From punch and cartoons to spitting image and television
Substance and Shadow, Cartoon No 1, John Leech, 1843The individual print flourished in London until the 1830s and 1840s when the magazine and journal began to take over as the visual medium for satire.
The first caricature magazine to be produced in London was 'The Looking Glass', published by Thomas McLean, which began on 1 January 1830 and ran for six years.
The development of wood-engraving as a mass printable form of illustration saw the birth of pictorial magazines such as Punch which began in 1841 and dominated Victorian London.
Today's understanding of the word 'cartoon' was first coined by John Leech in Punch in 1843. The main image above shows Substance and Shadow, 'Cartoon No. 1' created by Leech, as the first in a series of images in response to an exhibition at Westminster Hall of preparatory drawings for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament.
Leech's image makes explicitly clear Punch's criticism of government policy which favoured schemes of cultural and moral improvement above tackling directly the problems of poverty.