September 27, 1792

George Cruikshank (September 27, 1792, to February 1, 1878), was, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, an:

English artist, caricaturist, and illustrator who, beginning his career with satirical political cartoons and later illustrating topical and children’s books, became one of the most prolific and popular masters of his art.

His father was Isaac Cruikshank (1756?–1811), a popular illustrator and caricaturist. In 1811, when George was still in his teens, he gained popular success with a series of political caricatures that he created for the periodical The Scourge, a Monthly Expositor of Imposture and Folly. This publication lasted until 1816, during which time Cruikshank came to rival James Gillray, the leading English caricaturist of the preceding generation. For the next 10 years Cruikshank satirized with fine irreverence the political policies of the Tories and the Whigs.

Although Cruikshank continued to publish political cartoons in periodicals and separately until about 1825, he began to do book illustrations as well in 1820. In these he showed his more genial side. It is estimated that he illustrated more than 850 books, and he was one of the first artists to provide humorous, spirited illustrations in books for children. ....Cruikshank published a number of books himself, notably his serial The Comic Almanack (1835–53). In the late 1840s he became an enthusiastic propagandist for temperance, publishing a series of eight plates entitled The Bottle (1847) and its sequel, eight plates of The Drunkard’s Children (1848)....

Britannica used Cruikshank's illustration for Dickens's Oliver Twist, (1838) and specifically (above) that of "mr. bumble and mrs corney taking tea."

John Wardroper in 1992 revealed a larger picture of Cruikshank's life.  Cruikshank's obituary as Punch wrote it, includes this description:'There never was a purer, simpler, more straightforward or altogether more blameless man. His nature had something childlike in its transparency.'

His having a mistress, and eleven children, in another household a few blocks from the home with his wife, does not actually contradict the quote, but then and now, most people would assume it did.

Here is some of the story:

....'OH, WHAT will become of my children?' The words spoken on his deathbed by the artist George Cruikshank would sit well in a novel by his old friend Charles Dickens.

The children, however, came as a surprise to his wife Eliza. She had none - and his long-dead first wife had had none either. ....

[As it had transpired when Cruikshank was 61,] Adelaide [the Cruikshanks' maid] became pregnant. Despite what Mrs Snaith [her great grandniece] calls 'a strong affection' between Eliza [Mrs. Cruikshank] and Adelaide, the maid would not reveal that Cruikshank was the father: and a pregnant maid had to go.

However, Cruikshank set her up in a house about two minutes' walk away, ....and thus a young woman who might otherwise have ended on the streets became ostensibly the wife of a mature gentleman, 'George Archibold'.

...... So what did Eliza do when, bending over the deathbed in February 1878, she learnt that George had a swarm of children by the maid of whom she had been so fond? She went round to Augustus Street, says Mrs Snaith: but not to play the outraged wife. For the first time in nearly a quarter of a century she saw Adelaide, and insisted on helping the mother of her late husband's children. Cruikshank had made some provision for them, but Eliza nobly added to it.

'She would do anything for them,' says Mrs Snaith - even helping to send the girls to finishing schools....

So we have another, edifying, Victorian story.  And that is what I think it is, a story that may have some elements of truth in it.