Tom Merry, Lightning Cartoonist, Sketching Kaiser Wilhelm II

1895
Silent
1m

Quick on the draw: Victorian cartoonist Tom Merry does a rapid sketch of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

One of many actuality shorts filmed by Birt Acres in 1895, in its surviving fragmentary form this film provides a brief glimpse of Tom Merry (real name William Mecham), a popular caricaturist of the period whose work was featured extensively in the political magazine St Stephen's Review.

Merry's 'lightning sketch' act was a popular music hall draw - and he may have been the first British celebrity to be filmed. His path to the screen would soon be followed by other cartoonists. Kaiser Wilhelm II would be a frequent target of the cartoonists' pens after 1914, when he was typically drawn much less kindly than he is here.

Tom Merry sketching Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The First World War: Drawing the Enemy

Britain's cartoonists take up their brushes to confront the Kaiser and his armies.

As the First World War raged across Europe, Britain's animators dedicated themselves to the propaganda effort. These determined artists, among them Lancelot Speed, Dudley Buxton, GW Studdy and Anson Dyer, unleashed an arsenal of tricks with one objective - making the enemy look ridiculous, and victory seem inevitable.

In cartoon after cartoon, lightning sketch after lightning sketch, the elaborately-moustached 'Kaiser Bill' was subjected to a catalogue of indignities, whether at the hands of 'Tommy', 'John Bull' and their allies, or just falling victim to his own hubris.