Mary and Matthew Darly. NODDLE ISLAND or HOW are We Deceived. Hand-colored engraving, third state. London, May 12, 1776.
This cartoon satirizes the March 1776 retreat of General William Howe from the British siege of Boston. News of the retreat sparked heated debate in London, as the government portrayed the withdrawal as a tactical maneuver while the opposition bemoaned the loss of a strategic port city. In response, cartoonists Mary and Matthew Darly created this print of fleeing troops set amongst a comically oversized woman’s powdered wig. They nestled the retreating forces among the hair and crowned the scene with a battle between the colonists and Howe’s army, represented by a dunce cap and an ass. The caption plays on Howe’s name and alludes to a remark made by British Whig politician Horace Walpole who declared “nobody was deceived” by the government’s representation of the loss. Noddle’s Island, then one of the Boston Harbor islands, was subsumed by fill in the twentieth century and became part of East Boston.
For more information on this cartoon and related materials, see the European Political Print Collection Illustrated Box List.