1-150-205 - The Cartoon Collector/Heritage-Images

'One Good Turn Deserves Another. The Working Man Enlightening the Superior Classes', 1858. This was a time in which the educated minority spent much time posing as 'the Working Man's Friend'. Many didactic lectures aimed at the moral improvement of the working classes were delivered by those seeking votes and popularity, as well as those with a genuine interest in the wellbeing of the proletariat. Middle-class women Evangelicals spent much of their newly acquired free time in visiting the homes of the working classes in order to teach them the womanly skills of the good housewife. Here, Mr Punch pokes gentle fun at all those philanthropists by suggesting that the tables be turned, and the Working Man be given an opportunity to enlighten his social superiors. So, the working class man stands behind the table on the dais with his hammer before him, to deliver his lecture to the rather astonished middle- and upper-class audience. From Punch, or the London Charivari, October 30, 1858.