The Bank Director's Son select illustrations, 1851
Permanent ID:
10853Call number:
Am 1851 Lip;LCP Vt .2861Date:
1851Image Description:
Select illustrations from The Bank Director's Son by Romantic journalist and novelist George Lippard (1822-1854). Lippard based this work and two closely related novels (The Killers, A Narrative of Real Life in Philadelphia and Life and Adventures of Charles Anderson Chester, The Notorious Leader of The Philadelphia “Killers”) on Philadelphia’s many street gangs and the riots they provoked, especially the 1844 Anti-Catholic Riots in Kensington and Southwark. Philadelphia had its own version of The Gangs of New York, organized around fire companies and reveling in names like The Rats, The Bouncers, and The Skinners. The “b’hoys” were toughs, but they dressed nattily, which may be why Lippard made his fictional gang leader Charles Anderson Chester a millionaire’s son and a Penn undergraduate.(1) is the title page from The Bank Director's Son.
(2) is a frontpiece illustration with the caption reading "'The devil's up in the City to-night, and men have been shot, who are worth your weight in gold--' thus spake Cromwell--'One man wouldn't be missed much, particularly a man like you.'"
(3) is illustration opposite page 5 with the caption reading "Prostrate on his face, the blood from the wound trickling over the boards of the floor, and over him triumphant and chuckling stood the Negro, 'Bulgine,' the knife which he shook dripping its red drops upon his black and brawny arm."
(4) is illustration opposite page 35 with the caption reading "'Either you must leave this house or I will,' said the girl, and dashing the gold pieces into the face of the portly gentleman, she retreated behind the table, her eye flashing and her bosom swelling with anger."