3-070-588 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A Day in Town, 1883. From "Illustrated London News", 1883. 'A Midsummer Day; Sally of our Alley; Home Sweet Home; little ones from the country; not for the country; a ray of light...the Artist, in drawing these imaginary scenes and figures, has evidently been drawing a moral; he wishes to make it plain that poor folk who always stay in town are likely to be wretched, and perhaps more likely to be wicked, than people of the same class who are permitted to enjoy themselves, now and then, in the fields and woods, as we all like to do. It is, in short, a pictorial plea for excursion parties, cheap trips, Bank Holidays, Easter Holidays, and Whitsuntide Holidays, Early Closing Saturday Afternoons, school children's rural feasts, and every such beneficent provision to allow the toilers, drudgers, and grabbers of this great city a few hours' innocent freedom amidst the pleasant sights and the delightful sounds and scenes of summer, anywhere out of London - in Epping Forest, it may be, or...Plumstead, or at Abbey Wood...or in some park or meadow...where the poor people, men, women, and children, may find consolation for life-long troubles in a brief taste of the kindness of Nature, so good and sweet to us all'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.