Mr. Briggs Has A Day’s Salmon Fishing

by John Leech,

in Punch’s Almanack for 1857
Example of a Mr. Briggs caption strip, spread over three pages.

Mr. Briggs, John Leech’s Masterpiece

Mr. Briggs

Ally Sloper may be the most well-known comic character of the Victorian age today, but he was preceded by John Leech’s world-renowned character Mr. Briggs in 1849. Leech may have had more of an influence on the British comic strip than had Charles Henry Ross. Mr. Briggs first appeared in Punch in a single panel cartoon called ‘The Pleasures of Housekeeping’ in 1849 and thereafter appeared in two panel and full page strip cartoons (in 1851), often using word balloons. He even appeared as a character in text only appearances. It was said he was modeled in appearance on Bradbury Evans, called ‘Pater’ by all the men of Punch.

John Leech (1817-1864) had his first work published in 1835 entitled ‘Etchings and Sketchings by A. Pen, Esq.’, four quarto pages of sketches of London oddities. Some of his political and social lithographs were published by W. Spooner under the titles ‘Droll Doings’ and ‘Funny Characters.’ He contributed to the Gallery of Comicalities issued as supplements to Bell’s Life in London newspaper, and then turned to magazine and book illustration.

His first Punch contribution was published in the fourth number, August 14, 1841. ‘Mr. Briggs and his Doings’ appeared in 1860 and consisted of twelve color fishing scenes featuring the popular character. Punch itself (July 18, 1891, p.4) described Briggs as “Leech’s most delightful character, the simple-minded, sport-loving, philistine paterfamilias…”

Grolier Club Exhibition watercolour, 1914

George du Maurier called Mr. Briggs, “whom I look upon as Leech’s masterpiece – the example above all others of the most humorous and good-natured satire that was ever penned or penciled.” Du Maurier would go on to make many of his own character-driven cartoons with Jenkins, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Tit, and Tom Noddy (following an earlier Leech creation by the same name).

Punch’s Opinion of the American Civil War

Punch’s political cartoons – called the “big cuts” because they were full-page size – were discussed after the weekly Punch dinner, as M.H. Spielmann wrote “often by the aid of the evening papers,” and settled by ideas put forth by the group. 
John Leech had done most of the big cuts, but as his health decreased in the 1860s he only supplied sketches, with John Tenniel doing the finished drawings. Tenniel’s signature did not begin to appear on the political cartoons until 1862.

Portrait of John Leech from the National Gallery

Spielmann quotes Tenniel as saying “As for political opinions I have none; at least, if I have my own little politics I keep them to myself, and profess only those of my paper.”

The cartoons issued during the American War of Secession were, in the words of Henry James, issued “under a dark star.” Spielmann wrote that Punch’s political cartoons “carried weight and influence; they were the nation’s ideas…”

To the British nation’s press the American war was an economic irritation, interrupting the trade in cotton. They feared the war would spread north and Canada would suffer a war of annexation. There was also a bit of schadenfreude involved stemming from the War of Independence.

The gorilla cartoon is a double-barreled slam at Charles Darwin’s new theory and at the Emancipationist’s slogan of “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” that William Wilberforce and Darwin’s grandfather Josiah Wedgwood developed in the late 18th Century.


Punch seemed to be of two minds:

O Jonathan and Jefferson,

Come listen to my song,

I can’t decide, my word upon,

Which of you is most wrong.

I do believe I am afraid

To say which worse behave,

The North imposing bonds on trade,

Or South that men enslave.

Putnam’s magazine opined that Tenniel’s Lincoln cartoons “were charged with a venom and malignancy such as, so far as our knowledge of those things extends, were never equaled in caricatures published anywhere in the world.” For the most part Americans were remarkably forgiving after Tenniel published his touching cartoon of the martyred President, ‘Britannia Sympathizes with Columbia’, on May 6, 1865.

*Thanks to E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra

Humor of John Leech

John Leech caricatures from “Four Hundred Humorous Illustrations with Portrait and Biographical Sketch” published by London, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., date unknown, sometime in the sixties. A biographical article of “John Leech” from The Leisure Hour, Dec 1865 can be read HERE.

John Leech

John Leech from The Leisure Hour No. 729, 16 Dec 1865.