The Wasp, 1913 · page 332 of 364
The Wasp — 1913 — page 332: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This appears to be a narrative illustration from *The Wasp*, a 19th-century American satirical magazine. The text describes a violent street encounter in which a disabled beggar (posing as a war veteran who "lost 'is leg a servin' o' 'is king") tricks a drunk man named Stanton into falling, then stabs him repeatedly. The satire targets **false disability claims and street crime**. The "cripple" is revealed as a con artist—he uses a fake disability to elicit sympathy and coins ("yellow boy" = gold guineas), then commits murder for profit. His survival without actual injury and his deception of genuinely sympathetic observers suggests social commentary on urban fraud and the difficulty of distinguishing real need from exploitation. The brutal violence and the beggar's calculated escape emphasize the dangers of underworld crime in cities, likely reflecting Victorian anxieties about urban poverty and criminality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WASP 325 Out of Hound Alley staggered Stanton. “A penny, cap’n!” whined the fellow in the gut- ter. “A penny for pore old ’Odge what lost ’is leg a servin’ o’ ’is king!’ He hitched himself across Stanton’s course; and just as Stanton cursed him and struck at him with a stout stick, he thrust one of his crutches between Stanton’s feet. Down crashed the bully in the gutter. The cripple instantly dropped the crutches, flung himself upon the prostrate sot, and drove a knife hilt-deep into the quivering back again and again. He sprang to his feet at last, recovered his crutches, and returned them to the old fellow in the doorway, “And here is another yellow boy for you, mate,’ he said: “Now take my advice and stir your stumps. You want to be a long way from here - before morning!” With this he turned and walked briskly away. The real cripple bit the third guinea with his two remaining teeth by way of a test, then stowed it and the other two in a place of concealment among his rags. He chuckled: He fixed his crutches Comichooks.com