The Ratcatcher and the NH Lithographer

In 2020, the Smithsonian Institution released 2.8 million images from its collections into the public domain. We Americans collectively own the Smithsonian, but this is unprecedented access. It is a boon for more than historians. Users, especially young people, are encouraged to download high-resolution images, from 2D works of art to 3D dinosaur skeletons. Users are granted permission to remix and repurpose images in any form for free and share the results online.

I jumped to the Open Access website and searched for items related to New Hampshire. I got mostly pictures of dried botanical and insect samples collected in the Granite State a century ago and now resting in the National History Museum. There were also artist sketches, political posters, minerals, paintings, and pictures of famous people. There were enough portraits of Franklin Pierce and Daniel Webster to fill a gallery.

Among a handful of images related to Portsmouth was this illustration from an 1850s sheet music for a tune titled “The Ratcatcher’s Daughter.” It is one weird song as you’ll discover by listening to it online. It’s a jaunty cockney ballad with a sad ending. Written and popularized by British actor-comedian-singer Sam Cowell (1820–1864), the lyric tells the tragic tale of a girl who sells an oily fish called “sprats” on the mean streets of London. Her father, as played in the theater by Cowell, was an early pest control agent killing rats in London. Engaged to be married on Easter Sunday, the ratcatcher’s pretty little daughter falls into the River Thames and drowns. Her aggrieved lover then cuts his throat with a piece of glass and also kills his donkey. That’s the story.

Now relegated to footnotes, actor Sam Cowell was hugely famous and highly paid in his day. Acclaimed in both the USA and England, he’s often credited with kickstarting British popular theater, better known as “music hall.” After a stellar career as a touring performer, Cowell turned to drink, developed consumption, and left his family impoverished.

The crude illustration of singer-songwriter Sam Cowell on the sheet music is attributed, amazingly, to the famous Boston artist Winslow Homer (1836-1910). If my math is correct, Homer was still a teenager when he made this sketch. The young artist was working in 1855 for a Boston lithographer named John Henry Bufford. And here, at last, is our local connection to the new Smithsonian Institution website…

J.H. Bufford (1810-1870) was born in Portsmouth. He grew up in that desperate era when – diminished by fire, war and a faltering maritime trade – the city was in an economic tailspin. Like many of his generation, Bufford left Portsmouth as a young man to make a success of himself in nearby Boston. In an age before offset printing, Bufford’s lithographic process produced sheet music, book illustrations, city and marine views, reproductions of paintings, advertisements and copies of photographs. An often reprinted 1853 image of floral arches in Market Square is among the countless images created by Bufford’s lithography company.

Copyright 2020 by J Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.