'St Stephen's Review' cartoons

Series of cartoons published in the late Victorian periodical titled 'St Stephen's Review', a journal catering to a conservative view of the British Empire. The cartoons were published between January 1885 and March 1888 and deal with the general elections of the period and politicians such as William Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, Joseph Chamberlain, Randolph Churchill, Spencer Cavendish, Charles Parnell and others. The cartoons provide a visual commentary of political issues of the time and there are many reference William Gladstones's Irish Home Rule Bill.

The cartoons have been drawn by several different artist. The majority of the cartoons were produced by William Mecham (1853-21 August 1902), who adopted the professional name of Tom Merry. Several of the cartoons were produced by Matthew Somerville Morgan (1837-1890), an artist known mainly for his political cartoons, and Philip William May (1864-1903) who was an English caricaturist. The French artist Jean Marius Rogier (1851-1928), known for his landscapes and portrait paintings, also drew a few of the cartoons.

St Stephen’s Review' was a journal that catered to a conservative view of the Empire. The publication adopted a Unionist and loyalist position that saw anything that threatened the social and political order as anathema to the best interests of Britain. Magazines like this employed cartoonists to illustrate their pages and encouraged them to be as savage as they liked. One of the masters of the genre was William Mecham who took the professional name of Tom Merry, and in each issue he provided a political cartoon commenting on the times. Each one was as superbly drawn as it was vicious and as pointed as it was unsubtle.

Given the Conservative politics of the 'St Stephen’s Review', Tom Merry’s cartoons cast Parnell and Gladstone as villains. The cartoons often feature shadowy Irishmen in the background, masked and carrying dynamite. Although his Irish caricatures were not as outrageously simian in their features as those of the infamous Punch cartoons, they are often shown as drunken and thuggish.

Source: blog post titled 'St Stephen's Review' accessed 1 February 2022 via https://roaringwaterjournal.com/tag/st-stephens-review/

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