Hand coloured engraved map of the World [45 x 37 cm] dissected into 63 pieces and mounted on wood; contained in the original stained wood box [23 x 18 x 5 cm], the sliding lid with hand coloured lithograph label by Edwin Bates depicting the four continents shipping and emblems of trade etc. surrounding the title. William Peacok would have purchased maps to mount and dissect for his jigsaw business, this example using a map published by G. F. Cruchley, Map Seller & Globe Maker, 81 Fleet Street. William Peacock was a dissected map maker and publisher who was born in 1840 at Twickenham, his father James Edward was a carpenter by trade and with family decided to emigrate to Australia, taking one of the Free Passages offered at that time and sailing on the ship Royal Saxon in March 1841. This was not wholly a success as William’s mother and several siblings died there, James remarried and with several more children moved back to Britain about 1850. James then became a maker of dissected maps from 1853, based in Islington and naturally enough his son William followed the same course. William had married and appears to have taken over the business during 1860 at the time our Jigsaw was made, his father and his second wife having in the meantime moved to Devon to become a Baptist minister. William worked first from 31 Penton Street in Clerkenwell and latterly from 30 Windsor Terrace to the north of City road. We know that he and his wife Bella employed at first a boy to help them, but having ten children this became very much a family business, two of the boys also entered the business of dissecting maps. By the turn of the century William had transformed his business into making kindergarten toy manufactures and on his death his sons continued the business as Peacock Brothers which was eventually to be taken over by Chad Valley Toys. Such geography jigsaw toys had been popular since the latter part of the eighteenth century, Peacock clearly finding it remunerative enough to commission a lithograph label for the box lid designed by Edwin Bates (1824-1893) who had begun his employment as a colourer, but later became a lithographic draughtsman and artist working in the Holborn and King’s Cross areas of London.