The Tunnel!!! or another Bubble Burst!

£1,800 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Rare. No copy in the British Museum. There is a copy in the Science Museum, John Rylands Library and at the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale. A fabulous impression of a savage satire on Brunel’s Thames Tunnel published in the same month that, while under construction, the tunnel flooded and required extensive repairs. The following year the tunnel again flooded and killed six workmen and nearly took the life of Brunel himself. The satire illustrates how the tunnel had become a fashionable place for people to visit and admire the engineering marvel but also alludes to the great financial disaster, the South Sea Bubble. The print shows water pouring into the Thames Tunnel while workmen and fashionable visitors flee. A sign in the tunnel reads: “The Tunnel being perfectly DRY and SAFE the Public are invited to visit it every day Sundays excepted. Admittance One Shilling.” Brunel himself, standing on a ladder beside the gushing water, says, “My hypothesis is gone to the devil.” One workman exclaims, “Run! Run! every mothers son of you! or by J—s wel be all drowned, O my poor Wife and children…”. The visitors who are fleeing scream: “The devil burn the Tunnel I say! faith I thought no good could come of it for the poor watermen would be all Starved.” One gentlemen says: “If I can get home before this transpires I’ll sell my shares immediately.” The text below the print is in verse and describes how angry “Old Father Thames” became angry at the excavation under the River Thames and in

• Year: 1827

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