21-01-2016, 12:30 AM
512
Re: The Pages of Punch
Originally Posted by Mr Magoo
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1938: Non Communication
I wonder where it is that she has been. Quite possibly it is nothing illicit but she objects to her mother’s intrusive line of questioning.
21-01-2016, 10:45 AM
513
Re: The Pages of Punch
1938: The Classically Educated Master Criminal
Most Latin tags encapsulate quite complex ideas into very few words. The English language rarely supports such economy. So I prefer the following longer, freer translation:
The object must be pursued without compromise but if it can be achieved without unpleasantness then so much the better.
The master criminal is addressing this message – in Latin – to a dodgy set of shady characters, including the obligatory gangster’s moll. We clearly aren’t expected to believe that any of them will understand what he is saying nor that they would appreciate the instruction even if they understood it. Looking at the gang it is highly likely that there will indeed be some unpleasantness. We are expected to find it amusing that the arch criminal is so literate. Possibly he is meant to have attended a Public School in his youth and then ‘gone to the bad’. (Jane Austen once described Winchester College as a place for future heroes, legislators, fools and villains.)
Presumably the cartoonist assumed that a reasonable proportion of Punch’s readers would have understood the quotation. Even those that didn’t would at least get part of the joke.
Interestingly this quotation does not stem from classical antiquity at all. It comes from the writings of a Superior General of the Jesuits and dates from the late Sixteenth Century.
27-01-2016, 10:39 AM
519
Re: The Pages of Punch
1938: Cinema Violence
By 1938 films were all of the talking variety though still black and white. Going to the flics was a treat at the time and all sorts of people indulged in this activity. This was the time when every urban area offered a choice of picture houses to attend ranging from the grandiose to the simple which was always called the fleapit.
28-01-2016, 10:47 AM
520
Re: The Pages of Punch
1938: Bathchair Race
There are many cartoons dating from this time in which people are being wheeled about in bathchairs. The suggestion is that the occupants were either too old or disabled in some way to walk. I have the impression that they often were elderly men suffering from gout. The man talking in the cartoon looks rather fit and not that old. Perhaps he just can’t be bothered to walk.
Ten pounds would have been a considerable inducement at the time.
Nowadays wheelchairs are available making a ‘driver’ unnecessary. For those who can’t propel the device with their hands a motorised version exists.
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