From the exhibition
'Burials' — Mr George Osborne Morgan, M.P.
Leslie Ward · Vanity Fair, 17 May 1879

Spy (Leslie Ward) renders the Welsh Liberal M.P. George Osborne Morgan as a compact, slightly top-heavy figure in a double-breasted frock coat and grey trousers, hands clasped, silver-whiskered, wearing the measured smile of a man accustomed to committee rooms. The caption word 'Burials' fixes his public identity at once: Morgan had championed the Burials Act campaign, fighting to let Nonconformists conduct their own funeral rites in Anglican churchyards — a cause that cut to the heart of Established Church privilege. The caricature is mild in manner; Ward's mockery is political rather than physical, noting that a man so associated with the dead carries himself with conspicuous, even cheerful, vitality.
Leslie Ward CC0