William Mecham (1853 – 21 August 1902) was a British cartoonist and performer, taking the stage and pen name Tom Merry.
He was a professional caricaturist who gave 'Lightning Cartoon' presentations on the
music hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Bri ...
stage, and was the first celebrity of any kind to appear in a British film.
Cartoonist
William Mecham was born in the first quarter of 1853, in the parish of St Saviour,
Southwark
Southwark ( ) is a district of Central London situated on the south bank of the River Thames, forming the north-western part of the wider modern London Borough of Southwark. The district, which is the oldest part of South London, developed ...
.
Merry was a cartoonist and political satirist, he created the centre spread in colour of ''The St Stephen's Review'', a weekly magazine of political comment published from 1883 to 1892, when it became ''Big Ben'', and closed the following year. Thirty four political lithographs, of statesmen of the era are in the collection of the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
. A number of presentation (signed) copies were also in the personal collection of
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
, with his father,
Lord Randolph Churchill
Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill (13 February 1849 – 24 January 1895) was a British statesman. Churchill was a Tory radical and coined the term 'Tory democracy'. He inspired a generation of party managers, created the National Union of ...
as subject. He also published in the London edition of the American satirical ''
Puck Magazine'', from January 1889 to June 1890.
Merry's musical hall stage act appears to have involved high speed drawing of subjects drawn both from the audience, and of famous figures from memory. The caricatures were drawn at a furious pace, as can be seen in the films that survive.
Early film
Birt Acres
Birt Acres (23 July 1854 – 27 December 1918) was an American and British photographer and film pioneer. Among his contributions to the early film industry are the first working 35 mm camera in Britain (Wales), and ''Birtac'', the firs ...
filmed four separate performances of 'Tom Merry' drawing personalities famous in his day. Films included ''Tom Merry Lightning Artist Drawing
Mr Gladstone'' (1896) and ''Tom Merry Sketching
Lord Salisbury
Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (; 3 February 183022 August 1903) was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times for a total of over thirteen y ...
'' (1896). Two further films were made, contemporaneous with Acres' films of the opening of the
Kiel Canal
The Kiel Canal (german: Nord-Ostsee-Kanal, literally "North- oEast alticSea canal", formerly known as the ) is a long freshwater canal in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The canal was finished in 1895, but later widened, and links the N ...
, in June 1895. They were produced by Robert Paul and featured Merry drawing the German Emperor
Kaiser Wilhelm II
Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 18594 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (german: Kaiser) and List of monarchs of Prussia, King of Prussia, reigning from 15 June 1888 until Abdication of Wilhelm II, his abdication on 9 ...
(1895), and
Prince Bismarck
Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of ...
(1895). They were made to be shown as a part of the same performance, but the first record of the Merry films is as part of Robert Paul's first theatrical programme at the
Alhambra Theatre on 25 March 1896.
The films presaged the animated cartoon. Merry could complete his caricatures in less than a minute, the practical length of the first film reels. To accommodate longer demonstrations, ''
stop motion
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...
'' technology had to be developed.
''Tom Merry'' Denis Gifford (Who's Who of Victorian Cinema)
accessed 3 Nov 2007
Death
Merry also did illustrations for a book on Canvey Island
Canvey Island is a town, civil parishes in England, civil parish and reclaimed island in the Thames estuary, near Southend-on-Sea, in the Castle Point district, in the county of Essex, England. It has an area of and a population of 38,170.Office ...
, he died before its publication, and a dedication in the book reads:
References
*Simon Houfe, ''Dictionary of British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists 1800-1914'' (1978)
External links
Westminster Victorian Cartoonists - UK Parliament Living Heritage
UK Parliamentary Archives, Lithographs of political figures by William Mecham
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mecham, William
1853 births
1902 deaths
Music hall performers
English cartoonists
English caricaturists
English satirists
British editorial cartoonists