‘The Pleasures of Matrimony’, 1773.

‘The Enrag’d Batchelor, or the Plague of a Single State’, 1760.

‘Batter’d, diseas’d, and past his youthfull Pranks’

‘The Assembly of Old Batchelors’, 1743. ‘All you expect, and yet you nothing bring’.

William Hogarth, ‘The industrious 'prentice married and furnishing his house’, c.1747.

John Forth’s bill at college in Cambridge, 1783.

The Middle Temple, c.1780.

48 North Bar Without, Beverley, Yorkshire, the house where John Courtney was born in 1734.

George Barrett, ‘North Bar Within’, 1780 (detail). Beverley,

Yorkshire.

Embroidered waistcoat, later eighteenth century.

The General Post Office, London, 1830s.

‘The Dinner Locust’, 1826. The accompanying text says: [Visitor] ‘Egad, my Worthy Friend, it seems I have just hit your hour’. [Reluctant host] ‘Yes, you generally do.’

‘The Office Loungers’, 1790.

‘Dandies at Tea’, 1818.

‘The Wedding’, 1794.

‘The Good House-Wife’, second half of the eighteenth century.

The verse reads: ‘Woman, when virtuous, free from Sloth & Vice,

Greater by far, than Rubies is her price: Heaven crowns her Labour

with a plenteous Store, To feed her Household, and relieve the Poor.’

‘The Welsh Curate’, 1775.

‘Each Faculty and Limb beside, Eyes, Ears, Hands, Feet, are all employ’d. His

Wife at Washing – ‘Tis his Lot, To pare the Turnips, watch

the Pot’.

George Cruikshank, ‘A widower washing his children’s clothes by candle-light as they sleep’, from J. Wight, Mornings at Bow Street, 1824

Matthew Flinder’s house, Donington, Lincolnshire, c.1914 (now demolished).

George Stubbs, ‘The Wedgwood Family’, 1780.

Thomas Rowlandson, ‘The Comforts of Matrimony. A good Toast’, 1809.

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