Where Are the Police?

This color lithograph from St. Stephen's Review depicts a street brawl between an Arab and Turkish figure while a British policeman restrains his colleague from intervention. The composition invokes the 18th- and 19th-century tradition of social and political satire—descended from Hogarth and Gillray—using violent disorder to comment on imperial policy or diplomatic tensions. The title's ironic question critiques either police negligence or Britain's reluctant diplomatic posture in the Ottoman sphere. Lithography allowed satirists rapid production of topical commentary, making images like this central to how Victorians consumed political humor before the comic strip emerged.