Political-ravishment, or the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street in Danger!

Here we have another James Gillray cartoon lampooning Prime Minister William Pitt's financial policies. See also his Midas cartoon of a few months earlier. Pitt's Bank Restriction Act was enacted in May 1797 in the febrile atmosphere caused by naval mutinies, runs on banks in the north-east of England and threats of invasion from the French. Passage of the Act released the government from the fear of mass redemption of banknotes into gold, so much so that, by 1814, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the banknotes in circulation had a face value of £28.4 million but were backed by only £2.2 million of gold.

After the passing of the Act, the Irish playwright and Member of Parliament, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, publicly bemoaned the way in which the Bank of England had fallen under the influence of William Pitt by describing the institution as: “An elderly lady in the City, of great credit and long standing who had unfortunately fallen into bad company.”

This in turn led to James Gillray’s famous cartoon entitled Political-Ravishment, or the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street in Danger!, which depicts Pitt seducing the Bank of England, personified as an old lady attired in a dress made of £1 notes, for her fortune. The ‘Old Lady’ is a thin old harridan, and seated on an iron-studded treasure-chest inscribed ‘Bank of England’, fastened by two heavy padlocks. She shrieks and throws up her arms at Pitt’s advances as he takes a long stride towards her from the right, with his right hand round her waist and his left dipping into a cavernous pocket and taking out Guineas. This cartoon is the origin of the Bank’s nickname of ‘The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’.