCAL??) GENTLEMAN ONE, &c. And immediately became to all extents and purposes, deranged in the little modicum of intellect, or rather animal instinct, he possessed, and ran from Monmouth to Tredegar, and then to Chepstow, opening branch office with the positive intention of setting the Thames a-fire. He moreover cajoled and introduction to the business of a person called Frankey, deceased, through one who dwellers at the Towns-end of Newport.

 

On the occasion of Vincent’s trail at Monmouth, this animal found his way into the witness box, to the intimate amusement of the court, and spectators, making as is his wont, a most egregious ass of himself.

 

In his personal dress he imitates the swell mob, and occasionally sports a white hat, with a profusion of brass gilt pins, rings, chain and quizzing glass. (7)

 

In his deportment he is a disgusting ape of a coxcomb, interlarding every other word with an oath, affected lisp, low slang, and grossly offensive to females. Being all legs wings, and having a goose’s head he is known in Monmouth by the name of Giblet Pye!

 

In Newport he is better known than trusted, and ekes out an existence by a Friar’s Field and low practice, and is only tolerated as a butt for their scorn and infinite derision- a public laughing stock, and an everlasting source of contempt.

 

Of his legal attainments we can say nothing, because he has nothing to be spoken of.

 

He fancies himself an Adonis, and rather to spare the ladies he has traduced, than to spare him castigation, we forbear to repeat the names of those he boasts the favour of. He was kicked out of three houses in and about Newport for such foul vain boasting and traduction of character.

 

We will conclude in verse, after the manner of Anacreon (6) in his Ode, wherein he directed his portrait painter, as a far more interesting subject than the negative animal before us, adding by the way of consolation, that the school boys of Newport purpose, on the fifth of November next, to smuggle the animal aforesaid, to make him a Guy Fawkes! when he will FINALLY  evaporate in fire, smoke and brimstone, according to the form of the schoolboy statute in such case made and provided."

VIVAT REGINA

 

Ode to the Chimpanzee

Prince of spooney sons of witches,

Famed for Borough Court dull speeches,

Redolent with empty jaw,

Unillumined by the law:

Above your scarecrow figure scan,

Vile apostrophe for man, Newport, Monmouth, all may see,

Thy ugly visage, Chimpanzee.

Tawdry rings, and quizzing glass (7),

Ears that rival a jackass,

Store of long black bushy hair,

And a monkeyana stare,

Parchment brains, and leaden skull

Intellect confused and ill,

Spindle shanks, en verite,

Here’s thy portrait, Chimpanzee!

P.S - Omitted

Boots that make the natives cry out

They’re formed to kick a Tomtit’s eye out

 

Newport .                     V.V

 

* [Spit and Greece, we presume, have reference to something connected with the culinary department}- Ed (of Vindicator)

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Notes

1. Fillius nullus = illegitimate

2. Fillius populi = son of nobody

3  Malgré = despite fr.

4. A reference probably to Axel Oxenstierna of Sweden)

5. Non Lucendo = illogical

6. Anacreon a Greek poet (582 BCE-485 BCE)

7. Quizzing Glass, A late Georgian and mid Victorian fad to wear a single, usually very ornate, gold or silver eyeglass. This is used in modern media productions to show foppishness or affectation and appears to have the same meaning in 1839.

 

Links.

 

Joan Allen and Owen R Ashton Papers for the People, a Study of the Chartist Press

 

www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/ Henry Vincent.