ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

'Police' — Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Yeamans Walcott Henderson

Carlo Pellegrini · March 6, 1875

'Police' — Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Yeamans Walcott Henderson
Carlo Pellegrini ('Ape') presents Henderson, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 1869 to 1886, as a lean, slightly stooped civilian gentleman rather than a uniformed officer. He wears a long grey frock coat, brown trousers, and a silk top hat, hands buried in pockets — the image of administrative authority dressed in bourgeois anonymity. The caption reads simply *'Police.'* Pellegrini's caricature elongates the figure modestly and emphasizes Henderson's reddish mutton-chop whiskers and drooping moustache, sharpening the face into weary self-importance. The composition's political argument is quiet but pointed: London's police chief passes for any prosperous gentleman on the street, power concealed beneath respectability — a wry comment on Victorian policing's preference for plainclothes discretion over transparent accountability.

Carlo Pellegrini CC0