Louis Philippe Boitard, The Covent Garden Morning Frolick, 9 October 1747, etching

The frolic of the title is that enjoyed by two well-dressed gentlemen, one of whom holds a large artichoke he has evidently acquired from a market woman, while the other sprawls drunkenly on the roof of a sedan chair in which sleeps a woman whose breasts fall out of her bodice. One of the young men has evidently struck a bellman (night-watchman) on the head, and compensated him with a few coins that the old man holds in his hat. The supposed names of the drunken trio have been added to the print by a later hand: Captain Laroon, Captain Montague and Bet Careless. The sedan chair is carried by two exhausted men and has clearly been led through the dark early morning streets by a barefoot boy recognisable as 'Little Cazey' (see Related Objects) carrying a torch made of burning flax and pitch. Another street-boy plays a hurdy-gurdy.J.T. Smith, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum and writer of reminiscences of London life, recalled that 'whenever Captain [Marcellus] Laroon was named by Henry Fielding [the novelist and Bow Street magistrate], he said, "I consider him and his friend Captain Montague, and their constant companion, Little Cazey, the link-boy, as the three most troublesome and difficult to manage of all my Bow-street visitors". Cazey was transported for stealing a gentleman's gold watch.'The only hint of criticism of the rowdy young gentlemen is the motto 'Sic Transit Gloria Mundi' ('thus passes the glory of the world') beneath the clock in the pediment of St Paul's Church.