Abstract
Joseph Chamberlain came to prominence in the second great age of political caricature, which was also the first age of mass-circulation political satirical periodicals.1 Although historians of journalism have been preoccupied with the concept of the ‘new journalism’ in the late nineteenth century, recent studies have demonstrated that there was as much continuity across the media of the second half of the nineteenth century (after the abolition of stamp duty in 1855) as there was change.2 Chamberlain was in many ways the first modern politician to manipulate the media effectively, cultivating a visual image, using a range of printed propaganda to promote his causes and making careful allegiances with journalists such as J.L. Garvin, John St Loe Strachey and John Jaffray. Consequently, one might expect the Birmingham satirical press to have been part of this effective media-management and to have been as acerbic towards his enemies as Chamberlain himself famously was. But, in reality, for the majority of Chamberlain’s career, the Birmingham satirical press was vehemently opposed to Chamberlain, constituting a thorn in his side in the very heart of his ‘duchy’ of the West Midlands. This article will explore the long-term reasons why the satirical press in Birmingham was so prolific and so enduring, in contrast to most provincial cities, and also so independently minded that it was prepared to defy the wishes of ‘King Joe’ for so long.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
M. Conboy, The Language of Newspapers: Socio-historical Perspectives (London: Continuum, 2010);
J.D. Startt, ‘Good Journalism in the Era of New Journalism: The British Press 1902–1914’, in J.H. Wiener (ed.), Papers for the Millions: The New Journalism in Britain, 1850s to 1914 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 275–303;
P. Waller, Writers, Readers and Reputations (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 83–5.
M. Huggins, ‘Cartoons and Comic Periodicals, 1841–1901: A Satirical Sociology of Victorian Sporting Life’, in M. Huggins and J.A. Mangan (eds), Disreputable Pleasures: Less Virtuous Victorians at Play (London: Frank Cass, 2004), p. 124.
In her recent article on journalistic networks, Laurel Brake admits that she has relied on the nineteenth-century journals digitised by ProQuest, none of which was published outside London. L. Brake, ‘“Time’s Turbulence”: Mapping Journalism Networks’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 44.2 (2011), pp. 115–27. See also
R.D. Altick, Punch: The Lively Youth of a British Institution, 1841–1856 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1997);
P. Leary, The Punch Brotherhood: Table Talk and Print Culture in Mid-Victorian London (London: British Library, 2010).
The first serious study of Judy only appeared in 2013: R. Scully, ‘William Henry Boucher (1837–1906): Illustrator and Judy Cartoonist’, Victorian Periodical Review, 46.4 (2013), pp. 441–74.
See for example S. Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class: Ritual and Authority in the English Industrial City, 1840–1914 (Manchester University Press, 2000); H. Miller, ‘The Problem with Punch’, Historical Research, 82.216 (2009); A.G. Jones, ‘The Dart and the Damning of the Sylvan Stream: Journalism and Political Culture in the Late-Victorian City’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 35.1 (2002); J.K. Walton, ‘Porcupine’, Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism, online edition, http://c19index.chadwyck.co.uk /home.do.
P. Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London: Verso, 2003), p. 204.
See E. Jacobs, ‘Disvaluing the Popular: London Street Culture, “Industrial Literacy” and the Emergence of Mass Culture in Victorian England’, in D.N. Mancoff and D.J. Trela (eds), Victorian Urban Settings: Essays on the Nineteenth Century and Its Contexts (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 89–113;
B. Reay, ‘The Context and Meaning of Popular Literacy: Some Evidence from Nineteenth Century Rural England’, Past and Present, 131 (1991), pp. 89–129.
Dart, 19 March 1880. The figure is unlikely as Ellegard estimates that, in 1870, Fun sold 20,000 copies nationally and even Punch only sold 40,000. A. Ellegard, ‘The Readership of the Periodical Press in Mid-Victorian Britain’, Victorian Periodicals Newsletter, 3 (1971), p. 20.
L.K. Hughes, ‘Sideways! Navigating the Material(ity) of Print Culture’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 47.1 (2014), p. 2.
J. Money, Experience and Identity: Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1800 (Manchester University Press, 1977), ch. 3, ‘The Newspapers of the West Midlands’, pp. 52–79.
A. Briggs, Press and Public in Early Nineteenth-Century Birmingham (Oxford: Dugdale Society, 1949).
M. Wolff and C. Fox, ‘Pictures from the Magazines’, in H.J. Dyos and M. Wolff (eds), The Victorian City: Images and Realities, vol. 2 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 559.
H. Miller, ‘John Leech and the Shaping of the Victorian Cartoon: The Context of Respectability’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 42.3 (2009), p. 280.
M. Roberts, ‘Election Cartoons and Political Communication in Victorian England’, Cultural and Social History, 10.3 (2013), pp. 371.
Dart, 17 October 1884. For detail on the Aston Riots see P. Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain: An Entrepreneur in Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 174–6. The Dart took great pleasure in illustrating the subsequent court case, showing Chamberlain giving evidence in a manner that made him appear to be on trial, Dart, 28 November 1884.
E. Porritt, ‘Party Conditions in England’, Political Science Quarterly, 21 (1906), p. 215.
Sell’s Dictionary of the World’s Press (London, 1893), quoted in S. Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain. Volume 1: The Nineteenth Century (London: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), p. 286.
Analysed most recently in: K. Jackson, George Newnes and the New Journalism in Britain, 1880–1910: Culture and Profit (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001);
M. Hampton, Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850–1950 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004); Waller, Writers, Readers and Reputations; Conboy, The Language of Newspapers;
J.H. Wiener, The Americanisation of the British Press, 1830s–1914: Speed in the Age of Transatlantic Journalism (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2012).
Balfour to Salisbury, 24 March 1886, in R. Harcourt-Williams (ed.), Salisbury– Balfour Correspondence, 1869–1892 (Hertford: Hertfordshire Records Society, 1988), p. 138.
L. Nead, Victorian Babylon: People Streets and Images in Nineteenth Century London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000);
P. Bailey, Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City (Cambridge University Press, 1998);
P. Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Use of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion, 2001).
J. Thompson, ‘“Pictorial Lies?” – Posters and Politics in Britain c.1880– 1914’, Past and Present, 197 (2007), pp. 177–210.
G. Cordery and J.S. Meisel (eds), The Humours of Parliament: Harry Furniss’s View of Late Victorian Political Culture (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2014), pp. 4–11; Miller, ‘The Problem with Punch’, pp. 283–302; Roberts, ‘Election Cartoons and Political Communication’, p. 374.
L. Hamilton, ‘The Importance of Recognizing Oscar: The Dandy and the Culture of Celebrity’, The Center & Clark Newsletter, 33 (1999), p. 4.
H. Furniss, Some Victorian Men (London: Jon Lane, 1924), p. 203.
P. Vervaecke, ‘La “caricature au vinaigre”: Francis Carruthers Gould et Joseph Chamberlain, 1895–1907’, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, 16.2 (2011), pp. 27–42.
H. Fraser, S. Green and J. Johnston, Gender and the Victorian Periodical (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 1.
L. Blaxhill, ‘Electioneering, the Third Reform Act and Political Change’, Parliamentary History, 30.3 (2011), pp. 343–73;
J. Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c.1815–1867 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 337; M. Roberts, ‘Election Cartoons and Political Communication’, p. 390.
J. Thompson, British Political Culture and the Idea of ‘Public Opinion’, 1867– 1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 245.
The Diary of Beatrice Webb, reprinted in B. Webb, Our Partnership, ed. Barbara Drake and Margaret I. Cole (London: Longmans and Green, 1948), p. 125.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 Ian Cawood and Chris Upton
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cawood, I., Upton, C. (2016). Joseph Chamberlain and the Birmingham Satirical Journals, 1876–1911. In: Cawood, I., Upton, C. (eds) Joseph Chamberlain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137528858_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137528858_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-70803-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52885-8
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)