Tom Browne

 

Tom Browne - The man who established the British comic style for the next 50 years, was born in Nottingham in 1870. He started his working life, aged 12, as a milliners errand boy and later became an apprentice lithographic printer, where he was paid one shilling (5p) a week. He left here in 1891 and, in order to make ends meet, he would moonlight by freelancing cartoons for the London comics. 

His first work appeared in James Henderson's Scraps when he was 18 years old (1888) and was entitled He Knew How To Do It. He was paid 30 shillings (£1.50) for it which equated to six months wages for one nights work! As soon as his apprenticeship was done, Tom moved down to Blackheath in London and became a major influence in the ha'penny comic revolution.

Tom modelled his work on Phil May who simplified his sketching to its bare essentials. He would strip away all the overloaded cross-hatching that was so beloved by the Victorian periodicals such as Punch, and produce just clear lines. This was perfect for the cut-priced publications with their low-quality newsprint paper, ill-etched blocks and cheap, near grey, ink.

All of Tom's early work were one-off sequences, but gradually the idea of series characters crept in. His first was Squashington Flats in Comic Cuts (1895), followed by the double-act that made his name and fame, Weary Willie and Tired Tim (1896).

These World Famous Tramps shot the circulation of Illustrated Chips up to 600,000 copies a week and Tom became very much, a man in demand. He created a pair of cyclists in the guise of Airy Alf and Bouncing Billy for The Big Budget (1897) and drew the front cover of Dan Leno's Comic Journal. For six months Tom drew five front pages of six panels each, every week. It earned him £150 pound a week but it seriously exhausted him and by 1900 Tom left comics to do other things.

He did paintings, posters and he was responsible for many of the famous Bamforths saucy seaside postcards from the early Edwardian age. He was also a very keen cyclist, as were many people from the late Victorian age, and he made several bicycle trips around the world where his drawn adventures appeared in newspapers, including the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1906. This hobby was most probably the reason while Airy Alf and Bouncing Billy were always seen on this mode of transport in their early adventures. 

Sadly, in 1910, Browne underwent an internal operation and tragically died soon afterwards at the early age of just 39.

A brief overview of his work is given here:-

Comic Cuts - Squashington Flats (1895), Billy Buster The Steam Engine (1896), Don Quixote de Tintogs (1898)
Illustrated Chips - Weary Willie & Tired Tim (1896), The Rajah (1897), Little Willy And Tiny Tim (1898)
Big Budget - Airy Alf & Bouncing Billy(1897), Wackington School(1897)
Comic Home Journal - Lanky Larry & Bloated Bill (1897)
Dan Leno's Comic Journal - Dan Leno (1898)
Halfpenny Comic - Mr Stanley Deadstone & Co. (1898)
Funny Wonder - Plumduff Island (1899)