Controlling Wartime Humour in Controlling Wartime Humour in CartoonsCartoons

Pip Gregory, PhD Candidate, School of History, University of Kent.

Comedy Forum, Institute of Education 1st April 2014

A Question of Humour…?– What is humour?– Is it all about laughter?

Visual humour

Jack Walker, 1914

‘Tempus Fugit’

‘The Real Strategists’

Textual humour

Willie C George, 1915

How was humour created through cartoons?

1914

1915

1917

1918

They’ll never be any

use as workers – the time they waste talk, talk, talking!

- And the way these men waste time, my dear,

leaning over a wall doing absolutely nothing!

How then was humour controlled?

• The Defence of the Realm Act (1914) DORA

• Joint Standing Committee• Press Bureau,

TNA/PRO INF 411/11, Official Press Bureau Instructions, 19th

March 1918.

TNA/PRO WO 32/4893, D-notice 279, 24th September 1915.

TNA/PRO INF 411/11, Official Press Bureau Instructions,

19th March 1918.

The D-Notice / Parker

Defence of the Realm Act (DORA)

1918

November 1918

April1919

January 1919

The Censor

1914

1915

1914

1919

The Artist {Poy}

1917

Soldiers need to laugh!More About the Willies in the Trenches: ‘I heard yet more accounts of Mr Haselden’s ‘Willies’ popularity in the German trenches… Each morning

the Germans would call out greeting across the short

intervening space and ask for English papers, particularly the

Daily Mirror. They wanted to see ‘Big and Little Willie’ they said.’

Daily Mirror, 28th January 1915, p. 10.