Scientific researches! - new discoveries in pneumaticks!, or, An experimental lecture on the powers of air / Js. Gillray inv. & fect.

Print shows a fashionable lectures at the Royal Institution. The audience are in a semicircle facing the lecturer's table, which is covered with apparatus. The lecturer, probably Thomas Young, is experimenting on Sir J. C. Hippisley. Holding him by the nose, he applies to his mouth a tube from a series of retorts in which a gas has been made. The result is a violent explosion of flame and smoke from the victim's breeches. Next Young stands Humphry Davy, holding a pair of bellows with vapour and gas spouting from its nozzle. Facing the table from the right, Count Rumford stands a little apart from the audience. On the extreme right, the audience members are: Isaac Disraeli, Lord Gower, and Lord Stanhope. Beside him on the padded green bench is an open book: 'Hints on the nature of Air requir'd for the new French Diving Boat.' Two unidentified ladies watch open-eyed. Immediately in front of Stanhope sits Lord Pomfret, enormously stout, his eyes almost shut. Facing the lecturer sit (right to left) Sir H. Englefield, and a thin and elderly lady, taking notes but not watching the experiment. She has been identified as Mrs. Frederica Augusta Locke (1750-1832), the wife of William Locke of Norbury, or their daughter Amelia (b. 1777) who married John Angerstein in 1799. Next is a florid lady in back view, both hands held up. On her left is a very little girl with note-book. The remaining figures face the lecturer from the left. Next the child sits William Sotheby (1757-1833), a dilettante poet. Holding a little boy between his knees sits Peter Denys, wearing spectacles. In front of him sits his wife, Lady Charlotte, sister of Lord Pomfret. Next is Tholdal, a German attaché, taking snuff, and spilling the contents of his snuff-box, and his wife. On the table, besides the set of retorts used by Young, are bottles of 'Oxygen' and 'Hydrogen', a smoking tobacco-pipe, a smouldering candle, a small mechanical windmill, a complicated instrument opposite Davy (? a galvanometer) on the base of which stands a bell-glass containing a frog emitting bubbles. There are also a clyster-pipe and the figure of a cock on a (?) stand. A half-open door, probably that of the 'repository of models', shows a globe and a large electrical machine connected with bells; smaller objects include a winged cannon, two little figures on a see-saw, a retort, a skull and cross-bones. On the wall behind the table, above a recess or open fireplace, are the words 'Royal Institution' in large letters.