The School of Projects

Print: The School of Projects. Published for the Satirist Octr. 1st 1809 by S. Tipper. Lo[ndon]. Aquatint; image 18.2x35.5cm on sheet [cut to] 20x36cm stuck to card 21x40cm. Plate from The Satirist v.313 [explanatory text, p313-317]. A satire on the flotation of joint stock companies, reflected in three visually parallel projects. To r., William Brown, chairman of lunatic companies, Hope Insurance Co, Golden Lane brewery plans etc. by statue of Hope in niche. Next with the ram is George Leybourne, who planned to breed a sheep as big as an ox. Centre, a Patent Gas receptacle issues large flames from a broken panel. Frederick Winsor holds up a triple gas burner resembling a devil's tail. Left, an arched timber bridge lit by lamps connects two globes of Earth and Moon. Two men gouge a tunnel in the Earth. The engineer Ralph Dodd had plans for a tunnel from Gravesend to Tilbury, to be gaslit by Winsor; in an uncanny anticipation of the Thames Tunnel saga, subscribers lost money. A plan for the Strand bridge approved by Parliament in 1806 became the Westminster bridge opened 1817. The year 1809 saw much speculative fever for failed projects. Winsor's plans for gas went awry, his plans received consent in the following boom year 1810. [BM11439]