The London Stock Exchange’s reaction to a current financial panic is the butt of John Leech’s “The Currency Question, or The Exchange Out for a Day.” Leech implies picnicking in troubled times is laughable when buying and selling stocks is as much a gamble as horse racing. The cartoon’s legend is an exchange between Jones and Brown: “Things are deuced bad in the City!” to which Brown answers: “Then I’m deuced glad I’m at Epsom!”

Featured Image: John Leech. “The Currency Question, or The Exchange Out for a Day.” Punch, or the London Charivari (May 1847); https://archive.org/stream/picturesoflifech00leecrich#page/272/mode/1up

See John Leech. Pictures of Life and Character, from the Collection of Mr. Punch. London: Bradbury, Agnew, & Co. 1887