“That’s the way to do it!” The puppet screeches as he lays into his wife and child with a wooden cudgel. On the East End’s pavements, Punch and Judy booths draw big crowds but the laughter is tinged with a certain unease.
The big-nosed little man is an uncomfortable caricature. His disrespect for everything society holds dear is legendary. So much so that his name has already been stolen by that ‘refuge for destitute wit’ – Punch magazine.
On the Mile End Road, a couple of local activists are casting around for a title for their own ‘illustrated satirical paper’ when, perhaps unsurprisingly, Punch’s dog Toby wanders into view. Trailing behind him, the paper’s pithy tagline (‘The East London Watch Dog’).
The activists
Since their marriage in 1878, Francis and ‘Pollie’ Parsons have been using every minute they can spare to set up the ‘East London Union for Advanced Education’. They run courses for local workers ranging from shorthand to boot and shoe making, from first aid to musical theory.
‘Pollie’ is a force of nature, having first blown in from Yorkshire to find work and send money home to her widowed mother.
Their satirical paper is a new venture. Six years into their marriage, her 37-year-old husband has been pensioned off from his job as a General Post Office (GPO) Counter Clerk, having worked his way up from messenger boy. They will never have children.
Exhausted by his labours for both the Union for Advanced Education and in creating a 4,000-volume lending library for his colleagues in the GPO, Francis is suffering from ‘nervous debility’ (a catch-all term for severe depression and anxiety).
Toby – the paper
Toby is his new obsession. Believing he has secured two partners (though one will never stump up his share of the capital and the other will quickly bail), and bolstered by Pollie’s support, Francis takes on the role of editor. He vows that the pages of his new weekly paper will improve the lives of his fellow workers.[1]
On 27 March 1886 Toby’s first editorial barks that local abuses ‘of immense importance to thousands…are never noticed’. It promises to alert Eastenders to the perpetrators of such ‘with bitter satire or gentle humour as they may respectively deserve.’ Its aim is ‘to make by wit, humour, sarcasm and caricature the lot of the toilers of life less difficult to bear, and those who grow fat upon their struggles more uncomfortable than ever.’ [2]
In both tone and content, the paper was a cross between Private Eye and a modern local Facebook group. To safeguard Toby’s editorial independence, the Parsons refused to take advertising from Vestries (local government) or Boards of Guardians (the administrators of poor relief).
Twice the couple were forced to sell their printing equipment to repay debts. And twice they traded in their personal possessions to reclaim it. Toby meant everything.
While Francis penned most of its lengthier content, Pollie sketched rough caricatures. She could be found ‘standing at the printing frames setting up type…correcting proofs…counting, folding and getting out copies…to wholesale and retail newsagents; working early and late without a murmur.’ [3]
‘Can’t Think Why’
The first issue was timed to influence the election of local Guardians. It’s ‘Can’t Think Why’ pages poked fun at officials and ‘Bumbledom’ – that is, the officious and pompous behaviour of minor officials. The column soon became a haven for locally crowd-sourced tittle-tattle and played a large part in Toby’s small success and ultimate failure.
‘Can’t Think Whys’ were always anonymous, though contributors had to supply their name and address alongside the copy. The aim was ‘to satirize abuses, to correct morals, or provoke mirth, and never gratify ill-feeling…to make the readers, as well as those written about, indulge in hearty laughter, or resolve that they will not give scope to be laughed at again.’
‘Scurrilous,’ declared a judge in 1887 when Toby questioned a doctor’s ethics. Though the doctor was not named, Pollie’s sketch proved too good a likeness. Francis was ordered to pay £100 in damages (plus costs). Dr James Morrison Orr continued to practise. However two decades later he was struck off for allowing a medically unqualified man to treat patients in his surgery.
Toby’s readership was rapidly expanding as ‘Can’t Think Whys’ filled every column inch. The paper now covered much of London, some of Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent and Middlesex. Consequently, Francis dropped the ‘East London’ tagline.
The downside of upscaling – aside from the increased workload – was that Francis no longer had any knowledge of the folk his correspondents were lampooning. Nor if their mockery could be justified. It was the slippery slope that would see him in jail within two years.
On 13 April 1889 a ‘Can’t Think Why’ suggesting that three ‘copper nobs’ – a derogatory term for a persons with red hair – should not lounge ‘round the back of your wall with the dirty little engine cleaner’ put Francis in the dock of the Maidstone Assizes.
The women from Strood objected to the assertion that their hair was red – they preferred to call it auburn, the prosecutor said. And their father objected to the inference of immoral behaviour. The prosecution’s aim was explicit: it was ‘to put a stop to the publication’.
In court
Francis – short of cash, as always – mounted his own defence. He claimed he had not seen the paragraph before it went to press. In fact, Pollie and a paid compositor did much of the work, though Francis would not have either take the blame. So he claimed that most ‘Can’t Think Whys’ were ‘bogus’ and made up in the office. In any case, Francis contested that nobody could be positively identified from the paragraph. As proprietor, he offered an apology to the father. But he refused ‘to divulge the name of the correspondent who wrote the paragraph.’
In his summing up, Lord Justice Charles (a man who was neither ‘witty or humorous’ according to his obituary) condemned Toby. It was ‘a disreputable and pestilential print…it was a scandal to the country that such rubbish as this should be put forth week after week to libel unoffending persons.’ In such a serious case a fine would not suffice. Francis must be sent down for three months.[4]
‘At last!’ trumpeted the East End News – one of Toby’s local rivals. In contrast the Dover Chronicle declared it to be ‘a piece of judicial tyranny.’ ‘The Press is undeservedly persecuted,’ the Chronicle’s editor claimed, ‘and people are getting more thin-skinned than ever.’[5]
Toby had always been Francis’s baby, and in his absence Pollie battled on to keep the paper alive. Halfway through Francis’s sentence, the judge got his wish – the last edition of Toby, East London Watch-Dog rolled off the press.
Successes and whispers
Following Francis’s release, the couple moved on. They made a living selling coal, but they never gave up campaigning. Their later efforts would see them petitioning for improvements to the area. Among their successes, they saw to it that the ‘Hackney Death Trap’, a notorious section of the Regents Canal which had claimed the lives of hundreds of local children, was fenced off. They managed to obtain damages for council employees who had been blamed for their superiors’ incompetence. And succeeded in reinstating 28 GPO workers after they had been sacked for striking over their appalling working conditions.
‘Mr Parsons is a character.’ The Hackney Mercury noted, ‘You cannot push him into a corner and say, “Stop there and be quiet.” He won’t be quiet.’[6]
When Pollie died in 1905, Francis responded as only he could. He wrote a tribute to her in the Mercury. It filled nearly twelve broadsheet columns.
Her passing left him inconsolable. ‘My mind shattered,’ he wrote, ‘my memory almost gone, my voice almost a whisper…’[7]
By the time Francis fell silent, so much had been achieved.
And on the East End streets a strangled refrain rang out. “That’s the way to do it!”
- Our schools and colleges; being complete compendium of practical information upon all subjects connected with examination and education recognised in the United Kingdom at the present day – FS Blisson (1883), p.248 ↩︎
- Toby, 27 March 1886, p.3-4; ibid, 31 December 1887, p.1 ↩︎
- Hackney Mercury, 23 June 1906, p.3 ↩︎
- Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 25 November 1921, p.10 ↩︎
- ver Chronicle, 5 October 1889, p.2; ibid, 12 October 1889, p.4 ↩︎
- Hackney Mercury, 27 September 1902, p.5 ↩︎
- Hackney Mercury, 14 July 1906, p.3 ↩︎
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