George Osborne Morgan, M.P. — 'Burials'

Spy (Leslie Ward) depicts the Welsh Liberal M.P. and barrister George Osborne Morgan Q.C. in full-length caricature: a stout, slightly bald figure in a double-breasted black frock coat and grey trousers, hands clasped before him with a mild, self-satisfied expression. The caption 'Burials' keys the plate to Morgan's great parliamentary cause — the Burials Act campaign, which fought for the right of Nonconformists to hold burial services with their own rites in Anglican churchyards, finally achieved in 1880. Morgan represented Denbigh Boroughs and was a champion of Welsh Nonconformist grievances against Established Church privilege. Ward's caricature is benign rather than cutting, the mild smugness of the pose gently satirising a man whose reforming zeal had made him the respectable face of Dissent.