What is Cartoon Museum ?

With workshops for children during half-term and holidays, it also features adult courses in cartooning and graphic novels

In the 1780s political satire ripened. Print-shops flourished in the City, Westminster and St. James's, many holding caricature exhibitions. The hand-coloured copper-plate etching, freer in style that the engraving, became fashionable: often priced at 2 shillings (10p) or more it was a luxury item, and beyond the means of most.

The French Revolution in 1789 ignited a fusillade of satirical propaganda in France and Britain.  Both 'Loyalist' members of the Pitt coalition and the opposition 'Reform' Whigs around Fox sponsored partisan political prints.  At first, the Foxites took the upper hand, creating a new type of sophisticated visual and verbal satire.  But news from France of the excesses of the Terror damaged the reform cause.

By 1795 the Foxites were in decline, and a blast of repressive measures, culminating in the Treason and Sedition Acts, subdued not only the press and opposition, but also the print publishers.
In August 1819, the local Yeoman Cavalry attacked a crowd of peaceful protestors in St Peter's Fields, Manchester. The government response was the repressive Six Acts, including an increase in stamp duty that tripled the price of many papers.