Glasgow Looking Glass

Stone lithography was invented in the last years of the 18th century. By the early 1820s it was becoming a functional trade at the cutting edge of modern communications. The printing process involves drawing indirectly on to a flat stone surface with an oil pencil as opposed to images being engraved on metal plates or carved into blocks of wood. The stone surface is then treated so only the greasy line takes ink, perfect for quickly drawing comics.

Thomas Hopkirk, a Glaswegian investor, owned one of the city’s first lithographic presses, and by 1825 a John Watson was printing. Watson is the only name on ‘Glasgow Looking Glass’ and the only artist we can identify is William Heath. Arriving in Glasgow from London in order to paint panoramas, Heath began caricaturing things he saw around Glasgow. He is credited with being the author of a number of different works. From being the sole artist and inventor of the ‘Glasgow Looking Glass’ to being one of a handful of artists who came on board after the print run had started and leaving before it ended. Whatever the case, he certainly had a strong hand through the central run of issues.

The periodical is three pages long consisting of mostly cartoons, these being single images usually with a small amount of text. Growing in popularity, by issue six its circulation is Scotland-wide. This resulted in a name change to ‘Northern Looking Glass’ which was at a time when Scotland was referring to itself as ‘North Britain’. Also at this time a fourth page is added. This was a typeset page of news to serve as explanatory text for the cartoons. It’s during this middle period that the publication is at its most artistic and inventive. It is also the period where Scots becomes a significant feature.

Issue 17 is the last which John Watson prints. ‘The Northern Looking Glass’ is then relaunched for two more issues by Richard Griffin & Co. All the features which made the ‘Looking Glass’ the world’s first comic are now absent from the second series, although they may have re-emerged had further issues been printed.

Heath was obliged to leave Glasgow due to mounting debt. He returned to London where he resumed work as a caricaturist, all the while putting forward an idea for a periodical consisting of cartoons and strips. Eventually, in 1830, he started on a periodical known as ‘Mclean’s Monthly sheet of Caricatures’, or ‘The Looking Glass’!

The first comic book

What claim does ‘Glasgow Looking Glass’ have to being the world’s first comic?  Two candidates which precede ‘Glasgow Looking Glass’ are ‘The Comick Magazine’ (1796) and ‘The Caricature Magazine’ (1808). These were reprinted ‘picture stories’ by William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson respectively.  These magazines were not dedicated to cartoons however, as they were mostly made up of text and very few images. ‘Glasgow Looking Glass’ was entirely hand drawn.

Other features of comics and cartooning emerge through the run. In the first issue there are only cartoons, single images with or without text. On the first page of issue two there is the start of three series of cartoons, one consisting of two ‘scenes’, what we today call ‘panels’. The other two end with the now familiar phrase ‘to be continued…’, letting us know the story will be serialised across other issues. On the third page there is a device common throughout the whole run, two juxtaposed images creating meaning through their contrast. This cartoon is called ‘Wants’ and begins by showing one man caught in the rain beside another whose house is on fire.

From issue three a caricature of the publisher, John Watson, responds to readers’ letters. This is a feature which persists throughout the run where he is even depicted in the letterhead of the New Year issue.

In the fourth issue there is the first full comic strip – ‘The History of a coat’. Eight panels follow the fleece of a sheep from being sheared via a loom and a tailor to the new owner of a coat. This, unlike the contrasting two panel cartoons shows the passage of time and the persistence of characters across panels. This ends with a ‘to be continued’ where in later issues we see the coat passing through a number of hands and eventually, being worn out, it’s fed to a pig.

In issue nine there are the first speech bubbles and in issue 10 there is creative presentation of multiple panels in ‘The Life of an Actress’. By issue 14 there is a full three-page, seven-panel sequence covering a Glasgow New Year.

In the ‘New Series’ of the ‘Northern Looking Glass’, started by new printer Richard Griffin & Co. all of these features are absent. ‘The Northern Looking Glass’ is now a collection of single panel cartoons. It is only in the penultimate panel of the last issue that we have a hint of the old ‘Looking Glass’, with a panel marked ‘No. 1’ which contains one final caricature of John Watson.

Scots language in the Glasgow Looking Glass

From its outset the ‘Glasgow Looking Glass’ is in standard English, with the exception of a few proper nouns. ‘Trongate’, the street where the communal scales stood, correspondents ‘Tron Steeple’ and ‘Auld Reekie’, usages like ‘dunstead’ in place of ‘dungheap’. In the first issue the word ‘Numpskull’ appears, this form perhaps an antecedent of the word ‘numpty’.

However, as the periodical develops, along with its readership, Scots becomes more prominent. In the sixth issue, where the name changes to ‘Northern Looking Glass’ there are first cartoons containing Scots language in full. The scene is about the Edinburgh town council election of a new provost, a race between a Mr William Trotter, the eventual winner, and a Mr Allan.

The first cartoon is called ‘The twa Provosts’.  The second, ‘Civic Festivals’ shows both candidates, each in their own panel, holding a feast for a group of councillors with one saying:

‘Oh! ye wee council ling rogues,
Ye promised to mak a bit Mayor o’ me
I’ve speer’d a’ my friens to the Feast,
And my coach is ready to carry me.’

and the other councillor:

‘I ha’ laid in a stock o ‘ Champaigne,
Lads, gin ye loo me, elec me now;
Lang ha’ I long’d owr auld Reekie to reign,
An’ ye’ve drunk to my health as Provost I trou.’

Also in this issue there’s talk of Glasgow ‘bailies’ and the new cartoon series ‘Modern Medical Education’ begins in the ‘Kirk yard’.

In the following issue there is a cartoon with a ‘noddy’ horse and carriage in distress. The caption quotes the popular Burns song ‘an we’re a’ noddin, nid, nid noddin.’ In the eighth issue we find phrases in the typeset page such as: ‘the Mad Brig’, ‘That’s the scamp fallow that gart my teeth clatter! He’s jist a whang o’ the Devil’s hide’, and ‘get mae to look at him than gie him ought.’

In issue nine there is  an extract from a letter from Pittenweem to Glasgow:

‘Pittenween Election.

Extract of a letter from Mr William T******, Town Officer, Pittenweem, to Mr. Mattew L*****, Glasgow:-

‘Dear Matthew, – We ha’ had strange doin’s at the election o’ our Magistrates here; the like o’t ne’er was seen.  We haena had an election sin’ our disfrancheesment in 1823; an’ we met yesterday, by order o’ the Preevy Cuncil, for that purpose.  Ye ken weel eneuch, that, like bigger brughs, we hae aye had twa perties: an’, yesterday, the twa perties, consisten o’ eleeven each, met at the chaumer, the taen heeded by Bailie John Tod, an’ the tither by Bailie James Tod.  Now, what think you does Bailie James?  Hech, he votes that the Lord Advicat himsel – wha had come a’ the way frae Embro to vote for Bailie John, an’ wud aiblins hae been droun’t, had it no been for a cliver chap i’ the boat – cudna vote ava, for no hae’n taen the aith to Government time eneuch.  An’ sae, his focks hae’en a majority o’ ane, proceeded to elec the Councillers an’ Bailies; Bailie John’s perty purtesten a’ the time like wud.  An’, whan that was dune, Bailie James he whups up the minits o’ Council, turns a’ an’ sundry out o’ the chaumer, locks the door, an’ claps the key i’ his pouch.  There was a Rosy Girr for ye.

Hooever, Bailie John, see’en sic huggry-muggry wark, petitioned the Shirra, through an advicat he had brought frae Embro; gets a warrant to break open the council door; an’ he an’ his perty gangs in, and appoints their Councillers an’ Magistrates, an’ the Bailie gies his casten vote, because he was the last head Bailie afore the disfrancheesment. So now, ye see we hae twa sets o’ rulers;  an’ the deil’s in’t gin we’re no weel governed, I think. How it ill en’ I kenna; i’ the meantime, we officious people are in an awfu swither whilk o’ the Balies to obey, without offenden the ither. By the bye, I hear that the Commissioners o’ your toun, that hae lately been maken siccan a wark, are no gaunto be satisfeed wi’ turnen out Mr. Hardie, but that they’re gaun to turn out the Lord Provost his-sel an’ a’ the Bailies; an’ tak charge ‘ the toun themsels. – Is this true? Na, I’m telt, that, whan Bailie Miller made his first appearance amang them, they telt him to his face he wasna a Bailie ava, for a’ his cockit hat an’ his chain; an’ frichen’t him out o’ his wuts, about sponsibility, an’ pay lists, an’ sic like. I think the warl’s gaen gyte!’

This siege receives its own two panel strip in the issue.

Issue 10 has a song in Scots entitled ‘New Music’.  This song lampoons William, Duke of Clarence and St Andrews, from the point of view of his wife, Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. William, the third son of George III, lived with an Irish actress, Mrs Jordan, and had 10 illegitimate children with her. By the 1810s he was heavily in debt and sought a wife who was independently wealthy.  He eventually found that in Princess Adelaide. After she paid off his debts the succession to the crown of Great Britain became a pressing concern. William’s oldest brother, George IV, had no child and heir. His next oldest brother didn’t either so it looked like the crown would be inherited by William, which is what happened in 1830.

‘New Music’

‘Young Willie loed my pounds, and asked me for his bride,
For saving his Crown, he had naething else beside,
To mak my pounds his ain, his Duchess I’m to be,
But the Crown as weel’s the pounds are baith for me.’

The tune and lyric of this ‘new music’ was taken from a contemporary popular ballad, ‘Auld Robin Gray’. This song was collected in the ‘Scots Musical Museum’ published in 1790 and in the ‘Edinburgh Musical Miscellany’ of 1792. Reverend William Reeves, an English vicar, had claimed authorship of the song and even gave it a new tune. By 1825, the year of the ‘Looking Glass” first appearance, at her request, Walter Scott finally revealed Lady Anne Lindsay as the genuine author.

‘Auld Robin Gray’

‘Yong Jamie lood me well and he sought me for his bride,
But saving a crown he had nothing beside,
To make that crown a pound my Jamie gade to sea,
And the crown and the pound were baith for me’.

Over the next few issues there is a little more Scots, one cartoon on ‘Awfu weather’ and the special on New Year using a few culturally relevant terms.

The final cartoon in the Watson run of the ‘Looking Glass’ using Scots is about the demolition of Carlton house by king George IV and called ‘Sign of Bad Times’. This was his residence during his regency though after he became king he preferred Buckingham House. Carlton House was demolished and fine town houses were built in its place. The profits on the sale of these houses were used to finance the building of Buckingham Palace.

The cartoon depicts two older gentlemen discussing Carlton House: ‘So they are going to pull down Carlton House. What can that be for?’ And the Scot: ‘Hout mon! they’re wanting stanes for the new hoose, and havena the siller to send to Scotland for ’em’.

In the ‘New Series’ there are a few Scots words and phrases in the typeset page and an announcement that there will be a new corner, called ‘The Jew’s Harp’ where poems in either Scots or Modern Hebrew would be printed. In the second and final issue there are four cartoons in a section called ‘Scots Proverbs’. Here there are illustrations of ‘Ae bird in the hand is worth ten fleein’ by’, ‘A’ cats are grey i’ the dark’, ‘Far frae court far frae care’ an ‘Daughters & dead fish are nae Keeping ware’.

The penultimate poem of the last issue is a Scots poem, ‘The Rule of Drink’.  Given that Heath is said to have left Glasgow due to debts in no small part accumulated through drink, this is, perhaps, an appropriate way to finish.

‘The Rule of Drink’

Quo’ Neil, of drink, it is the rule,
Tae change the wise man tae the fool;
Now a’ Neil’s friends most gravely think,
Neil needna fear a drap o’ drink.