You Shall Either Die Upon the Gallows or of the Pox
Not Benjamin Disraeli — Lord Sandwich, to Samuel FooteJohn Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich1718–1792 · First Lord of the Admiralty · named as the speaker in the earliest printed telling (January 1784)
The line is the set-up half of a Georgian anecdote first printed in The European Magazine and London Review for January 1784, where Lord Sandwich needles the actor Samuel Foote and Foote fires back the famous reply about embracing his lordship’s mistress or his principles. Disraeli is not in that story at all — Quote Investigator ↗ finds the Gladstone-and-Disraeli casting no earlier than a 1950 American memoir, and even there Disraeli speaks the reply, not this line.
“You Shall Either Die Upon the Gallows or of the Pox” not Benjamin Disraeli. The earliest documented telling, in The European Magazine and London Review (London, January 1784), gives the line to John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, and the famous reply to the actor Samuel Foote. The Gladstone-and-Disraeli version is not recorded before a 1950 memoir. Chronology: Quote Investigator, quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/26/gallows-pox/ — via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “Which do you think will happen to you first, the experience of a certain disease, or an intimate acquaintance with the gallows?”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Benjamin Disraeli. Use the credit shown above instead.
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Provenance
Where the line actually comes from
Earliest printing
The European Magazine and London Review, vol. 5, January 1784
Item
“Bon Mot of the late Sam. Foote,” page 16
Speaker
John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich — to the actor Samuel Foote (1720–1777)
Disraeli version
Not documented before 1950, in George E. Allen’s Presidents Who Have Known Me
Bon Mot of the late Sam. Foote — Sam. was invited to a convivial meeting at the house of the late Sir Francis Blake Delaval. Lord Sandwich was one of the guests upon the same occasion. When the Comedian entered, the Peer exclaimed, “what are you alive still?” “Yes, my Lord,” replied Foote. “Pray Sam,” retorted his Lordship, “which do you think will happen to you first, the experience of a certain disease, or an intimate acquaintance with the gallows?” “Why,” rejoined the Comedian, “that depends upon circumstances, and they are these, whether I prefer embracing your Lordship’s mistress, or, your principles.”
London, January 1784
The blunter wording people quote today — the pox and the halter — comes from Percival Stockdale’s 1809 memoirs, which keep Sandwich and Foote but move the scene to the beefsteak club in Covent Garden. Wikiquote reproduces that version ↗, citing Stockdale via The Yale Book of Quotations.
January 1784 — the exchange appears as a memorial ‘bon mot’ of the recently dead Samuel Foote in The European Magazine and London Review ↗, with Lord Sandwich delivering the insult.
1809 — Percival Stockdale’s memoirs give the wording everyone now quotes, “you must either die of the p-x, or the halter,” still Sandwich to Foote; Wikiquote carries it ↗ from The Yale Book of Quotations.
1828–1844 — John Wilkes replaces Foote, first in a book on London’s clubs and then in Henry Brougham’s sketches, where Brougham cites the Duke of Norfolk as a witness but doubts the wording; Wikipedia calls the Wilkes attribution mistaken ↗.
1950 — Gladstone and Disraeli are written into the roles in George E. Allen’s memoir, the earliest such instance Quote Investigator could find ↗.
✓Public domain
Every documented telling of this line is old: the January 1784 European Magazine item, Percival Stockdale’s 1809 retelling, and the Victorian versions between them were all published long before 1931 and are in the public domain in the United States. The smoothed modern phrasing has no identified author. George E. Allen’s 1950 memoir, which first casts Gladstone and Disraeli, is still in copyright — but its wording is different and is not what is quoted here.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Who else gets the credit
This is one of the most-travelled anecdotes in English, and almost every retelling promotes the cast. Quote Investigator counts five proposed pairings; only the first is supported by an eighteenth-century printing.
✕
The whole exchangeWilliam Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli Not before 1950
Quote Investigator ↗ finds no Gladstone-and-Disraeli version earlier than George E. Allen’s 1950 memoir Presidents Who Have Known Me ↗, where Gladstone says Disraeli will “probably die by the hangman’s noose or a vile disease.” Disraeli died in 1881 ↗. Note too that even in this version Disraeli delivers the reply — so crediting him with the gallows line is wrong twice over, and the widely copied Disraeli version ↗ hands the insult to an unnamed Member of Parliament.
An undated theatrical joke collection, catalogued by HathiTrust at about 1816, gives the exchange to the actor James Quin and an unnamed nobleman. Quin died in 1766, and QI notes the ascription appeared many years after his death ↗, which badly weakens it.
✕
The whole exchangeThe Earl of Sandwich and Charles James Fox 1968, in the Commons
An MP alluded to the story in the House of Commons in 1968 with Fox as the target, giving only the first line — another late substitution recorded in QI’s chronology ↗.
✓The earliest known printing — The European Magazine, January 1784 ↗ — puts the gallows-and-disease line in Lord Sandwich’s mouth and the retort in Samuel Foote’s.
Context
Why this joke keeps changing hands
Some jokes are too good to leave attached to a half-remembered actor. This one has been re-cast at least five times in two hundred and forty years: Sandwich and Foote in 1784, an unnamed nobleman and James Quin by about 1816, Sandwich and John Wilkes from 1828, Gladstone and Disraeli by 1950, and Sandwich and Charles James Fox when an MP alluded to it in the Commons in 1968. Each retelling swaps in bigger names, which is exactly how a famous line ends up on the wrong mouth.
The 1784 version is also the funniest, because it is the most specific. Foote had died in 1777 and the magazine ran the item as a memorial ‘bon mot of the late Sam. Foote’; the setting is a supper at Sir Francis Blake Delaval’s, and the jab about Sandwich’s mistress was pointed rather than generic. Strip out the names and the room, as later versions do, and you are left with a portable gag that will attach itself to whichever pair of rivals the reader already has in mind.
Disraeli did not say it, and in the version that names him he is not even the one saying this half.
How the wording drifted
The 1784 text has Sandwich ask “which do you think will happen to you first, the experience of a certain disease, or an intimate acquaintance with the gallows?” The blunter phrasing everyone quotes — the pox and the halter — comes from Percival Stockdale’s 1809 memoirs, which relocate the scene to the beefsteak club in Covent Garden but keep Sandwich and Foote.
The modern internet form drifts further still. A widely copied version credited to Disraeli has an unnamed Member of Parliament deliver the insult and Disraeli answer “whether I embrace your policies or your mistress” — policies for principles, which quietly kills the pun the joke was built on.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1718–1792 · First Lord of the Admiralty · Georgian political grandee
John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, ran the Royal Navy through three spells as First Lord of the Admiralty, the last of them (1771–1782) covering the American War of Independence, and he is the peer the modern sandwich is named after ↗. He was also a reliable target for jokes about his morals: for years his mistress was Fanny Murray, the subject of John Wilkes’s scandalous Essay on Woman, which is exactly why the retort about ‘your lordship’s mistress’ landed. In this anecdote he is the aggressor, not the wit — the laugh belongs to Samuel Foote.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented telling
“Bon Mot of the late Sam. Foote.” The European Magazine and London Review, vol. 5 (January 1784): 16. Earliest telling located by Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: You Shall Either Die Upon the Gallows or of the Pox,” 26 January 2014.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘You Shall Either Die Upon the Gallows or of the Pox’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/you-shall-either-die-upon-the-gallows-or-of-the-pox/