'2nd Commissioner'

Spy (Leslie Ward) presents a judge or senior legal officer — captioned '2nd Commissioner' — wedged behind a high wooden bench, dwarfed by its bulk yet unmistakably authoritative. He wears the full judicial uniform: black robe, scarlet sash, white bands, and a barrister's wig pushed back to expose a fleshy, bespectacled face registering weary disapproval. A gavel sits at his right; a paper lies before him. The caricature's politics are institutional rather than ideological — Ward lampoons the English legal establishment's self-importance, its pomp outsizing any individual within it. The Commissioner's bulging eyes and jowled grimace suggest a man besieged by tedium or impertinence.