Happy New Year 1890

A strange and inexplicable New Year greeting! An old woman is tossing a young boy, identified as "1889" across his back, into a steaming kettle of soup that she's cooking over a hot fire. The legs of her previous victim are barely visible at the edge of the kettle.

Am I missing something here? Is there a literary allusion or proverb or something else that might explain this? Otherwise, it seems a rather cruel and violent way to greet the New Year.

In any case, after initially believing this to be a calling card, I finally discovered that it's number 5 ("Old woman holding boy 1889 over soup tureen") in a series of 50 "New Years 1890" cigarette cards issued by Kinney Tobacco Co. See Kinney New Years 1890 Cards - N227 for additonal information about the card series.

By the way, some of the other cards in this series also show strange and unsettling scenes:

No. 19 - Boy pushing huge snowball over figure of 1889.
No. 20 - Duelist 1890 standing over fallen 1889.
No. 36 - Boy 1890 skates round 1889 falling through ice.
No. 38 - Whale swallowing 1889, 1890 steps on to floating globe.
No. 49 - Sun as spider devouring insect 1889, insect 1890 flies away.

A checklist for the card series and illustrations of each card are available at Kinney New Years 1890 Cards - N227.