Songs: "With ____ mixture without measure..." 1822

This print, made in London by Henry Thomas Alken sometime in the first half of the 19th century, gives us a window onto the popular culture of the period. Composed of six scenes, each seems to illustrate a popular song of the time. We see men working with barrels and bottles of alcohol, two men brawling under a table, and a close up of a man smiling. The captions give us some of the lyrics. These scenes of drinking, fighting, and revelry tell us a lot about the entertainments of the working classes at the time. Prints like this would have been relatively cheap to produce and could have been distributed widely, bringing them into pubs and homes across the city. They offer today’s researchers valuable information about the daily lives and cultural values of everyday people in early 19th century London. These insights can be further enriched with research into the popular songs and street culture of the time.