One
evening at the beginning of June, 1841, Mark Lemon
and Henry Mayhew, met at the Edinburgh Castle
public house in the Strand, London, to discuss
the possibility of starting a new journal. Lemon and Mayhew were both
reforming liberals and the plan was to combine humour and political
comment. Others invited to the original meeting included Douglas
Jerrold, a journalist with the reputation for campaigning against
poverty, and John Leech, a medical student
whose drawings had impressed Lemon. During the meeting at the Edinburgh
Castle, someone remarked that a humourous magazine, like good punch,
needed lemon. Mayhew, remarked "A capital idea! Let's call the
paper Punch."
Mark Lemon and Henry
Mayhew found three other men to help finance the magazine, the printer,
Joseph Last, the engraver, Ebenezer Landells and the businessman, Stirling
Coyne. Lemon and Mayhew recruited a team of young journalists and artists.
Douglas Jerrold was probably the most important
journalist on the magazine, but other writers who contributed included
Shirley Brooks, William
Wills and William Makepeace Thackeray.
As well as John Leech, who was with the magazine
from the start, Richard Doyle and Archibald
Henning produced the drawings.
Punch front
cover that first appeared in January
1849. The cover was designed by Richard Doyle
The first edition of Punch Magazine
was printed by Joseph Last of Fleet Street and published on Saturday,
17th July 1841. In an article entitled The
Moral of Punch Mark Lemon wrote
that he hoped the journal would help, "destroy the principle
of evil by increasing the means of cultivating the good". For
the first few years of its existence, Punch
Magazine developed a reputation as "a defender of
the oppressed and a radical scourge of all authority". Early
targets included the monarchy and leading politicians. The magazine
campaigned against the high cost of the monarchy. It pointed out that
Prince Albert had a yearly allowance of
£30,000, whereas the total amount spent on educating the poor
in England was only £10,000.
The prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, also
came under attack for the unfair taxes he had introduced and was often
referred to as "Sir Rhubarb Pill, M.P., M.D., the new state physician."
Other politicians who suffered from the caustic wit of
Punch Magazine included Henry
Brougham, Benjamin Disraeli and Daniel
O'Connell. Politicians were seen as corrupt and self-seeking and
only Radicals such as Joseph Hume were treated
with respect.
Employers who treated their workers badly were also condemned. In
1843 Punch Magazine published
Thomas Hood's poem, The Song of the Shirt.
This powerful indictment of capitalism was supported by cartoons such
as Capital and Labour
and Cheap Clothing, by John Leech,
that illustrated the growth of inequality that was taking place in
Britain during the 1840s. The magazine also campaigned against the
Corn Laws, the 1834
Poor Law and reform of parliament. Although Punch
Magazine supported Moral
Force Chartists it was totally opposed to those such as Feargus
O'Connor who advocated the use of force to obtain the vote.
John
Leech, Cheap Clothing, Punch
Magazine (1845)
In
the early years Punch Magazine
sold about 6,000 copies a week. However, sales of 10,000 were needed
to cover the costs of the venture. In December 1842 it was decided
to sell the magazine to Bradbury & Evans. Mark
Lemon was reappointed as editor and Henry
Mayhew was given the role of "suggester-in-chief". Mayhew
wrote his last article for Punch Magazine
in February, 1845 and over the next few months worked on his railway
magazine, Iron Times.
The loss of Mayhew reduced the radical content of the magazine. Douglas
Jerrold, complained to Lemon about the influence of conservative
writers such as William Makepeace Thackeray.
Jerrold continued to work for the magazine, but in 1850, Richard
Doyle left in protest at what he saw as an anti-Catholic campaign.
He was replaced by the far more conservative cartoonist, John
Tenniel. Other cartoonists who worked for Punch during this period
included George du Maurier, Charles
Keene, Harry Furniss, Linley
Sambourne, Francis Carruthers Gould and
Phil May
The publishers believed that the radicalism of Punch
Magazine was not popular with the majority of its readers.
It was also argued that magazine's original readers had changed. As
one writer pointed out: "Adolescents had become mature men who
no longer trailed radical clouds of glory from their youth: they were
by then established in their careers and involved in their domestic
life and their growing number of children."Although there were
some campaigns that Mark Lemon did support,
such as a reduction in the hours of shopworkers, after 1850, the magazine
reflected the conservative views of the growing middle class in Britain.
After Mark Lemon died in 1870 he was replaced
by Shirley Brooks as editor. He was followed
by Tom Taylor (1874-1880), F. C. Burnand (1880-1906), Owen Seamen
(1906-1932), E. V. Knox (1932-1949), Cyril Bird
(1949-1952) and Malcolm Muggeridge (1953-1957).
In the 20th century Punch Magazine
employed Britain's top cartoonists including F.
H. Townsend, Frank Reynolds, Bernard
Partridge, Alexander Boyd, Sidney
Sime, Henry M. Brock, Cyril
Bird, H. M. Bateman, Jack
B. Yeats, Leonard Raven-Hill, George
Stampa, Frederick Pegram, Lewis
Baumer, George Belcher, George
Morrow, Edmund Sullivan, Bert
Thomas, James Dowd, F.
G. Lewin, A. Wallis Mills, David
Low and Leslie Illingworth.
During
the 1980s the circulation of Punch
dropped dramatically. The owners, United Newspapers, closed the magazine
in 1992.
In 1996 Mohamed Al Fayed re-launched the magazine. The venture was
unsuccessful and Punch ceased
publication in June 2002.
(1)
Douglas Jerrold, letter to Charles
Dickens in 1846.
Punch, I believe, holds its course. Nevertheless, I
do not very cordially I am convinced that the world will get tired
(at least I hope so) of this eternal guffaw at all things. After all,
life has something serious in it. It cannot be all a comic history
of humanity. Unless Punch gets a little back to his original gravities,
he'll be sure to suffer.
(2) George Julian Harney, letter to Friedrich
Engels about Punch Magazine.
Punch contains a good deal of Free Trade and glorification of
the Anti-Corn League. It dismisses as a mischievous delusion the doctrine
of perfect equality. Instead it is for various "social improvements",
"shorter hours", "sanitary reforms", "small
farms", "perpetual leases", etc.
(3) Henry Hamilton Fyfe, My Seven Selves
(1935)
I was a close student of the bound volumes of Punch that were
in my school library. They went back to the beginning, and I got from
them what was of great use to me - an idea of the history of the Victorian
Age. Schoolbook histories left off far earlier. But for Punch's
cartoons I should have known nothing about the Crimean War, the Indian
Mutiny, the fight for Free Trade, the No Popery campaign; nothing
about the conspicuous personalities. Not only did Gladstone and Disraeli
become real to me; I was familiar with funny little Lord John Russell,
Palmerston sucking his straw, John Bright in his broad-brimmed Quaker
hat.
As a social historian, he is unrivalled. His volumes show with unquestioned
accuracy the changing costumes, customs, fads, fears, follies, of
more than a hundred years. They provide a week by week record of everyday
life, casting a wide net and gathering into it all sorts and conditions.
Whenever Punch has during my lifetime shown strong bias, he
has been usually on the side I consider wrong, but a chronicler I
discovered, at the age of thirteen, his unique value, and have been
grateful for it ever since.
(4) David Low, Autobiography (1956)
A pile of old copies of copies of Punch I found in the back
room of a fatherly second-hand bookseller introduced me to the treasure
of Charles Keene, Linley Sambourne, Randolph Caldecott and Dana Gibson.
The more I poured over the intricate technical quality of these artists
the more difficult did drawing appear. How impossible that one could
ever become an artist! But then I came on Phil May, who combined quality
with apparent facility. Once having discovered Phil May I never let
him go.
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