Colic and Headache sound like two deviant Frisian horses pulling a funeral carriage to Kensal Green. However, it is the only title possible for this postscript to the recent article on Cruikshank’s darker side.
These two pictures – “The Head-ache” and “The Colic” – have hung on my kitchen walls since Goth Soc days. (Different kitchens, same pictures.)
Dated 1815-1820 on the back of the frame, they are hand-coloured versions of Cruikshank images, with his characteristic wit, verve, and sadism. I particularly like the nice touch of showing the comfortable domestic interiors in which these horrors are taking place. Note the book on the table in “The Head-ache” which reads “Ledger 1819”.
According to the Welcome Collection’s website, there were two editions of these images, one in 1819 and one in 1835. My 1819 version of “The Head-ache” is very much more attractive than the 1835 one that they show on their website – it has finer detail and drawing, as does my version of “The Colic”. (The Welcome Collection, by the way, is thoroughly worth a visit, plenty of Gothically hideous medical stuff as well as more mainstream but still fascinating information. Sample article: “Printing the Body” about scientific and artistic collaboration.)
The Welcome Collection also provides the information about “The Colic” and “The Head-ache” that their lettering contains “the anchor pictogram denoting attribution to Captain Marryat”. This was the famous Captain Frederick Marryat, a British Royal Navy officer, who later wrote Mr Midshipman Easy and the children’s classic The Children of the New Forest. He was an exact contemporary and friend of Cruikshank, and often provided sketches for the artist to turn into finished cartoons.
The Marryat and Cruikshank collaboration – pictogram and signature – from another picture in my collection
Captain Marryat, clearly a bit of a dish
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
However, it seems that my two pictures may have been pirated ones as the Marryat logo and Cruikshank signature appear to be missing. The contemporary, dark, moulded picture frames cover the edges of the pictures, but “The Colic” clearly shows “Published by Le Petit” at 20 Capel Street, Dublin. Le Petit was a successful Irish publisher and print seller. I could now go off on a wild internet goose chase trying to ascertain how honest and upright Le Petit was, but the line had to be drawn somewhere this morning and it has been moved several times already.
JENNIE MACK GRAY, 12 February 2026.
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