The music hall performer W.G. Ross (d.1876) became famous at the Cyder Cellars in London's Maiden Lane for singing Sam Hall, a song about an unrepentant chimney sweep about to be hanged, that Ross performed in character, wearing tattered clothes and a battered hat, with a clay pipe clenched between his teeth. The journalist F.C. Burnand (1836-1917) remembered visiting as a boy and seeing men in adjoining rooms rushing to the concert hall to hear Ross sing Sam Hall when his turn was announced, even if they had heard him do it fifty times before.

In 1848 Percival Leigh wrote:
‘After that, to supper at the Cyder Cellars in Maiden Lane, wherein was much Company, great and small, and did call for Kidneys and Stout, then a small glass of Aqua-vitae and water, and thereto a Cigar. While we supped, the Singers did entertain us with Glees and comical Ditties….. But the thing that did most take me was to see and hear one Ross sing the song of Sam Hall the chimney-sweep, going to be hanged: for he had begrimed his muzzle to look unshaven, and in rusty black clothes, with a battered old Hat on his crown and a short Pipe in his mouth, did sit upon the platform, leaning over the back of a chair: so making believe that he was on his way to Tyburn. And then he did sing to a dismal Psalm-tune, how that his name was Sam Hall and that he had been a great Thief, and was now about to pay for all with his life’

Portraits of Ross in character, costing one shilling, apparently sold tremendously well, and it may well be this print published by Stannard & Dixon that was sold for a shilling, with its printed signature: 'W.G. Ross'.