Sir Henry Storks, 'Statesmen No. 70'

Carlo Pellegrini ('Ape') renders Sir Henry Storks—soldier-administrator and MP—as a side-on figure in top hat and long frock coat, mouth agape mid-declamation, cane and furled umbrella gripped behind his back. The exaggerated open jaw and bulbous nose are Pellegrini's characteristic tools for puncturing pomposity; the dark moustache reads as a marker of military sternness. The caption's paradox—'no one less subject to control, no one a greater slave of control'—skewers Storks's reputation as a rigid disciplinarian whose own political career was notoriously erratic, notably his failed candidacy at Newark where his administration of the Contagious Diseases Acts provoked organised feminist opposition. Pellegrini's wit is structural: the rigid posture contradicts the helplessly open mouth.