English: Satire on female fashion. A scene set outside Long's Warehouse in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden with the sign of a woman in a petticoat which is held up from the ground with strings attached to the hoops. A woman emerges, on the left, holding up her petticoat with strings attached to the hoops; she reveals her undershift and a chatelain hanging from her waist. Other fashionably-dressed women look on with interest, one with her back to the viewer shows the width of her petticoat; two shoe-blacks, a man and a woman, sitting against the street pump, laugh at the petticoat. In the background, a woman in a hooped petticoat is being lowered through the roof of a carriage by means of a pulley attached to a house; she is assisted by three men, and another holds her horse. A smiling black servant wearing a large turban holds the quilted petticoat of another woman by strings. Further passers-by, of all classes, join in the merriment: they include a clergyman, an elderly country couple, a mechanical organ player, a woman selling bread from a basket and a charity school-boy who steals one of her loaves. In the background, on the right, a weeping woman is tried before a magistrate's court, apparently for wearing the round hooped petticoat which is suspended above her head. In the background the street stretches towards the dome of St Paul's.
Etching