Entrance from Hackney or Cambridge Heath Turnpike with distant View of St. Pauls

This print, entitled, Entrance from Hackney or Cambridge Heath Turnpike with distant View of St. Pauls, is number 6 in a series of six ‘Views of London’, first published by Rudolph Ackermann at his shop, 104 Strand. The first two plates of the series were drawn and engraved by an artist and printmaker called Dagaty (perhaps Edouard Dagaty), with the other four being drawn by Rowlandson and engraved by H. J. Schütz. The series focuses on the entrances to the metropolis, including several turnpike gates, with the different modes of transport and members of society that could be found entering and leaving the city, or inhabiting its borders.

Turnpikes were privately constructed and managed roads operated by Turnpike Trusts. Their employees, stationed at toll houses either side of a barrier, collected a fee from travellers passing through the gate. These funds were reinvested to maintain the roads and expand the network.

The building of turnpikes during the eighteenth century improved travel and trade across the country. They also caused local traffic jams and road accidents, and attracted many people hoping to make some money from the many travellers waiting to pass through the gate. There is considerable chaos in the foreground of the present scene where two boys chase a dog, who is chasing a pig and four piglets that have got loose, upsetting a horse and carriage and getting under the feet of another horse. At the right a large crowd congregate outside an in, while at the left a family are giving alms to a disabled man with two crutches. In a review of the Museum of London’s collections, historian of disability Simon Jarrott noted that this man is depicted stereotypically as both physically and intellectually disabled. He uses short crutches to move around the city on his knees, and his facial features are characteristic of how eighteenth-century artists typically depicted someone with so-called ‘idiocy’ (learning disability) based on the pseudo-science of physiognomy, where a person’s facial features and expressions were supposedly indicative of their character or personality. Despite this caricatured depiction of disability, this print, and others in the series, do provide evidence that people with physical and learning disabilities were a part of everyday London society and street life, and that many demonstrated great ingenuity in travelling around the city and making a living.

The other turnpikes depicted in the Views of London were at (1) Hyde Park Corner, (2) St George’s Road, Southwark, (3) Tottenham Court Road, (4) Oxford Street, and (5) Mile End.