This illustration is for the first instalment of John Edward Jenkins’ The Coolie: His Rights and Wrongs, later published in book form. Jenkins had been commissioned to investigate the system of indentured migrant labour, by which many Asian workers were transported around the world, sometimes forcibly or in appalling conditions. Jenkins writes that the illustration is reproduced after a drawing by a Chinese immigrant in British Guiana. It is satirical, and represents ‘the point of treatment in a hospital’, with a desperate man hanging himself from a veranda, and two men in stocks visible through the windows on the left.
Dalziel after an unnamed Chinese artist, illustration for John Edward Jenkins, ‘The Coolie: A Journey to inquire into his Rights and Wrongs’, illustration for the magazine Good Words, (1871). Dalziel Archive Vol. XXVI (1869-1870), British Museum reg. no. 1913,0415.187, print no. 668. By Permission of the Trustees of The British Museum. All Rights Reserved © Sylph Editions, 2016