The Fun Factory –

of Farringdon Street 

The Fun Factory of Farringdon Street, by UK comics historian Alan Clark (author of Comics, an Illustrated History with Laurel Clark, 1992), tells the story of Alfred Harmsworth's Amalgamated Press and the Fleetway House from 1890 to 1960, from the comics (The Funny Wonder, Comic Cuts, Illustrated Chips &c.) to the boys' story papers (Union Jack, Pluck, Magnet &c.). The book is small in size but packed with historical fact and lavishly illustrated. Only available on EBAY.

Edwardian Comic Papers (2021) is out of print now, but is a potpourri look at the publishers, editors, cartoonists and writers of the Edwardian era of comic journals illustrated with period photographs and illustrated comics like Jester & the Wonder, Big Budget, Lark's, Scraps, World's Comic, Funny Cuts &c. Features a lot of unknown fact and history including American imports by Dirks, Charles Dana Gibson, and Opper.

JKA

Cutting labels

           

[a] 1890, Comic Cuts (detail).

Yesterday’s Papers. Today’s Views.

by Huib van Opstal

[10] print labeling

Seduced by better printing, most artists, painters and others, sooner or later started using print too. The label ‘picture’ for ‘properly the art of painting’ was there first — in particular for paintings done in oils and in colour, profiled as single works and marketed as ‘high art.’ But today the word picture is a common word and simply refers to anything pictorial.

‘Sculpture’ is a label with a similar history. It began as a description for making classical sculpture and then for similar other ways of working. Metal engravers in the 1600s, able to resculpt their grooves like sculptors do, also began to sign their work-for-print in copper or steel ‘sculpture’ or ‘sc’ for ‘sculpsit,’ carved it. For a long period of time labels like ‘plate’ and ‘engraving’ solely meant work that’s done in metal. A new label begins to spread around the year 1800: ‘litho’ or ‘lithography’ for work that’s done via stone. Confusing in the mid-1700s remains that a ‘cut’ can refer to both metal and wood.

Since the 1800s the bulk of printed illustration is produced via wood and stone; afterwards, the three general terms used for a picture remain ‘cut’ or ‘block’ or ‘litho.’ In the 20th century they all refer either to the pictures themselves or to master films for printing.

[b] 1884-85, Choice Chips.

‘Cut.’ Up to the year 1900 printing via wood — via woodcut blocks, woodcuts, wood engravings — remains the cheapest and most used method.

‘Cut-workes.’ In London in 1632, a selection of stock woodblocks with illustrated ornaments is presented in book form, in the scrapbook way. On the title page described as ‘Certaine Patternes of Cut-workes: and but once Printed before.’

‘WITH THIRTEEN CUTS’ is how in 1819 London publisher William Hone subtitles his satirical pamphlet The Political House that Jack Built, illustrated in woodcut by George Cruikshank. ‘With a Cut’ is how he in 1821 advertises his ‘Works nearly out of Print,’ pamphlets which are each embellished with a single, rather crude woodcut.

‘By means of Wood-cuts’ is how in 1832-33 publisher-editor Charles Knight (b.1791) of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge explains the success of his small-page weekly — his ‘little work’ — The Penny Magazine (s.1832) in England, together with his steep claim to have reached a weekly sale of 200.000 copies in its first year.

[c] 1898, Illustrated Chips.

Cut versus Engraving. But the ‘woodcut’ label gradually fades away. Under the mock alibi engraving tools are used on end-grain instead of side-grain wood, ‘woodcut’ is replaced by the more posh sounding ‘wood engraving.’ As distorting a label as the shortened cut and engraving. A cut, or an engraving, via metal or wood? Carved, cut, chiseled, incised or excised, or etched with acids? (Much to the regret of those who consider woodcuts cheap and vulgar, the artsy name ‘xylography’ for woodcut doesn’t catch on in English.)

‘With Comic Cuts’ is the wording used in December 1831 when The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction reviews the latest comic annuals in a second supplementary number, titled ‘The Spirit of the Annuals for 1832’ — duplicating three woodcuts from The Comic Annual and The Comic Offering; or Ladies’ Melange of Literary Mirth. The reuse of these illustrations is talked about with great excitement.

‘Amusing cuts.’ In 1832 the small-page The Comic Magazine (subtitle: ‘Intended For The Risible Muscles’) offers an ‘amazing number of amusing cuts of the punning order’ and lots of wordplay, often in the form of just a short pun with a crude woodcut illustrating it. (Cuts presented on the cover as ‘Engravings by Dank, Esq.’) Editors in different years were Gilbert Abbott à Beckett (b.1811) and artist Alfred Crowquill (b.1804, penname of Alfred Henry Forrester). The typesetting is so large, the white between the lines so high, that most pages of The Comic Magazine carry only the shortest amount of text.

[d] 1890s, Comic Cuts.

‘COMIC CUTS.’ In 1833 The Comic Magazine advertises: ‘SPLENDID NOVELTY !!! This Week, Price only Threepence, A BROADSIDE OF COMIC CUTS, printed on fine paper, the size of “The Times,” presenting nearly ONE HUNDRED FIRST RATE ENGRAVINGS, By Seymour and — Dank, Esq. Selected from the early Numbers of THE COMIC MAGAZINE.’

‘Highly Humorous Cuts.’ The 1834 New Comic Annual is ‘Illustrated with One Hundred Highly Humorous Cuts.’

‘Illustrated with Designs on Steel and Wood by George Cruikshank’ is how editor-writer W. Harrison Ainsworth, Esq. (b.1805) launches Ainsworth’s Magazine in 1842 (subtitle: ‘A Monthly Miscellany of Romance, General Literature, and Art’) — for sale ‘On the 29th of January (…) price Eighteenpence (…) Orders received by all Booksellers and Newsmen.’

[e] 1890, Funny Cuts.

‘Saucy and Spicy Cuts.’ In the summer of 1855, New York publisher Garrett & Co. publishes a new strip book — by an author kept anonymous — titled The Wonderful and Amusing Doings by Sea & Land of Oscar Shanghai advertised in August as ‘… All told in a series of nearly TWO HUNDRED of the most RISIBLE, QUIZZIBLE, PROVOKING, PECULIAR, SAUCY AND SPICY CUTS ever gathered within the leaves of any one book …’ Earlier ideas by Swiss stripmaker Rodolphe Töpffer are quietly recycled in it.

‘Comic Cuts.’ In Victorian times the woodcut roots of papers with comical illustrations often show up in their titles and bookish spinoffs — Cuts… Amusing Cuts … Funny Cuts … Comic Cuts… Cheap comic weeklies carry grand cover banners and subtitles like ‘150 comic and humorous cuts for one penny’ … ‘A Journal of Humour, Romance, Comic Cuts, And Answers On Everything.’ Funny Cuts (1890) is subtitled: ‘JOKES, PICTURES, STORIES & TALES.’

[f] 26 July 1890, Illustrated Chips, nr 1, Vol. 1.

‘Chips.’ In America, a joke book is titled Chips from Uncle Sam’s Jack-knife. From New York comes a comic monthly titled Chip Basket in 1869. England has its weekly ILLUSTRATED CHIPS in 1890 (with the cover price lettered as large as its title, twice). The penny-paper Choice Chips has its title pictured in bent wood chips; the squibs in it are done under titles like ‘Quaint Chips’ or ‘Illustrated Chips.’ (A shortish satire in words may be called a ‘squib’ or a ‘skit’ or a ‘quip’ or a ‘chip.’) In 1897, the work of American illustrator Frank P.W. Bellew, Jr. (1862-94) — whose penname was ‘Chip’ — is titled “Chip’s” Old Wood Cuts. 

[g] 1890, Illustrated Short Cuts.

Stock blocks. In London many comic papers are assembled the scrapbook way, for the larger part assembled from years-old stock blocks, and sold for as little as posible. (In the 1880s swiping by photographic means picks up speed too.) Papers with titles like: Illustrated Short Cuts (1890)… Snap-Shots (1890, subtitle: ‘Humorous Pictures, chiefly from Advance Proofs of this Week’s American Comic Papers. With Useful, Entertaining, and Amusing Reading’)… Comic Pictorial Sheet (1891)… Comic Pictorial Nuggets (1892)… The Comic Home Journal (1895, subtitle: ‘The Friday Edition of Illustrated Chips’)… Comic Bits (1898)… The World’s Comic (1892, subtitle: ‘Edited by Grandad Twiggle’)…

[h] 1890, Comic Cuts.

Real and fictional editors — some with large scissors in hand — have names like ‘Mr. Chips,’ ‘Chips Esq.,’ ‘Mr. Comic Cuts,’ ‘Mr. C.C.’ or ‘Mr. Clarence C. Cutts,’ and begin to figure as funny men in strips themselves, even in their papers’ front-page top titles (‘mastheads’ or ‘nameplates’).

Price cut. In 1890 a young London editor-publisher, Alfred C. Harmsworth (b.1865), in business with his younger brother Harold, targets readers of all ages. English comics in the late 1800s cost no more than a penny, still an amount only to be spent by adults. They publish papers under their trade names ‘“Answers” Company’ and ‘Pandora Publishing.’ On 17 May 1890 — with the launch of their weekly Comic Cuts, carefully captioned ‘Amusing Without Being Vulgar’ and subtitled twice: ‘Pictures, Prizes, Jokes,’ and ‘A Penny Illustrated Paper for One Halfpenny’ next — the cover price is lowered to half a dime. Four of its eight pages are filled with picture cuts, the other four with short texts. Cuts from other publishers are quietly recycled in it. Jokingly plugged as ‘The Poor Man’s Punch,’ it is noticed by readers of all ages in the 90s — ‘Comic Cuts… One Hundred Laughs for One Halfpenny!…’ — and commercially so successful, that all competitors followed, making the ha’p’orth (half-penny worth) paper the new standard.

A little later, the top title on the cover gets a new standard caption: ‘CLEVER ARTISTS SHOULD SUBMIT WORK TO THE EDITOR OF “COMIC CUTS,” Enclosing large stamped envelope for return, in case of rejection.’

In May 1892, in prominent advertisements Harmsworth claims — for its first four weekly titles together — a circulation of over a million sold copies per week.

“A WORLD’S RECORD. (…) Figures certified by Chartered Accountants (…) The largest circulation not only in the United Kingdom but in the whole world. In less than four years (…) The HARMSWORTH Journals, “ANSWERS,” “COMIC CUTS,” “ILLUSTRATED CHIPS,” and “FORGET-ME-NOT,” 1,009,067 Copies Weekly. (…) Circulations are not gauged by the sale of a holiday issue.

Why have the “ANSWERS” journals achieved so vast a sale? Because they were the first cheap papers to recognize the fact that the day is passed when the public will be satisfied with clippings from American newspapers and old books, and because their literary and artistic expenditure is, per journal, five times as great as that of any of their imitators.”

Answers (s.1888, initial titel: Answers to Correspondents) is profiled as ‘a high-class penny weekly magazine.’

Forget-Me-Not (s.1891) is profiled as ‘a ladies’ paper’ and ‘a ladies’ journal’ and described as ‘charmingly written and illustrated, and printed in the style of the six-penny magazines.’

Comic Cuts is profiled as ‘an illustrated comics paper’ with a ‘circulation (…) equal to all the cheap illustrated weeklies combined. It is practically a penny paper sold for 1/2 d. among its artists are the best men of the “Graphic,” “Illustrated London News,” an “Black and White.”’

Illustrated Chips (s. 26 July 1890) is profiled as ‘an illustrated paper’ and ‘another penny paper sold for 1/2 d. Its circulation is one of the most remarkable features of modern periodical journalism.’

[i] 1897, Illustrated Chips.

Most famous reader. In an 1890s Comic Cuts series of poster parodies that picture VIPs reading it, the one titled ‘Famous Comic Poster No. 6’ shows an amused British Queen — ‘What would the nation do without its Queen? Worse: What would the Queen do without her Comic Cuts?’

Huib van Opstal

[ to be continued ]

Click up next or preceding paragraphs here:

[1-8] Roughly, eye shock 1800

 [9] The text, the type, the visual

[10] Cutting labels
  
[11] The Hogarth-Doyle Punch foundation

Alfred Harmsworth

Propaganda is nothing new, the early Christians were reported to worship an Ass, Jews were said to eat Christian and Muslim babies, the Society of Jesuits and the Protestants each blood libeled the other, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion has plagued the world since 1897, forged by Russia’s secret police, the Okhrana. These days newspapers and television news are increasingly irrelevant to the public, reduced to serving as a “bully pulpit” for the creators of “reality” in politics and the press. Edward Bernays (1891-1995) is often called the father of propaganda, however the use of press propaganda and advertising as a means of changing the public’s perception of reality had its English-speaking roots in London in the 1890’s, under baby-faced Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe, who served as Director of Propaganda to enemy countries in the Great War.

Alfred Harmsworth was born Saturday, July 15, 1865, in Chapelizod, near Dublin. He loved books and newspapers as a child, and, while his favorite author was Dickens, he also dipped into the penny dreadfuls, then accused of poisoning the manly minds of British youth. A friend of his family ran a local newspaper and young Alfred visited the composing room on press days. On his eighth birthday he received a gift of a toy printing set from the proprietor. Harmsworth entered the printing trade as a sub-editor on James Henderson’s Young Folks’ Budget, and supplied squibs for George Newnes Tit-Bits, a cheap magazine of scrap-book oddities gleaned from various periodicals. This type of scrapbook compilation went back a long way. The Thief, edited by Gilbert Abbott a’ Beckett in 1834, was aptly named, all of the contents were the result of the judicious use of scissors and paste.

After a stint as editor of the Bicycling News, Alfred started Answers to Correspondents in 1888. In Answers Harmsworth let his guns loose on the penny dreadfuls. “-- shop boys and factory hands, pit boys and telegraph boys, devour them eagerly and fill their foolish brains with rubbish about highwaymen, pirates, and other objectionable people.” Harmsworth liked to pretend his publications were different from the penny dreadfuls, but even in Answers he adored stories of cannibalism, or the woman buried alive only to wake up screaming and scraping her fingernails to the bone in her anxiety to be freed. He began offering prizes of a pound a week for life; each entry had to be countersigned by five people, resulting in a circulation of 205,000 weekly.

In 1890 he issued Comic Cuts a halfpenny eight page weekly and in 1890, Illustrated Chips. Although he later distanced himself from the boys’ story papers he published, he was always proud of his comic publications. At this time he came up with something called the ‘Schemo Magnifico.’ This was a written plan to overwhelm the competition with loads of magazines featuring ‘bad paper and cheap printing.’ He published For-Get-Me-Not, aimed at ladies and shop-girls, and in 1892, the Funny Wonder. A new comic, Funny Bits: or Roars of Laughter, was registered but never published.

Harmsworth began to investigate the boys’ story paper market. First he investigated the American boys papers, asking an American journalist about circulations. “I mentioned the Munro papers, The Fireside Companion and Family Story Paper; The Street & Smith publications; Frank Tousey’s Boys of New York; and Frank Munsey’s The Golden Argosy.” In 1893 he brought out the Halfpenny Marvel, and in 1894, the Sunday Companion. There were “Thrilling serials,” short stories and illustrated articles. Alfred offered the following bizarre incentives to his subscribers; Bottled Water from the River Jordan, Bethlehem Earth, and “The Harp of David,” a musical instrument. His competition received a double blow in 1894 when he launched the Union Jack and the Pluck Library. The Union Jack offered prizes of ‘Pocket Money for a Year.’

In 1893 Answers ran a serial by William le Queux, entitled “The Poisoned Bullet.” England is invaded by France and Russia in 1897, the story “deals not with the vague, shadowy and distant future, but with the almost immediate present.” The streets of England were crammed with corpses, but in the end England had a glorious victory. One promotional poster showed aircraft dropping bombs on St. Paul’s Cathedral while London burned. Alfred Harmsworth and Le Queux would return to the invasion theme with a serial called “The Siege of Portsmouth” in his newly acquired newspaper The Evening Mail in 1894 and “The Invasion of 1910” in 1906. By now he was well off and could afford to have a stuffed polar bear in the hall and American alligators in his greenhouse.

“The Poisoned Bullet,” was just the latest future war story that was begun with Chesney’s “The Battle of Dorking,” published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1871. These fictional accounts were popular in England and the Continent until 1914. Harmsworth’s newspaper serials and editorial stance reflected his real fear of Russia, France, or Germany gaining naval dominance of the North Sea.

After 1900 Harmsworth concentrated on his newspapers and in 1901 the Amalgamated Press was formed to handle the story papers and magazines. By 1908 Harmsworth dominated the newspaper field. He controlled the halfpenny tabloid Daily Mail, the Sunday Dispatch, the Daily Mirror, The Observer, the Times and the Sunday Times, which gave him unprecedented influence over both the working class and the elite. Even his story papers and comics were drafted in his propaganda wars, Weary Willie and Tired Tim fought the Boer and the Hun in the weekly Chips. Harmsworth used his story papers, the Union Jack and Pluck, to recruit young men for the British Navy. Winston Churchill once wrote to his mother describing “Harmsworth’s cheap Imperialist productions” that were “produced for thousands of vulgar people at a popular price.” Churchill had no love of the common people, as he showed by drawing up plans for concentration camps for the mentally unfit, amongst others.

Above from Tacoma Times 1917.

Harmsworth also awarded Pluck Medals, which would make a fine collectible today. “The Editor of the Pluck Library will make it his duty to search out and inquire into all such heroic deeds; and whenever he finds a deserving case, he will reward the plucky one with a silver medal, which has been specially made for the purpose. He hopes to be able to award a medal every week; enough cases will, we feel sure, be forthcoming.” Awarded Pluck Medals, the editor said, were instituted for “neither high nor low, but for all sorts and conditions of heroes.” The first medal was awarded to a British sailor.

The Daily Mail whipped up hatred against English born Germans, accused them of spying, and advocated deportation and the use of concentration camps for “aliens” born on British soil. Mail readers were whipped into a poisonous hatred that resulted in beatings, the burning of shops, and a boycott of all Germans working as managers and waiters. Even a German surname was enough to make a man unemployable for the duration of the war. The Weekly Dispatch on 16 May 1915 wrote that “the Germans are enemies and spies. We loathe them. We feel they pollute the air. We see blood on their hands… We demand that the wretched creatures be removed. The thought that there are 20,000 of them walking our streets was enough to make all London sick.”

Political careers were ruined by innuendo; a man might have a German cousin or a German chauffer and that was enough to ruin him. It was due to the rabid ranting of the newspapers that royalty adopted the English name Windsor, replacing Saxe-Coburg-Gotha by royal proclamation on 17 July 1917.

At war’s end Northcliffe demanded nothing less than unconditional surrender from the Germans. His newspapers thirsted for revenge; the Kaiser should be brought to London and hanged. The outcome of the “blighted peace” made World War II all but inevitable. Harmsworth was not the only publisher involved in the propaganda war but he might well be termed the “Godfather” of modern propaganda since he reached the largest audience.

It was one of Harmsworth’s writers who invented the term ‘Hun” for the Germans. Harmsworth had begun attacking the Kaiser in print in 1896, for the support given by Germans to the Boers. In 1918 Northcliffe was appointed Director of Propaganda to enemy countries at the newly formed Ministry of Information under Lord Beaverbrook. H. G. Wells resigned from the Ministry after only two months, apparently because of Northcliffe’s savage attacks on the German people. Northcliffe continued using his newspapers as a personal pulpit to promote the views of himself and his political allies while overseeing the operations of the Ministry.

Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, died on 14 August 1922 from a streptococcus infection. During his lifetime he pioneered the use of the newspapers as tools of propaganda. The lessons were not lost on the United States which formed their own propaganda ministry, the Committee on Public Information, under George Creel, (which employed Edward Bernays) in 1917.