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1935: Getting Away From the Crowds

There obviously was a fashion for taking caravan holidays. As the cartoon shows us they seem to have been anything but solitary.

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1935: The Professor’s Memory

A university is an unusual setting for George Belcher’s cartoons. Using a modern analogy the professor thinks that his memory is like the fixed disk on a computer. If it is full you have delete stuff in order to store something else. I have the distinct impression that human memory is not like that at all. I also think that even in 1935 his opposite number in the Psychology Department could have told him this.

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1935: Taking the Mickey

I am wondering if the speaker in the ‘loud’ clothing is a bookmaker. The barmaid finds his banter amusing. He, too, is wearing spats.

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1935: Playing the Game

The criminal clearly didn’t go to the same school as the keen as mustard young copper. What’s the betting that he will give the younger man the slip?

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I have now finished showing my 1935 cartoons. We now will switch our focus onto 1917. The war was in its third year and that initial enthusiasm of 1914 had largely evaporated. Instead there was the grim realisation that it was going to be a long, hard slog. The opportunities for humour were fewer but they did exist and the Punch artists did their best under the circumstances. Comments on the military tended to avoid the actual conflict but instead centred on the vagaries of army life. The ‘civilian’ cartoons were almost exclusively devoted to the effects of the war on the ‘home front.’ Two ever-popular themes concerned the effects of food rationing and the way women were now assuming roles previously confined to men.



1917: The MO is Confounded

Without the Internet doctors were unaccustomed to their patients having any medical knowledge at all. Here the Private has simply memorised the words but the Medical Officer (MO) is nevertheless impressed. In answer to the next question the Private reveals the extent of his medical knowledge.

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1917: Market Forces

The critical importance of munitions (especially shells) had been realised well before 1917. Already in 1915 Lloyd George became the Minister for Munitions, a government department having been hastily created for him. The German industries based in the Ruhr were highly efficient. Manpower was critically important and wages rose as a result of incessant demand. This cartoon is a good example of how this affected age-old levels of remuneration. The readers of Punch were not happy with this trend.

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1917: The Servant Problem in Wartime

This cartoon reflects a social issue during World War One. By 1917 many women were undertaking work previously done by men. As a result the demand for various kinds of household servants exceeded the supply.

The cartoon is clearly not intended to be taken seriously but the prospective employer’s anxiety to employ a cook is genuine enough.

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1917: An Outpost of the Empire

While the war was being ferociously fought in France it was still considered necessary to provide soldiers for the garrisons in the various and many parts of the British Empire. However, when we look at the soldiers here on guard duty and, of course, their colonel we see that these men are far from being A1 material.

Slogger is obviously not a professional but a war service soldier. In other circumstances he would have been the colonel’s daughter’s social equal. She, too, is well aware of this fact.

The sight of all these pith helmets reminds me that I was fortunately not forced to wear this ridiculous piece of headgear in Singapore in 1954/5. Right up till World War Two these were considered essential to the health of any European in the tropics. During that war they were found to be quite unnecessary. Our uniform hats were just ordinary army berets and when going out off duty in civvies we didn’t find it necessary to wear anything at all to cover our heads.

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1917: An Old Chestnut Appearing in Uniform

Ladders always provided opportunities for humour in the pages of Punch. The only thing that is different here is that the speaker is in the army.

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1917: No Sympathy for Lady Muck

It isn’t hard to spot who is the war profiteer’s wife. She’s the well-upholstered one with cup in hand. The war machine needed plenty of supplies. These mainly included munitions but there were plenty of other juicy contracts to be had for supplying the forces with uniforms and all their other bits and pieces.

The term ‘war profiteer’ implied that those who ran the supplying companies were unpatriotically making a profit instead (presumably) of doing it for nothing. Behind the criticisms was the fact that people one had previously despised for being ‘in trade’ were now living more lavishly that the pre-war upper middle classes who did not like to be outshone. These digs at the profiteers were to be repeated again and again in Punch during the 20s and 30s.