The ‘Budding Bairnsfathers’ : First World War Soldier-cartoonists Published in Blighty

Blighty: A Budget of Humour from Home was a charitable soldiers’ newspaper that ran between May 1916 and March 1919 (and later became a short-lived mainstream publication until its bankruptcy in 1921). In the foreword for the first issue, the origin of the magazine was attributed to an unnamed journalist who was inspired by letters from his two sons at the Front asking for reading material. Wondering how he could help, he consulted associates with the idea of taking the best jokes and articles from across publications, cutting them together, and reprinting them to send to the troops at no cost. The idea found patronage in the likes of Sir John Jellicoe and Sir John French and public subscriptions were raised to print the first few editions. The War Office and the YMCA, among others, were involved in its distribution, with the former arranging to send the first 40,000 copies directly to the trenches.

The first few issues were made up entirely of material from the likes of Punch, Tatler and the Bystander, with the editors being happy to provide material ‘as long as it wasn’t sold for profit’. On 14 June 1916, the call for material from servicemen appeared (Figure 1) — this was to be the beginning of a regular two-page feature titled ‘From the Fleet and the Trenches’, featuring soldiers’ and sailors’ stories, along with their cartoons, poems and limericks.

A more in-depth article about Blighty will be appearing on this website in the future, but in the meantime, there is an article I wrote for the Western Front Association, covering the publication, which you can read on their website here

Blighty was one of the major sources I used in my dissertation on soldier-drawn cartoons. What I want to do here is to document the soldiers whose cartoons were published in the magazine. Due to time constraints in writing my dissertation, and because of access restrictions on the original material, I had to be selective, but now with the luxury of time I want to go back to the archives and leisurely fill in the gaps. Where an individual has been identified, I plan to do a small write-up on them and, in addition, share some clues about who some of the other individuals are.

Currently, there are write-ups for:

and some clues here

• Mystery File No.1

The List