Black-Eyed Sue and Sweet Poll of Plymouth, taking leave of their lovers who are going to Botany Bay

Early transportation print. Laurie & Whittle were prolific publishers of popular material ranging from the humorous to the mawkish, and this image neatly fits into both categories. The firm’s 1795 catalogue of publications promotes their images to the public as offering, ‘the greatest variety of whimsical, satirical and burlesque subjects…’. This engraving would have spoken to a relatively large public as by the time it was issued nearly four thousand convicts had been sent to New South Wales in three separate transportation fleets. The 1787 decision by the British parliament to create a penal settlement, firstly at Botany Bay and later at Port Jackson, had greatly amused cartoonists and artists and the idea of transportation creating a distant community of criminals quickly developed as a medium for political satire and social humour.

Black-Eyed Sue and Sweet Poll of Plymouth is one of the earliest popular images to capture the results of this enormous social upheaval. Despite the rarity of its original versions, (there is also an equally scarce Sayer version of 1792), this image has become a familiar one, particularly in recent years when versions of it have proliferated on various online resources.