The Wasp, 1913 · page 333 of 364
The Wasp — 1913 — page 333: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This appears to be a narrative excerpt from a serialized story rather than a political cartoon. The text describes a murder in Victorian London's underworld. The plot involves: an old man with crutches who kills a man named Stanton in a drunken brawl, leaving his body in a gutter. Stanton's widow, Kitty, accepts the coroner's verdict of accidental death from drunkenness, though she suspects the truth. She pays for a burial and fears contacting her lover Willis, believing James Burnham (the old man) killed her husband and might kill her lover too. Without seeing the accompanying illustration, the satirical or comedic intent is unclear—though *The Wasp's* typical approach would likely involve social commentary on crime, morality, or class. The narrative's melodramatic tone and morally ambiguous characters (a widow with a lover) suggest Victorian-era sensationalism that the magazine may have been mocking.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
826 THE WASP under his arms and-hitched himself across the foot- path to where Stanton’s lifeless form sprawled in the gutter. The old man prodded the body with one of his crutches and chuckled again. At last he left it and stumped away—and that quarter of London knew him no more. When Stanton’s corpse was found at sunrise, the landlord of the Spotted Dog identified it and gave its address to the authorities. So it was car- ried off and presented to the widow. Kitty screamed and fainted. When she came out of her swoon she accepted the coroner’s opinion that Stanton had come by his death in a drunken brawl. He had a reputation for drunkenness, it seems. Kitty voiced no opinion of her own. She paid a tallow-faced man in rusty black the sum of thirty shillings to take the remains away and give them decent burial. Kitty did not send for Willis immediately, for she was afraid. James Burnham had killed her husband. “Might he not kill her lover? He had promised not to hurt Bob, ’tis true; but she was Comichooks.com