Short answers, pulled from the story.
George Cruikshank (the 27th of September 1792 - the 1st of February 1878) was a British caricaturist and book illustrator praised as the "modern Hogarth" during his lifetime. He produced nearly 10,000 prints, illustrations, and plates over his career, including illustrations for Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist and Sketches by Boz, and replaced James Gillray as England's most popular satirist.
Yes. In 1820, Cruikshank accepted £100 from the royal household as payment for a pledge not to caricature George IV "in any immoral situation." The payment was a direct acknowledgment of his influence as a political satirist.
On the 30th of December 1871, Cruikshank published a letter in The Times claiming credit for much of the plot of Oliver Twist, which he had illustrated in 1838. Dickens denied similar claims from other illustrators, and the friendship between the two men had already soured over Cruikshank's zealous support for alcohol abstinence, which conflicted with Dickens's view of moderation.
Cruikshank created The Bottle (1847), a series of eight plates depicting a family ruined by alcohol, and its sequel The Drunkard's Children (1848), also eight plates. His most ambitious temperance work, The Worship of Bacchus, was based on his own oil painting and is now in the Tate Gallery in London. In 1856 he was made vice president of the National Temperance League.
Cruikshank organized Rifle Volunteer Corps following the invasion scare of 1859. He first formed the 24th Surrey RVC, a unit of total-abstaining working men named "Havelock's Own," and later founded the 48th Middlesex RVC (Havelock's Temperance Volunteers) after disbanding the Surrey unit in 1862. The 48th Middlesex eventually merged with the 2nd City of London RVC and became the City of London Rifles.
Cruikshank was originally buried at Kensal Green Cemetery after his death on the 1st of February 1878. By November 1878 his remains had been exhumed and reinterred in St. Paul's Cathedral.