He is described at this early age as filled with a reckless love of adventure, emulating the exploits of Tom and Jerry, with wild companions. His field of observation extended from the foot of the gallows to Greenwich fair, through coal-holes, cider-cellars, cribs, and prize-fighters' taverns, Petticoat Lane, and Smithfield. Its centre was Covent Garden Market, where the young bloods drank, and sang, and fought under the piazzas in those days. Such was pretty much the sort of education the young men had, and luckily George had the sense and talent to turn it all to good account later on with his pencil.
In course of time the artist was firmly established in business, and had numerous patrons among the publishers, some of whom were thriving to a considerable extent through Cruikshank's labours. After numerous isolated sketches, which brought him no small amount of fame, the first considerable series of designs by him appeared in Dr. Syntax's _Life of Napoleon_, consisting of thirty illustrations. Another long series was twenty-three illustrations to Pierce Egan's _Life_ in London. As also twenty-seven etchings to Grimm's _Popular Stories_. These were followed by numerous other lengthened series, such as _Mornings at Row Street, Three Courses and a Dessert, Punch and Judy, Gil Blas, My Sketch Book, Scott's Novels, Sketches by Boz, The Omnibus_, and very numerous others. In all, he appears to have produced the illustrations for no fewer than three hundred and twenty volumes, not to speak of an immense number of isolated sketches of all sorts.
In 1847 and 1848 there came from his pencil his first direct and outspoken contribution to the cause of temperance in "The Bottle" and the "Drunkard's Children," although in some of his earlier designs he had satired the prevalent vice of drunkenness; he capped them all, however, in the eight plates of "The Bottle," in which he depicts the terrible downward march of degradation in the tragedy of an entire family, from the easy temptation of "a little drop" to the final murder of the wife. In "The Drunkard's Children," eight more plates, the remorseless moral is continued, the son becomes a thief, and dies in the hulks; the daughter, taking to the streets, ultimately throws herself over Waterloo Bridge. The two works had a great success. Moreover, they were dramatised in eight theatres at once, and were sold by tens of thousands. Hitherto Cruikshank had not been a strict abstainer, but now he became one with all the energy of his nature.