Odds & Ends, in, out, and about, The Great Exhibition of 1851

This illustration was published in a book called '1851: or The adventures of Mr and Mrs Sandboys and family who came up to London to 'enjoy themselves and to see the Great Exhibition' with text by Henry Mayhew and illustrations by George Cruikshank.

The illustrations were published as a separate portfolio of prints. The book was a comic novel describing the adventures of the Sandboys family who travelled from Cumberland to London to visit the Great Exhibition, eventually arriving just as it closed. It highlights the fears of overcrowding in London in 1851 due to the number of visitors.

This etching shows a sequence of events in four consecutive scenes, a queue of figures racing after an omnibus, a fat lady trying to squeece through the narrow entrances, a group which appears to have lost its picnic supplies and the consequence of that , namely a gentleman who is eating them all.