The Scald Miserable Masons

In the 1740s London humourists and a crowd of followers held a mock procession every spring to make fun of the Freemasons and their grand parade. Hone printed a broadside for one held on Thursday 18 April in an unknown year, and there was another in the Strand by Somerset House on 27 April 1742. The Scald Miserables marched behind a band of cow’s horns, tea canisters full of broken glass, shovels and dripping pans, with a mock funeral of Hiram in a cart like a brick waggon and a Grand Master in a sand cart. The broadside declared that no gentlemen’s coaches, or whole garments, were allowed in the procession.