Hogarth's series 'Industry and Idleness' is a cautionary tale in which two apprentices set out from adjacent looms to arrive at very different destinations. The industrious 'prentice rises through the ranks, marries the Master's daughter, becomes an Alderman and finally reaches the very highest station he could have hoped for: Lord Mayor of London. In the final picture we see him in the procession going to take office, and around the frame the cornucopiae stand for his great prosperity and happiness.
His counterpart is condemned by idleness and delinquency to drift into a life of crime. Finally betrayed by the prostitute whose garret he shares, he is sentenced - by the industrious apprentice, now Sheriff of the City - to the gallows at Tyburn.
Hogarth was a philanthropist and was motivated to create these and other improving works by concern for the plight of the poor: he said that they were "calculated for the use and instruction of youth, wherein everything necessary to be known was to be made as intelligible as possible", and by the standards of the day they were lurid, horrifying spectacles likely to have a great impact on the viewer. The prints were sold for a shilling each, or 12/- the set: much cheaper than other such works, but still well beyond the means of most apprentices, however industrious.
The Lord Mayor's Show appears in many other works of art and literature...