'A Popular Magistrate' — Ernest Baggallay

Ward's chromolithograph catches Baggallay mid-hearing: a lean, grey-haired man in a dark frock coat leans forward from his chair toward a document stand, pince-nez dangling from one hand, the other gripping the chair's carved arm. An inkstand and open register sit on his bench; a deep crimson curtain fills the left background. The caption beneath reads simply 'A popular magistrate.' — affectionate rather than satirical, which tells you something about how Vanity Fair treated the respectable magistracy by 1905. The physiognomy is gently exaggerated (long nose, prominent moustache) but stays within the magazine's gentlemanly register: no ethnic caricature is present. The plate is more honorific portrait than political cartoon, a mode 'Spy' increasingly favored in the journal's later, milder years.