"Mr and Mrs Dillwater", Dutch translation, 1936
Ernest "Ern" Shaw was born in Hull on 21 January 1891. Influenced by Tom Browne, he won a cartoon competition in the Hull Times at the age of twelve, and took a correspondence course with the Percy Bradshaw art school. He sold his first professional cartoon to Puck in 1910. He freelanced for The Hull & Yorkshire Times before joining the Hull Times as a sports cartoonist and caricaturist. He also worked for the Hull Daily Mail.
During the First World War he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps. During that time he drew cartoons for the service magazine The Ration, and his drawings of operations on wounded soldiers performed by surgeon Major J. L. Joyce were published in The Lancet. After his discharge, he moved to London and worked as a sports cartoonist for All Sports (1919).
He drew comics for the Amalgamated Press, including "Cyril the Sporty Scout" (1922) and "Clarence" for Sports Fun, "Ikeybod and Tinribs" (1923) for The Champion, and "First Aid Freddie" (publication unknown). He also worked on comic strips for large-circulation magazines, including taking over "The Gay Goblins" in The Family Journal in 1926 following the death of its creator, Lewis Higgins, and drawing "Mr and Mrs Dillwater" for Answers from 1923 to 1948, "Hector" in Wireless (1920s), "Sandy" in The People's Journal (1930s), and "Dr Gnome of Gnomansland" in Woman's Illustrated. From the 1940s he drew "The Dingbats", which appeared in a variety of titles including Candy, Lollipops, Look and Learn, Rocket, Silver Star Fun Comic and Tons of Fun.
In 1981 he was given the Ally Sloper Award by the Association of British Comic Enthusiasts in honour of his over 70-year career. He died on 22 February 1986, aged 95.
References[]
- Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, p. 153
