March to Finchley

Later reproduction of Hogarth's painting of the March to Finchley, depicting the army unsteadily preparing to march north to confront the Jacobites in 1745. It was engraved & published in 1750/51, and the original painting was won in a lottery by one of the tickets Hogarth had given to the Foundling Hospital). The scene is at St Giles Circus on Tottenham Court Road, between Gile's Nursery and the King Charles Pub out of which a number of prostitutes and women of ill repute lean out the window to watch the troops assemble below. With the King's troops all shown drunken, gambling, whoring and bare knuckle fighting, the satire was aimed at the state of the British army in the face of the Jacobite invasion in 1747. The satire was never intended to be deeply biting; in the background there are serried ranks waiting to march north to quell the invasion (which never got south of Manchester). The scene famously includes a uniformed soldier in the trop of the judgement of Hercules attempting to decide between a pregnant ballad singer and a (?)nun. Also pie sellers, ballad sellers, street characters etc.