Getting a Document Stamped At Somerset House by H M Bateman. This illustration shows the red tape of Somerset House tax offices. A long queue, the wrong line, stairs down, stairs up, office after office until the stamp is gained.The man leaves the building after many hours only to lose the paperwork in the wind, leaping into the Thames to follow it. Bateman spent a lifetime feuding with the inland revenue through the medium of his cartoons and regularly satirised their greed and bureaucracy.