Imagining John Bull, Part 2: The Victorian Age and Beyond

During the 19th century, John Bull featured in many publications. In 1820 the first of several periodicals named John Bull appeared. Its  orientation was Tory or old-style conservative, and it survived until 1892. Others followed in the 20th century, the last ceasing publication in 1964. 

From its inception in the 1840s, the popular humor magazine Punch featured many images of  John Bull. The main artists were John Leech and John Tenniel. The Punch cartoons developed what we might call the mature Victorian John Bull, a tamed version of the hard-drinking, gluttonous, somewhat crude Georgian farmer. 

The Victorian Bull is a matter of fact fellow, more middle class, who dresses respectably in a long-tailed jacket, waistcoat, boots, and a low topper (top hat).

In 1859, Leech drew Bull reacting to exaggerated rumors of a possible French invasion. In response, the English Volunteer Movement arose, which led to the creation of rifle corps, a kind of Home Guard of volunteers. 

Here, Bull is speaking to a Volunteer. He says his bulldog is a weapon the "poodles" (French) should fear. The bulldog soon became a common feature of Bull cartoons and in itself another British symbol.

Leech's younger colleague, Sir John Tenniel, is best known today as the artist responsible for the illustrations in Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. He was also the first cartoonist to receive a knighthood. 

Punch cartoons portray John Bull as a calmer, more thoughtful fellow than the Bull of the Georgian era. He exudes the  "common sense" of the day. Georgian John Bull had generally reflected hard Tory views. Punch's Bull, like the magazine itself, was basically liberal and reformist at home. 

Like Uncle Sam, Victorian John Bull remained firmly patriotic. As the empire expanded, he became increasingly imperialistic in outlook. He also reflected the ethnic prejudices and racialist views of the day. 

An example is "Moonshine" (1883) by J. Proctor. John Bull, with suitably subservient Scots and Welsh supporters, confronts simianized and violent-looking Irish "poll watchers" pressuring people to vote for Irish Home Rule, or autonomy.

Cartoons of Bull did not portray all the Irish as primitive, ape-like creatures. They showed the "loyal" Irish as hearty, clean cut specimens of "Anglo-Saxon" humanity. We can see this in Tenniel's "A Hint to the Loyal Irish"(1868). Bull is wearing a police uniform. He is recruiting special constables to combat the radical Fenians, who had resorted to terrorist acts, including bombings. 

The man facing policeman Bull asks him to "give us the oath (of allegiance to the UK) and some of them sticks. There's hundreds of the boys is ready to help ye Sor." 

Bull was a cheerleader for imperialism in the late Victorian period. Tenniel's "Never Say Die" (1900) shows Bull countering defeatist sentiments by pointing at a poster announcing recent reverses in the Boer War in South Africa. The "reverses" are in fact recent British successes. 

During World War I, Bull became a recruiter for the British military, pressuring young men to "do their bit for God and Country." He now sported a Union Jack vest to buttress his patriotic credentials. 

In 1906, Tory MP Horatio Bottomley revived the John Bull magazine as an unashamedly nationalistic tabloid. After a few difficult years, it became highly profitable. During the First World War, Bottomley's journal denounced the "Germ-Huns" and attacked British residents with German-sounding surnames as potential subversives. By the autumn of 1914, the magazine claimed to have "the largest circulation of any weekly journal in the world."

The enormous carnage of World War I tarnished John Bull's image. As the bodies piled up in their millions, many people rejected the idea that Bull represented the common Briton. Rather, they viewed him as a recruiter of cannon fodder for an establishment responsible for the slaughter. 

In 1937, W.H. Auden wrote in a poem that Bull "passed away at Ypres and Passchendaele," the names of bloody battles on the Western Front. Not quite. But Bull's popularity as a symbol of Englishness or Britishness began to fade. 

In the following decades, Britain gradually became less imperialistic, less boastful, more focused on a peaceful domestic existence. The 1960s, with its youth culture and rebellious anti-imperialistic, anti-war outlook, sent Bull to the dustbin of history. The last John Bull magazine closed down in 1964. 

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