The new Union Club : being a representation of what took place at a celebrated dinner given by a celebrated society - vide Mr. M-r-t's pamphlet, "More thoughts," &c. &c.

A design based on Gillray's "The Union Club" (1801), the roistering fraternizers being English and Africans, in place of English and Irish.
A racist and complex print purports to show a dinner held at the African Institution, becoming increasingly drunken and debauched as the evening progresses. Cruikshank employs many common 19th-century racist stereotypes of black people - drunkenness, aggressiveness, and sexual promiscuity - and lampoons the idea that black people could aspire to behave like white people. In the print, the white abolitionists are portrayed as unsuspecting and bewildered innocents who find themselves entirely out of their depth. Cruikshank seems to suggest that their association with black people has corrupted them - that they are being 'uncivilised' rather than black people becoming 'civilised'. Meanwhile, the idea of relationships between races is ridiculed. Many familiar and important figures are represented. Abolitionists like Wilberforce, Stephen and Macaulay appear next to the street entertainer Billy Waters and the radical Robert Wedderburn ... See a full description at Royal Museums Greenwich online catalogue.