1-624-729 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'The Military Prophet: or, A Flight from Providence. Adressed to the foolish and guilty who timidly withdrew themselves on the alarm of another earthquake, April 1750.' Incredible numbers of people, being under strong apprehensions that London and Westminster would be visited by another and more fatal earthquake on this night, according to the predictions of a crazy life-guardsman, and because it would be just four weeks from the last shock as that was from the first left their houses, and walked in the parks and the fields, or lay in boats all night; many people of fashion in the neighbouring villages sat in their coaches till day-break; others went off to a greater distance, so that the roads were never more thronged, and lodgings were hardly to be procured even at Windsor; so far, and even to their wits' end, had their superstitious fears, or their guilty consciences, driven them. Illustration from Social Caricature in the Eighteenth Century ... With over two hundred illustrations by George Paston (pseudonym of Emily Morse Symonds], (London, 1905).