'Public Prosecutions' — Sir Hamilton John Cuffe, Earl of Desart

Ward's full-length caricature presents Sir Hamilton Cuffe — then Director of Public Prosecutions — in the characteristic Spy formula: a lean, slightly elongated figure in a dark frock coat, both hands thrust into trouser pockets, a white pocket square breaking the somber palette. The face is rendered with mild satirical sharpening — high forehead, spare features — but without the ethnic distortion Spy sometimes deployed for non-Anglo subjects; the treatment is respectful, befitting a Crown law officer. The caption 'Public Prosecutions' identifies the office rather than the man, a Vanity Fair convention that flatters by institutional association. Politically neutral on its face, the plate implicitly endorses the Liberal Unionist legal establishment Cuffe represented in Edwardian London.