Bengough's Cartoons

John Wilson Bengough

Link to Online Anthology: Puffe and Co. (c. 1900), by J. W. Bengough.
Link to Database: Puffe and Co.

Link to Online Anthology: Life and Work of J.W. Bengough (No date), by Thomas Bengough.

Link to Database: Hecuba

John Wilson Bengough (1851-1923) was one of the first career cartoonists in journalism. Bengough often used Shakespearean references to satirize contemporary political events, as he did in his less famous literary publications. (CASP has published in the Online Anthology for the first time Bengough's adaptation of Hamlet, Puffe and Co., or Hamlet, Prince of Dry Goods, and his brother Thomas Bengough's biography of him, Life and Work of J.W. Bengough, Canada's Cartoonist.) He began his carreer at George Brown's Globe  in 1871 (Brown is represented in the second cartoon) before founding the weekly satirical magazine Grip (1873-94), the longest-running comic periodical of the nineteenth century (Shagerl 1). Bengough made his name ridiculing Prime Minister John A. Macdonald during the Pacific Scandal, (see also Sir John and Sir Charles for a satirical treatment of the contract given by Macdonald to build the Canadian Pacific Railroad) and continued to be considered "Canada's Cartoonist" until his death. (Fetherling http://www.canadianencyclopedia.ca/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0000675).

These cartoons are taken from Bengough's A Caricature History of Canadian Politics. Events From the Union of 1841, As Illustrated by Cartoons From "Grip", and Various Other Sources (1886).

 

"The suspense in relation to the Manitoba charters was ended by the triumph of the syndicate and the disallowance of the measures on the ground that good faith with the Pacific Railway Company demanded this action" (Bengough 266).

 

"It was an open secret that Mr. Gordon Brown, as editor of the Globe, was not upon the most cordial terms with the new leader of the Party" (Bengough 164).

 

"In the new tariff as published in the Globe (and as afterwards authoritively announced by the Government), the interests of the Agricultural Classes were comparatively neglected, although vast promises of "protection" had been made to the farmers before the election" (Bengough 38).

 

"An allusion to the annexation utterances of Hon Joseph Howe. The figures in the group are Sir George E. Cartier, Sir John MacDonald, Sir Francis Hincks, and Mr. H. L. Langevin (Bengough 144).

Bengough, John Wilson. A Caricature History of Canadian Politics. Events From the Union of 1841, As Illustrated by Cartoons From "Grip", and Various Other Sources. Toronto: Grip, 1886.

Link to Online Anthology: Puffe and Co. (c. 1900), by J. W. Bengough.
Link to Database: Puffe and Co.

Link to Online Anthology: Life and Work of J.W. Bengough (No date), by Thomas Bengough.

Link to Database: Hecuba

Please see Jessica Schagerl's 'A Shakespearian View Of It': Shakespeare in Canada, 1848-1891. Schagerl's M.A. Thesis completed at the University of Ottawa in 2001, explores how "Canada's comic press developed a complex and extensive pattern of verbal and visual satire drawing on the powerful resonances associated with the idea(l) of Shakespeare" (Abstract). Contains significant information on J. W. Bengough including a significant number of images in which Shakespearean referents figure. View Appendix.