John Leech, the son of a London Coffee House proprietor, was born on 29th August, 1817. He was educated at Charterhouse and at the age of sixteen he went to St. Bartholomew's to study medicine. Leech's teachers should became aware of Leech's superb anatomical drawings and began commissioning him to paint portraits.
Leech left medical school and tried to make a living from drawing and painting. His first known published work was a pamphlet called Etchings and Sketchings (1835) and included drawings of street characters such as cabmen, policemen, street musicians, etc.
For the next few years he produced a series of humourous pamphlets including the Comic Latin Grammar, The Fiddle-Faddle Fashion Book and the Children of Mobility. Although influenced by the work of James Gillray and George Cruikshank, Leech's humour was as one critic pointed out "less grotesque, less boisterous, less exaggerated, nearer to the truth and to ordinary experience."
1840 Leech was employed by the London Magazine to supply illustrations. The following year he was recruited by a new journal, Punch Magazine, founded by Mark Lemon and Henry Mayhew. Leech's humourous drawings were extremely popular and was one of the main reasons the magazine became a great success. Over the next twenty-three years Punch Magazine published 3,000 of Leech's drawings and 600 cartoons.
A significant percentage of Leech's drawings dealt with political issues. Like the editors of the magazine, Lemon and Mayhew, Leech held fairly radical views. Between 1842 and 1845 Leech produced a series of cartoons such as Capital and Labour, Cheap Clothing and the Agricultural Question, which question the morality of the capitalist system. In the cartoon Substance and Shadow (1843), Leech criticised artists for ignoring social issues such as poverty.
