Punch, Judy & Toby

• Victorian embossed scrap printed by chromolithography
• 127 x 133mm (5 x 5¼in), circa 1880
•  

This month is the 350th birthday of Mr Punch and it is being marked by a nationwide celebration of events in Britain.

The first recorded sighting in England of a Punch puppet was made in 1662 by Samuel Pepys in Covent Garden, London which he dutifully noted in his diary on 9 May 1662:

Thence to see an
Italian puppet play
that is within the
rayles there, which is
very pretty, the best
that ever I saw, and
great resort of gallants