1324? Wake Me At Dawn
Of course this is a deliberate anachronism. You didn’t need a personal wake up call in the Middle Ages. Dawn would inevitably be accompanied by a cacophony of noises. The gentleman in number five would be in no danger of oversleeping.
The cartoon is attractively and realistically drawn and probably raised quite a few appreciative chuckles.
It just raised another appreciative chuckle.
1949: Public Opinion Survey
Uniformed maids had regularly appeared in cartoons during the 1930s. By 1949 they were much rarer and this is an exception. There were rather more cartoons in which their absence provides an underlying message.
The maid hadn’t understood how Public Opinion survey worked. The gentleman would expect to interview ma’am personally.
1949: An Emett Tram
Frederick Roland Emett was a very popular cartoonist at this time. He specialised in weird complicated vehicles often used in unconventional ways. I may be wrong but in his work I sense some kind of link with the Nineteenth Century when Britain was the workshop of the world. At that time all sorts of weird inventions were made which did not survive the prototype stage.
At the Festival of Britain in 1951 you could ride on an actual train designed by Emett. I saw it there but I don’t remember riding on it. No doubt we would have had to queue for the privilege. There seem to have been queues for everything.
I suspect that his drawings don’t have anything like the appeal today that they did in 1949.
1949: Harsh Words Outside the House
He is too concerned with his precious car to consider her feelings. No doubt a garage / workshop would be able to make good the damage – for a price. By the look of things that is something that he could afford to do though he was not clearly looking forward to having to do it.
The drawing tells its story with skill and economy. The house, the clothes and the car are all ‘up market’. We are even shown the extent of the damage.
1949: Letting the Cat out of the Bag
In post-war Britain there were very strict controls on what money you could take out and what goods you could bring in – unless you paid the appropriate tax. Customs officers at the ports were very zealous.
The joke here is that this upper middle class woman seems to think that having got away with it once then the slate is wiped clean. This argument was not going to succeed.
As usual Anton has given us a picture of what these well-heeled travellers looked like. Package holidays only began to appear on the scene in the late 1950s.
1949: Nostalgia Time
This cartoon displays two kinds of nostalgia. In the period immediately after World War Two the readers of Punch were coming to terms with a world very different from that which their grandparents had enjoyed.
Norris has been busy producing the elaborate meal that her mistress had previously specified. There had been no thought of rationing in that distant time. Now, in 1949, there was not much food available and there was not even a Norris to prepare it.
The cartoonist is also offering the readers of Punch a wistful glance to a past that was never to return.
1949: Television is Mentioned in Punch
I would guess that television has played the major part in the eventual demise of Punch as a national institution.
The lady in the shop wants to keep up with the Dakers-Smiths without actually owning a set. At the time the programmes weren’t that many or that exciting. I think that there might here be a little dig at this new medium which in time was to become to dominate all the others.
1949: Family Life in Post-War Britain
George and his wife no doubt had, as children, plenty of staff to keep an eye on them whenever their parents had gone out of an evening. Now things were different. We see ample evidence that they are far from poor. They are setting out to a very grand event – the Royal Opera House, at the very least. (When George has finally managed to fix his black tie he will don the top hat placed in front of him.) Yet they have no resident domestic staff to look after the boys who look ready for bed.
Anton would have us believe that during the absence of the parents the sitter-in is going to entertain the youngsters while performing as a one-man band. That seems hardly appropriate, especially as the boys are quite small. No electronic entertainment was then available but surely bedtime stories would have been more suitable?
The term ‘baby sitting’ has become much more widely used than ‘sitter-in’ although the word ‘baby’ is in most cases far from appropriate.
I also wonder if Antoinette (posing as Anton) is indulging in a little fantasy here, in which it is George who is the last to be ready. I know that I am sticking my neck out here but I have always thought that it is an immutable law of nature (on a par with the Second Law of Thermodynamics) that the husband is always ready first.
1949: No Caption Required
No, I have not made a mistake in scanning this cartoon by omitting the caption underneath. There is no caption because it is unnecessary. We just know what the two lady jurors were talking about and it was not the testimony of the lady witness. They are clearly discussing her hat. Once again here is evidence that political correctness had not yet become dominant.
The artist has used a simple technique to guide us to the point of the cartoon. The courtroom and all the (male) officials and other jurors are rendered in grey lines. The ladies, and especially their hats, are given prominence by the use of more ink.
If my memory is correct by 1949 not that many women were routinely wearing hats. I would guess that the hats are being worn in the courtroom in honour of the occasion.
1949: Balance of Payments Crisis
Political cartoons did not often appear in Punch but when they did they usually had an authoritative feel about them. During the war enormous sums of money had been spent in order to ensure eventual victory. The time of reckoning had arrived and in this cartoon John Bull, speaking for the nation, recognises that some part of the current standard of living needs to be jettisoned in order to avoid complete disaster.
I can’t imagine a similar sentiment being expressed in such uncontroversial terms today.
1949: Retelling Old Tales
The cartoonist is here deliberately trying to give an old story a more modern twist. In the Middle Ages it was up to the parents to choose a husband for their daughter. In modern times it is up to the girl herself. The artist decided to mix up the time frames. That was the joke.
1949: Inter Generational Disagreement About Popular Music
There is not much evidence of consumerism in the 1949 Punch cartoons but this is an exception. A massive state of the art electric record player (not a wind-up gramophone) is being bought. The daughter is enthusiastic about the purchase and the mother appears to be mildly pleased. The father is clearly a reluctant buyer and wants to be protected from hearing the records that his daughter is going to play.
Unfortunately for him there is going to be a very long wait for personal stereos with excellent earphones that block out the sound to anyone but the listener.
I wonder whose music is being played in the listening booths. Could it be Frank Sinatra? Perhaps it was Dinah Shore. Tommy Handley once defined an intellectual as someone who prefers old Bernard Shaw to young Dinah Shore.
Many a Saturday morning spent in the record shop listening to records in one of those booths.
1949: Looking After Baby
The young mother is more or less technically correct in saying that her baby doesn’t take up ‘a scrap of room’. She hasn’t mentioned all the other baby related objects which have taken up the whole of what was once a rather grand room.
We can see three different guidebooks to advise the mother on looking after her baby. Clearly she is trying very hard to do all the right things.
She can’t get any advice from her own mother since one generation previously her mother would have had child care performed for her – by experts. When she was a child herself this new mother would have only seen her own mother from 5.00 to 6.00 in the evening.
On the other hand she must be doing something right because the baby is thriving and looking blissfully contented.
1949: Remembering the War
David Langdon was a very prolific artist during and after World War Two. He was responsible for the famous Billy Brown of London Town public information cartoons.
The joke here is that holidaymakers at the seaside are treated like soldiers being instructed – in this case – on the correct way to open up a deckchair. This memory of the war is still warm and all but one of the holiday makers are standing to attention while the bossy instructor is doing his stuff. The ‘civilians’ looking on seem relaxed enough.
1949: Thinly Disguised Truth
Cinemas were big business during the post war time of austerity. More often that not one had to queue to get in. The manager looks positively tycoon like while the commissionaire looks like the sergeant major summoned by the commanding officer.
The signwriter has underestimated the intelligence of his boss and he will soon be looking for a new situation. That should not be a problem since this was a time of full employment.
Other people have used the same trick in order to smuggle a real message into a bland statement. I remember the occasion when Robert Maxwell, very soon before his death, was talking up the share price of his Daily Mirror flotation. Knowing that Maxwell was very quick to resort to litigation, a financial journalist headed his piece with the following:
Cannot
Recommend
A
Purchase.
1949: Underworld Dilemma
Although his money is bogus he wants her love to be for him to be genuine and not for the results of his forgery. This is not likely.
1949: A Really Silly Question
PC Plod reveals his ignorance.
We notice that this is a time when orchestra members often were all white men.
Now that I find funny.
