The Wasp — 1913 — page 11: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# The Wasp, Page 10: "John Trimmer's Predicament" This page is prose fiction rather than a cartoon—a narrative excerpt from a story about a character named John Trimmer facing financial and social ruin. The text describes Trimmer in St. Paul's Churchyard, depressed after witnessing "a ghastly procession of thieves, housebreakers, masterless men, and footpads" bound for plantations (likely transportation to penal colonies). Trimmer's own fortunes are failing. He's been caught cheating at gambling (his "fingers were not clever enough" for dice manipulation), abandoned by companions and even "Kitty Trimmer, of Wantage, whom he had clothed"—suggesting he'd been a kept woman's patron. The satire mocks a dissolute gentleman now desperate and friendless, his criminal options exhausted, facing only the "road" (highway robbery) as remaining recourse.