The vicious political cartoon in which the Bank of England's famous nickname, the old lady of Threadneedle Street, first appeared in print is going on display at the bank for the first time.
The 1797 cartoon, Political Ravishment or The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street in Danger, by James Gillray, shows the old lady in modish Georgian costume made of bank notes, sitting on a double padlocked chest holding the gold reserves. She is fighting off the advances of a spindly, spotty, freckly youth who would have been instantly recognisable to the chortling contemporary audience as the man who became prime minister at the age of 24, William Pitt the Younger. It was drawn at a time when Pitt was struggling to reduce the national debt, and the government had ordered the bank to issue paper bank notes rather than gold.
The nickname is probably older – the street name Threadneedle, one of the cluster that converges on the site of the bank, is at least a century older than the foundation of the bank itself – but the cartoon was so famous it ensured the name stuck forever.
In the print – parodied by generations of later artists in every succeeding financial crisis – Pitt has already got his hand into her pocket and is groping out a fistful of coins, but the redoubtable old lady is yelling her head off, screaming: "What, have I kept my honour untainted so long, to have it broke up by you at last? Oh murder! Rape! Ravishment! Ruin, ruin, ruin!!!"
The cartoon, said to have been drawn by Gillray straight on to the copper printing plate, since no sketch has ever been found, first went on sale in Hannah Humphrey's print show in St James's, where passersby would cluster around the windows to view the latest scabrous jokes.
A tourist in London a few years later wrote of the impact when new Gillrays appeared: "The enthusiasm is indescribable when the next drawing appears. It is a veritable madness. You have to make your way through the crowd with your fists."
It is going on display at the Bank's museum in an exhibitionof cartoons and caricatures tracing the long history of the institution, including works by George Cruikshank, John Tenniel and the Guardian's own Steve Bell.