Anonymous (Punch or The London Charivari)

Punch or the London Charivari

Vol. XXIII, 1852. Punch Publications Ltd.

The Primrose-Hill Gold and Silver Mining Company...Abstract of Prospectus: The great absence of Gold in England has long been felt to be a general want. It is the object of this Company to supply that want. Public rumour has long pointed to Primrose Hill as being a mine of hidden wealth...Deposits have been found there of the richest description. Pieces of copper as big as a penny have been repeatedly picked up; and one old man recollects vividly, as if it were only yesterday, his finding a morçeau of gold, which, when washed from the earth matter that surrounded it, weighed not less than a sovereign.

The Australian gold rush had started the previous year, with discoveries in New South Wales and Victoria. The ensuing frenzy had inspired several satirical pieces in the magazine.

There has been a fortune lying at London’s door, and for generations we have been doing nothing but kick it away. The Regent’s Canal, at the foot of Primrose Hill, may also be a Pactolus that is actually running with streams of Gold, and we do not even send a bucket to help ourselves!...Future workings of Primrose Hill, however, may afford yet more outstanding revelations of its internal treasures. Something turns up every day to justify the most sanguine expectations that an El Dorado has really been discovered.

The jokes in Punch drew on a wide range of literature. Ovid (43BC-17AD) had related the story of Pactolus, the golden river, in Book 11 of his Metamorphoses (King Midas had been told that if he bathed in the stream the disastrous power of turning everything into gold would pass into its waters). Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, first published in the year the gold rush had started, introduced the character of Mr. Micawber, who was constantly announcing his 'sanguine expectations' that something would 'turn up' (and eventually emigrated to Australia).