Industry and Idleness - The IDLE 'PRENTICE betray'd by his Whore & taken in a Night Cellar with his Accomplice
Date1747
Designed and engraved by
William Hogarth
(1697 - 1764)
OriginEngland, London
MediumEtching and line engraving.
DimensionsOther (Plate): 10 1/2 × 13 3/4in. (26.7 × 34.9cm)
Credit LineMuseum Purchase
Object number1947-486,A
DescriptionUpper margin reads: "The IDLE 'PRENTICE betray'd by his Whore & taken in a Night Cellar with his Accomplice."Caption reads: "Proverbs; CHAP:VI. Ve:26./ Plate 9/ The Adulteress will hunt for/ the precious life".
Lower margin reads: "Design'd & Engrav'd by W.m Hogarth/ Plate 9/ Publish'd according to Act of Parliament Sep. 30 1747."
Label TextThis print is from a set of prints known as "Industry and Idleness" by William Hogarth. In the ninth installment of this series, Idle (the Idle Apprentice) is betrayed by the woman described in plate 7 as "a common prostitute" when she turns him for being posession of stolen goods (see plate 7) to a magistrate (coming fown the stairs) in exchange for a fee. The scene takes place in a "night cellar" which was a type of tavern-like establishment situated in a cellar that only opened at night. Blood Bowl House, which was located on Blood Bowl Alley, was a notorious night-cellar in London during the 1740s. Idle is dividing the spoils of a robbery with his accomplice (one of the gamblers in plate 3). It is a chaotic scene: a murdered man is being dropped down a trap-door and a fight has broken out in the background.
The series tells stories of the parallel and sometimes intersecting lives of the wayward Idle Apprentice and the successful Industrious Apprentice. The Idle Apprentice was designed to serve as a cautionary tale, while the Industrious Apprentice's life models exemplary behavior. It was issued in 12 prints, was very met with much acclaim and commercial success when they were published in 1747. Hogarth wrote that he designed the prints to educate the youth, particularly apprentices, and therefore series was "calculated for the use & Instruction of youth w[h]erein everything necessary to be known was to be made a intelligible as possible[.] and as fine engraving was not necessary to the main design...the purchase of them became within the reach of those for whom they [were] chiefly intended." They were given by masters to their apprentices as Christmas gifts and were published at Christmas after 1749 in Lillo's 'London Merchant' for the benefit of young apprentices.
See Ronald Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works, I, #168-179.
