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Victorians attached great cultural value to cartoons – they acted as vehicles for both satire and political commentary. This workshop will ask what can cartoons tell us about the past, but also what can they not tell us about the past on their own?

Punch, or the London Charivari, was a weekly publication founded in 1841. As a popular illustrated humorous magazine, it was known as a ‘national jester’, combining social commentary and critique with biting sarcasm and irony whenever it focused on current affairs. Punch represented a national institution, capturing some of the main ideas and debates of the age, while reflecting contemporary views on religion, politics, society, culture and the world at large. Punch catered mostly to the metropolitan (London-based) middle classes, but it was also read extensively by the aristocracy and even Queen Victoria and Prince Albert . What made Punch popular were its uncoloured lithographs or woodcuts, nowadays known as cartoons.

 

A cartoon is a drawing of a sketch that is coloured or uncoloured. It has three main defining characteristics:

• A humorous or satirical nature.
• Topicality – a relevance to current events.
• It acts as a vehicle for social commentary and critique.

In the past people would have used three other terms to describe what we now know as cartoons: caricature, pencillings, cuts.

The cartoon above was drawn by James Gilray in 1802, and shows Edward Jenner vaccinating patients in the Smallpox and Inoculation hospital at St Pancras.

This artwork captures some of the main debates about the smallpox vaccine in the 19th century. Edward Jenner, the man in the brown jacket on the left hand side, embodies the new scientific ethos of progress and determination to eradicate a disease through the newly invented smallpox vaccine. On the other hand, you can see some of the fears of the people about this new vaccine, manifested in the way that cows seem to be growing out of their bodies.

The picture above is from an 1855 edition of Punch, showing a young boy visiting the sculptures of the antediluvian (i..e, prehistoric) reptiles at Sydenham in the gardens of Crystal Palace in London. The artist perfectly captures the fear of the young boy seeing for the first time these strange animals that we now know as dinosaurs.

Alongside these purely comedic pieces, Punch published a large number of cartoons which commented on the events of the Crimean War. The Crimean War took place between 1854 and 1856, and had a long and complex diplomatic history. In simple terms, it began after a dispute between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. In 1853, Russia invaded the Ottoman-Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. Britain and France signed an alliance with the Ottoman Empire and declared war against Russia in March 1854. Some of the main battles of the Crimean War were fought in the Black Sea Peninsula of the Crimea. One of the most important events of the war was the fall of the Crimean City of Sebastopol into the hands of the Allies in September 1855. The war ended a few months later with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in March 1856.

The Crimean War is known as the first ‘media war’. There are three main reasons for this:

It had the first ‘special correspondents’ – journalists who travelled to the East to write reports on all aspects of the campaign, before sending them back to Britain to be published in the daily and weekly papers.

It had the first ‘special artists’, who travelled to the east and other battle-fronts to capture the campaign in their sketches, in particular the horrors of the war and the suffering of soldiers. The image, from The Illustrated London News, shows a soldier in a military hospital who has lost his leg.

It had the first photographers: the Crimean War was the first war to be photographed using the new medium of visual reportage, photography.

There are therefore two main things to remember about the Crimean war:

• It acquired an unprecedented degree of immediacy and visibility because of the new media: people back home were able to perceive the campaign both visually and textually.
  
• The war created an unprecedented demand for visual sources – not only sketches published in the illustrated press, but also photography and cartoons.

Many of these cartoons were published in Punch or the London Charivari, either as full cuts (covering a whole page) or half-cuts (covering half a page or even less). The majority of these cartoons were produced by the renowned caricaturist John Leech.

Throughout the rest of this workshop, consider the following questions:

What do these cartoons show?

What can we learn about Victorian perceptions of Russia from these cartoons?

Are cartoons useful to the historian on their own, or do we need any other historical resources in order fully to understand them?

How do you think Victorian readers made use of these cartoons? Did they just look at them, or did they use them in any other ways?

What do Punch cartoons tell us about wartime ideas and public perceptions/attitudes?

The 1856 Punch cartoon above, captioned ‘Evening Party at Sebastopol’, depicts the Crimean City that the Allies captured in September 1855. A social gathering is disturbed by cannons dropping into the ballroom, with the elegantly dressed guests now in chaos on the floor. The cartoon captures in a humorous way the destruction that was wrought to the city of Sebastopol by the heavy bombardment of the Allies.

It is also interesting to consider how Russia was represented in Punch cartoons.

Above is the 1856 cartoon, ‘The Split Crow in the Crimea’. Artists would often embody Russia with the double-headed eagle, a Russian symbol of Imperial might. But here this national symbol is ridiculed as a ‘Split Crow’. The soldiers’ words – ‘He’s Hit Hard! Follow Him Up! – emphasises that Russia is on the brink of defeat. The cartoon depicts these two soldiers, representing Britain and France, going after this ‘Split Crow’ with the intention of killing it.

So how did Victorians use Punch cartoons? The back of the page containing the ‘Split Crow’ cartoon is blank.

Answer: this was done deliberately in order to enable the readers to tear the cartoon out of the magazine and use it for decorative purposes. Cartoons such as those in Punch were treasured by the Victorians, and were prized possessions used to decorate houses or to be collected in albums.

Punch sometimes published more serious cartoons which did not have a specific humorous, satirical or polemical intent. The cartoon above, captioned ‘Sebastopol – A Prayer For The Brave’, is an example of this. The Punch caricaturists had no problem applying humour and satire when commenting on the impact of the war on Russia, but when it came to the emotional impact and suffering of people on the home front, it assumed a more serious tone. This picture depicts a mother and her child praying for the soldiers in the Crimea.

Punch would often publish its cartoons alongside text, in either verse or prose. The cartoon above depicts the celebrated nurse Florence Nightingale, who travelled in late 1854 to the East to try to establish proper hygienic and medical practice in the barrack hospitals of Constantinople, which treated wounded British soldiers. As you can see, this cartoon illustrates a poem, ‘The Nightingale’s Song to the Sick Soldier.’ This piece highlights the fact that, when engaging in visual sources, we must always, if available, consider them alongside the accompanying text – in this case a poem. It is only by engaging with the interactivity between the visual and the textual that we can properly illuminate and understand the meaning of an image such as the one above.

Sometimes the text accompanying a cartoon in the caption can give us direction or hints which help us better to understand its meaning. The Punch cartoon above depicts two soldiers in the harsh Crimean winter. In response to the news that they are going to receive a medal, one soldier declares: ‘That’s very kind. Maybe one of these days we’ll have a coat to stick it on!’ The cartoon is clearly humorous, but it also served as a vehicle for criticism against the British government for mismanaging the war and for not providing its soldiers with adequate supplies of food, clothing and medicine. The national press reported extensively on the suffering of soldiers, and the public criticised the government for its incompetence. This cartoon was thus contributing to the wider public criticism in a humorous way, by drawing visual attention to the plight of the British soldiers.

It is important always to examine cartoons alongside other historical sources in order to achieve a more holistic understanding of their historical context, which is key to understanding their meaning. On 23rd December 1854, The Times wrote that ‘The Noblest Army England ever sent from these shores has been sacrificed to the grossest mismanagement.’ This articulates public critiques towards the government that underline the cartoon above. Considering cartoons alongside other historical sources such as articles, pictures, records and books can give us a better understanding of what was taking place at the time the cartoons were created. It is this holistic understanding which enables us properly to tease out the meaning and appreciate the humour of a particular cartoon.

To conclude, there are three main points to take away from this account of Punch and its cartoons of the Crimean War:

• The importance and richness of wartime caricature in Victorian culture.
• Cartoons provide a key with which we can unlock the door to the past and examine some of the main ideas debated at the time.

We must think critically about how to use cartoons, and must always study them alongside other sources.

Further Reading

If you want to look at more cartoons and challenge yourself, check out the British Cartoon Archives on Punch. You can access the archive by clicking here.

For a look into how technology is shaping the future of political cartoons, as well as the role of religion, watch this TedTalk by Patrick Chappatte which you can access here.