William Hogarth and Georgian Life

In many ways William Hogarth’s life was a microcosm of the three main themes of Georgian life:  money, the home and sex.

Hogarth was born in Spitalfields, one of the poorest areas of London with houses which had escaped the Great Fire just about standing. He spent his boyhood in debtor’s prison, after his writer father had run into debt and the booksellers and printers foreclosed. Prisoners who could not pay the warden of the Fleet Prison, John Huggins, a caption fee faced peine forte et dure. Torture. The young entrepreneurial Hogarth and his mother peddled home-made Gripe Water to keep money coming in.  

One of Hogarth’s earliest prints centres on money, and the wicked ways of the money world. An Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme  (1721)  was a moral engraving of what became known as the South Sea Bubble, a financial crash eerily like that of 2008.