This aquatint by C. Hunt is one of the plates published by W.H. Isaacs of Charles Street, London in the 1830s after the original American series Life in Philadelphia. The fourteen-plate series was originally produced by Edward Williams Clay (1799-1857) and published in Philadelphia by William Simpson who published the first eleven plates, Sarah Hart and Son who published plates twelve and thirteen, and Sarah Hart alone who published plate fourteen in 1830. The first English reprint of the series was produced by Gabriel Shear Tregear (1802-1841 who operated his' Humorous and Sporting Print Shop' in London’s Cheapside

The original series was a set of cartoons that Clay began drawing in 1828 after he had seen George and Robert Cruikshank’s Life in London prints on a trip to England. Clay’s racist and anti-abolitionist caricatures were accompanied by ‘black’ dialect, depicting free blacks imitating white fashion, pastimes and courtship

In about 1831 W.H and H. Isaacs also republished Anthony Imbert’s 1830 Life in New York series, published in 1830 after the success of Clay’s original Philadelphia prints.