3-016-789 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Fancy-dress ball in aid of St. Ann's Dispensary, at St, George's Hall, Liverpool, 1864. Engraving from a sketch by Mr. Woods, representing '...the Grand Fancy-Dress Ball which took place on Tuesday week, in St. George's Hall, in aid of the funds of St. Ann's Dispensary, in that town. The architecture and permanent decorations of St. George's Hall must be well known to our readers from the Engravings we have published on some former occasions. The scene here depicted is full of animation, and the varieties of costume afford great scope for a learned fancy. In the middle of the foreground we see a British Admiral, arm-in-arm with Britannia herself, to whom Sir Walter Raleigh is just making his bow. A West India planter, with light coat and broad-brimmed straw hat, a Chinese, a courtier of the age of Louis XIV., a Spanish matador, an Indian chief, and other national or historical characters, in grotesque combination, may be discovered in this motley crowd. The gentleman in Hungarian costume, to the left hand, is a likeness of our artist himself'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.