Was It Not a Rum Disaster, After All, at Spuyten Duyvil?

Three anthropomorphized liquor bottles—labeled Whiskey, Rum, and Gin—cavort inside what appears to be a railway car, arms flailing, one yanking what reads as a signal cord overhead. The caption punches a double meaning: rum as the spirit plainly displayed, and rum in its Victorian slang sense of strange or bad. Nast is arguing that the January 1882 Spuyten Duyvil wreck—which killed a dozen passengers—was caused not by mechanical failure but by drunken politicians pulling the emergency brake as a prank, triggering the rear collision. The bottles substitute for the actual officeholders, letting Nast indict a class of men without libel. Signed lower center by Nast.