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Punch, or the London Charivari

Householder. “But, hang it all, I can’t see why that bomb next door should make you want to raise my rent!” Landlord. “Don’t you perceive, my dear Sir, that your house is now semi-detached?”

Punch, or The London Charivari. February 9, 1916

Over the years we have used a number of cartoons and quotes from a magazine that has it’s origins in the Victorian era, but went on to become an influential and iconic British institution, well into the 20th century.

Punch, or the London Charivari was a threepenny weekly magazine of humour and satire established in July 1841 by journalist and playwright Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells.

It didn’t start auspiciously, less than six months after the magazine was first published, it was in financial difficulties. It’s fortunes changed mid 1842 when they published a special edition called ‘Almanack’, and sales rose beyond all expectations. However, it wasn’t enough to sustain production of the magazine and it continued to struggle. In December 1842, they were taken over by a publishing firm called Bradbury and Evans.

The new owners, turned its fortunes, when they began publishing the works of many notable writers and poets. Throughout the years these have included Sir John Betjeman,

Home-Made Munitions. Fifty years hence – From London to Paris in – just time enough to allow of a comfortable Lunch and a quiet Cigar on board the Electric Plate-Glass Club Express.

Punch, or the London Charivari Almanack, December 5th, 1889

Quentin Crisp, Alan Coren, Peter Dickinson, Joyce Grenfell, Miles Kington, Henry Mayhew, Somerset Maugham, A.A. Milnes, W.M. Thackeray and P.G. Wodehouse amongst many others. Some of the finest illustrators/cartoonists were also used; C.H. Bennett, Quentin Blake, Richard Doyle, Fougasse (Kenneth Bird), Ronald Searle, E.H. Shepard and John Tenniel.

Punch was known for its sophisticated humour and its political and social cartoons which captured life in great detail. Its early readership included Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Although the glove puppet Mr Punch, of Punch and Judy fame was used as the cover illustration, Punch actually took its name from a joke made about it’s first editor Mark Lemon, that ‘Punch is nothing without lemon’ – referring to the term used for a large bowl containing a variety of mixed drinks often served with fruit – notably lemons. The subtitle, The London Charivari was taken from an earlier French satirical humour magazine called Le Chariva (meaning a medley of discordant sounds).

At the start of the 20th century Punch had a circulation of around 100,000 and had peaked to 184,000 by 1947–48. However soon after, the readership went into steady decline until in 1992 production ceased after 150 years of publication. An attempt by Mohamed Al-Fayed to revive the magazine in 1996 was short lived and it finally closed in 2002.

Today Punch is a window into a bygone era – a view of life which was so different from today. With it’s many illustrations, it poked fun at politicians and national figures, highlighted fashion, political in-correctness and poverty. But it also looked into the future to show how life might be in fifty to a hundred years. N.B. Henry Mayhew was a great advocate for social reform. In 1851 he published a series of books called London Labour and the London Poor, which, as the title suggests looked at the working class in the poorer areas of the city. John Tenniel’s, best known work includes the illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the LookingGlass. E. H. Shepard was the illustrator for Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows and Ronald Searle was the creator of St Trinian’s. Punch, or the London Charivari can be viewed online at Project Gutenburg – www.gutenberg.org Peter Simmonett