The Wasp — 1877 — page 28: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page features a multi-panel comic strip depicting a dialogue between a well-dressed gentleman and a shabby tramp. The tramp makes increasingly bold requests—first asking for money ("brace you"), then food, then shelter, finally claiming he "wasn't always a dirty tramp" and boasting of past schemes ("pledged, aye begged a show"). The satire targets vagrancy and urban poverty of the era, portraying the tramp as a manipulative con artist who exploits sympathy through fabricated sob stories. The gentleman's responses grow progressively irritated, culminating in rejection. The cartoon reflects late-19th-century anxieties about urban destitution, begging, and fraud—suggesting that street poverty often masked dishonesty rather than genuine hardship. It's social commentary disguised as humor, reinforcing period attitudes toward the homeless.