Val Bott, Brentford & Chiswick Local History Journal 23, 2014

Graffiti in cities is usually seen as a modern activity. However, records of nineteenth century examples survive, including drawings on a Chiswick wall. This article reveals the content and likely location of these images, and provides information on the artist who drew them.

The Dorset County Chronicle, 19 October 1826, reported a curious event in Chiswick. Thomas Hardy, the writer, copied the text into his notebook [1] for Facts from Newspapers, Histories, Biographies & other Chronicles (mainly Local):

Wonderful sketches on a wall, when people get up one morning at Turnham Green (skeletons &c it seems, called Death’s Doings done by a young man out of employ, at a very early hour, to divert his mind from dwelling on his wretched situation [& to prevent suicide].

Twelve small prints [2] acquired by the British Museum in 1878 show skeletons playing games, at a hustings, as painters, sculptors and musicians. One bears the watermark of W King and the date 1829. A pencilled note states that these are the ‘celebrated skeletons’ from the long wall between Turnham Green and Brentford, with the name F E Liardet. When the Museum acquired the prints, they assumed them to be the work of one artist. Other lithographs of the skeletons survive. A print in the Wellcome Library [3] , published by Netherclift’s Lithographic Establishment, Newman St, London, and measuring 11 x 15 inches, bears six of the British Museum’s skeleton groups. It is entitled Sketches of the celebrated skeletons: originally designed on the long wall between Turnham Green and Brentford , drawn by W F E Liardet, designer of the skeletons on the wall.

Yale University’s Lewis Walpole Library has the same lithograph [4], measuring 10 x 15 inches, and a second print [5] entitled Humorous sketches of skeletons: engaged in the various sciences, drawn by H Heathcote Russell as a companion to the skeletons copied from the long wall at Brentford with the other six groups. Though not Liardet’s work it closely matches the other in style and size at 10 x 15 inches, and was published in June 1830 by S Gans of 15 Southampton Street, Strand. The British Museum’s small prints were cut from other impressions of the Lewis Walpole Library’s two lithographs.

The description of the skeletons as ‘celebrated’ was the artist’s own, but they must have aroused great interest at the time. It is difficult to estimate how long they survived without knowing the medium in which Liardet executed them, or whether he maintained them. While they may have been durable if painted rather than chalked, they were clearly memorable. Such graffiti were probably rare, though a nearby example was described [6] in 1830:

The boundary wall of Kew Gardens, on the road leading thence to Richmond, has been much admired in consequence of a representation of 700 or 800 ships of war, each 5 or 6 feet long, chalked out by a disabled sailor with no small degree of skill and ingenuity.

Drawings on this scale and in such quantity must have taken time to complete. A very simple sketch, taking only minutes to draw, appears in an illustration of Hogarth’s House from The Graphic in 1874. A curious figure with an open mouth ‘floats’ beside the gate, probably the work of an adult because it is high on the garden wall.

Where were the original skeletons?
At that time the road between Turnham Green and Brentford was certainly flanked by ‘long walls’. West of the Sutton Lane junction the road passed nursery and market garden grounds as far as London Stile Farm (the site of today’s Brentford Fountain Leisure Centre) on the north side, while on the south lay the parkland of The Chestnuts and Stile Hall, with garden grounds between them, all enclosed within high brick walls.

Why choose this location? Chiswick High Road was then the ‘Great West Road’, comparable to today’s M4, with great numbers of travellers between London and the West Country passing daily. If Liardet wished to publicise his skill, it was a good place for a virtuoso performance – the skeletons’ appearance in a Dorset newspaper suggests a measure of success.

Who was the artist?
Wilbraham Frederick Evelyn Liardet was born in Chelsea in 1799 to Wilbraham Liardet (1771–1854) from Vevey, Switzerland, an Ordnance Department official, and his wife, Philippa, née Evelyn (the widow of Major Houghton of the 69th Regiment). W F E Liardet married his cousin Carolina Frederica, daughter of John William Tell Liardet, a Royal Marines officer, in Carlisle in 1821. [7] Their first three sons, Frank Wilbraham, Frederick Augustus and Alonzo Evelyn (born in 1822, 1824 and 1826 respectively), were all baptised in August 1826 and a fourth son, Hector Evelyn, the following year, at St Mary’s, Putney. [8] The parish registers described Liardet as a ‘gentleman’.

This military family probably expected Liardet to follow suit; he served as a naval midshipman on The Pelican, then in the Royal Horse Guards Blue, becoming a lieutenant in 1825. However, the skeleton images demonstrate a knowledge of anatomy, and those engaged in drawing and sculpture suggest that Liardet may have attended a drawing academy. In September 1826, at 27, Liardet retired on half-pay, a reduction in income which could have triggered his despair that October. Though one account [9] states that he frittered away £30,000 inherited in 1826, no source is given for this assertion. If true, the heading Gaming and images labelled ‘billiards, drafts, cards, dice, toss and pitch’ on the 1829 lithograph may provide a clue to the loss of so much money so quickly.

Other evidence confirms that Liardet’s financial desperation was real. In July 1830, on his release from debtors’ prison, the London Gazette [10] described him as ‘artist and teacher of drawing’, but also as ‘formerly potato-merchant late out of business’ with no hint of great wealth. Given the dates and the artists, perhaps the first lithograph was intended to earn something for Liardet, and the second to pay off creditors? The 1824 Land Tax assessment listed him at a Hammersmith property worth £40 a year. The London Gazette provided eight former addresses, not only in Hammersmith and Brook Green, but also Chelsea, Putney and Kingston, all within walking distance of Turnham Green for a fit person. Was he moving frequently to escape creditors?

John Evelyn Liardet’s baptism in Surbiton in 1829, Alonzo’s burial at Thames Ditton in 1834, and five more baptisms at Kemsing in Kent – Josephine Evelyn (1830), Caroline and Imogène (1832), Michael St Clere (1834), and Leonora (1837) – show the family still on the move. In July 1839 they embarked on the four-month voyage to Australia in the William Metcalfe, where two more daughters were born: Frances that November, soon after they arrived, and Rosalie Felicia Evelyn in 1841.

En route to Sydney, their ship spent three weeks at Hobson’s Bay, near the mouth of the Yarra River, and half an hour’s walk from Melbourne township, established in 1835. The family decided to stay, living at first in tents beside a few fishermen’s huts. Liardet purchased a small boat from the captain of the William Metcalfe to ferry his goods ashore [11]. By August 1840 they had built a pier, and the boat was carrying mail ashore from visiting ships three times a day. That October Liardet established the modest Brighton Pier Hotel, and began running a passenger coach to Melbourne.

In April 1840, English poet Richard Howitt [12] missed the boat back to his ship. Stranded at Hobson’s Bay he encountered the Liardets:

A tall, good-looking lady, attended by two children, stood, almost before we had perceived them, at our fire. In one hand was a bottle of port wine, and in the other a wine glass. The port was especially good, better for the unexpectedness and the courtesy. Liardet was at Williamstown, three miles across the river mouth.With what alacrity did those children make a large beacon fire; waiting long silently, then shouting welcome as … the tall, well-made, military-looking father presented himself. These people had not been long in the colony, were evidently superior persons, and were industriously supporting themselves and nine children [13]

Liardet generously ferried Howitt to his ship.

Wilbraham and his teenage sons became the leading fishermen on this coastal stretch, while Liardet’s Beach and his hotel became an attraction for Melbourne residents. Liardet organised racing, regattas and archery, and entertained them with songs, playing guitar and flute. Frequently sketching, he presented a water-colour of Melbourne to Admiral Sir John Franklin, Governor of Tasmania, on his visit to the town in 1843 [14].

Though Liardet was insolvent by 1845 his sons were already running the business. Frank married the widow of another hotelier, and Hector took over the Brighton Pier Hotel. John Evelyn left to study law in England, and Mrs Liardet and her five youngest followed soon after. Wilbraham joined them in 1850. The older sons prospered in the Australian gold rush of the early 1850s, running hotels, a coach to the gold diggings and steamboat services. In 1855 Ballam Park Homestead, one of Melbourne’s first brick buildings, was erected for Frank, symbolising his prosperity. [15]

When Wilbraham and Carolina returned, they brought tools and machinery for the goldfield prospectors. Around 1860 brothers Hector, Frank and Michael St Clere moved to New Zealand. Their parents visited in 1863, were in Dunedin in 1865 and Wellington in 1868 where Wilbraham painted and made lithographs. [16] Pride in their direct descent from the diarist, John Evelyn, underlay the Liardets’ use of his name for their children. Evelyn had granted use of 16 acres of land in Deptford to extend the Royal Dockyard on condition that it should revert to his heirs when no longer required for this purpose. This dockyard closed in 1869, and Wilbraham sailed to England again, aged 70, to stake their claim to Evelyn’s land. The legal case failed, and in 1874 he returned to Australia. There he began work on a history of Melbourne, gathering papers, preparing 40 water-colours as illustrations, and signing up 400 advance subscribers for the publication.

He re-joined his wife in Wellington, but he had barely begun writing when he died in March 1878. Liardet’s papers are preserved in the State Library of Victoria; the watercolours were published in 1972. [17] Amongst them is a tantalising image of a race for skeleton horses [18]. The image is a photo of a lithograph, and there is no dating evidence; so making sense of it will require detailed research. Meanwhile, the family name lives on at Liardet’s Beach and in street names in Australia and New Zealand.

References and sources
1 Thomas Hardy’s ‘facts’ notebook : a critical edition, ed W Greenslade, Ashgate, 2004, p84
2 Catalogue no: 1878,0713.4674–4685
3 Catalogue no: 36673i
4 Catalogue no: 830.00,00.121+
5 Catalogue no: 830.06.03.01+
6 G A Cooke’s Topographical and Statistical Account of the County of Surrey
7 This article includes new research but also draws upon the Australian Dictionary of Biography and Michael Hiscock, ‘Wilbraham Frederick Evelyn Liardet: Romantic Visionary of the Beach 1839–62’ in La Trobe Journal 54, 1995
8 London Metropolitan Archives, Putney St Mary, Register of Baptisms p95, Item 370
9 Susan Adams & Weston Bate, Liardet’s water-colours of early Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1972
10 London Gazette 19162, 6 June 1834, p25
11 Liardet’s daughter’s reminiscences in ‘Melbourne in its Infancy’ in The Melbourne Argus, 25 October 1913, p 10
12 A W Grieg, ‘The Liardets of the Beach’, in Victorian Historical Magazine, vol 5 no 1, August 1916
13 Richard Howitt, Impressions of Australia Felix, Longman, London 1845, p215
14 A print of this view, published in London, is in the National Maritime Museum
15 The Frankston Historical Society opens the house to visitors
16 Una Platts, Nineteenth Century New Zealand Artists; A guide & Handbook, Christchurch 1980
17 Susan Adams and Weston Bate, Liardet’s water-colours above
18 Alexander Turnbull Library/National Library of New Zealand, The end of the steeple chase; dedicated to Mr Thomas Coleman, Ref 1/2-052282-F

Val Bott is a museum consultant and local historian, and she chairs the William Hogarth Trust. She is the author of Flood! The Brentford Flood of 1841 (B&CLHS 2003), Hogarth’s House (Scala Books 2012) and Chiswick Children 1700-1850 ( CCS 2013)