Haddock, [Marsden] | Mr. Haddock's writing automaton, with a writing specimen 

Haddock, [Marsden]

For Three Weeks only. Telegraph, Exhibited Upon Mechanical Principles, by an Automaton Figure, at the Androides. [London]: Geoghegan, [ca. 1798]

Broadside playbill (502 x 189 mm). Printed in black ink on blue-grey paper, woodcut vignette of Haddock's telegraph machine; light scattered soiling, creasing, horizontal folds, a few small marginal chips. [Framed with]: Sample of writing by Haddock's automaton. Four lines within a decorative oval flourish signed "The Automaton," mounted on card (83 x 153 mm); light soiling. Framed, matted, and glazed with Plexiglas.  

At the end of the eighteenth century one of the best-known exhibitors of automata in England was Mr. Haddock. The playbill for his appearance in London included a stylized woodcut of the telegraph that was to become a kind of trademark for Haddock. Haddock's "Writing Automaton" was a mechanical boy about the size of a five-year-old who would draw pictures of a lion, tiger, elephant, camel, bear, horse or stag, and "write any word, words, or figures in a round legible hand" (EE).

The accompanying poem is an actual specimen produced by the figure, and reads, in full: 

Unerring is my hand tho' small

May I not add with truth 

I do my best to please you al: 

Encourage then my Youth. 

REFERENCE:

Exemplars, p. 177; EE, pp. 58-59