Sir John Lubbock, 'The Bank Holiday'

Spy (Leslie Ward) depicts the Liberal MP and banker Sir John Lubbock lounging on a tufted club sofa, legs crossed, one hand curling his pointed reddish beard in a pose of self-satisfied reverie. A silk top hat rests on the floor beside him, stuffed with papers—an allusion to his legislative industry. The caption below reads 'The Bank Holiday', saluting the Bank Holidays Act of 1871, Lubbock's most popular achievement, which created the first statutory public holidays in England and earned him the affectionate nickname 'Saint Lubbock.' The caricature's comedy is gentle and class-coded: an immensely wealthy man celebrated for giving the working poor a day off, pictured doing precisely nothing.