Design and Art Australia Online

Cartoonist, poster designer and etcher, was born at Preston, Northumberland on 21 April 1882, son of Joseph Scorfield, insurance agent, and Rebecca Jane, née Taylor. Educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he became a marine architect. He played lock forward for England against France in 1910. He spent the whole of WWI with the 66th Field Company of Royal Engineers, serving at Gallipoli (in the landing at Suvla Bay), Salonika (Thessaloniki), Greece and Palestine. Promoted sergeant, he was twice mentioned in despatches and appointed to the Russian Order of St George (acc. Stone).

After the war he worked as a draughtsman with a firm of Tyneside shipbuilders and began to draw cartoons for the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle. On the advice of his agent Percy Bradshaw, he came to Sydney in 1925 (Fifty years… says in 1923, so does Roger Butler’s National Gallery of Australia [NGA] website, but Australian Dictionary of Biography confirms 1925) and joined the Bulletin as a cartoonist and illustrator replacing Norman Lindsay. He remained until 1961, resigning soon after Sir Frank Packer’s ACP purchased the magazine.

Scorfield married Helen Cecilia Olga Louise Pillinger, a 24-year-old Englishwoman, on 4 October 1928 at St James’s Church of England, Sydney. They had no children. He died on 11 December 1965 in hospital at Mosman and was cremated; his wife survived him.

As well as being the Bulletin's political cartoonist, Scorfield drew illustrations and joke blocks for the magazine about slums, outback farms and animals, especially dogs. He drew with a pen and dry brush that gave an effect like crayon. A large number of his original drawings are in the Mitchell Library’s [ML] Bulletin collection. John Webb (editor 1933-48) thought he was 'more humorous, more humane and more tolerant than Lindsay or Lowe’ (quoted Rolfe 270, who disagrees). Douglas Stewart (27-28) commented:

“A big, solid, slow-thinking Yorkshireman, with a gift for drawing dogs with remarkably big feet, like his own, Ted was always to be seen, when anybody had made a joke or suggested an idea, glancing inquiringly around with a puzzled sort of grin, as if he thought he might have missed something; which invariably he had. But still, he was always good-humoured.”

Stewart’s lasting image of him was in a pub 'thumping the bar for service with a fist like a pile driver’ (p.36).

His cartoons for the Bulletin included: a page with six 'then and now’ drawings of trees in the suburbs, showing none in 1910, saplings in 191[5?], fully grown in 1920, digging up road for pipelines in 1922, removing trees to widen road in 1924, and street with lamp-posts and once again with no trees at all in 1925, published 1 October 1925 (original ML PxD458/11). The Duchess Writes Home 19 May 1927 (original PxD458/39), is a good-natured royal letter home “hand-written” under pictorial vignettes of tour highlights. It begins, 'Dear Elizabeth,/ Daddy and mother have been seeing Australia…’, and includes 'King Billy’ (with breast-plate and battered stove-pipe hat) – 'One day we saw the king, but he hasn’t got such a nice crown as Grandpapa’.

Other Bulletin cartoons are: Recruiting the Migrant (vignettes paralleling migration with war recruitment) 11 March 1926 (large original ML); The Greatest of All Illusions showing E.G. Theodore with 'Professor Inflationski’ as a magician reducing the audience’s savings to nil, published 1931 (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 40); Alice in Wonderland 25 February 1931, on the Lang government’s printing of banknotes (National Library of Australia, neg., plate #PL 654/*); Protest Dismissed (William McKell, former Labor Premier of NSW, becomes G-G) n.d. (ill. Coleman & Tanner); Spare that Tree! with a noble bronzed Aussie standing with thumbs up in front of a tree labelled 'White Australia’, defending it against two men (Asians?) with axes (large original ML PXD 469/37 used in State Library of New South Wales black and white exhibition, 1999).

His Bulletin gag cartoons include: '“In another three months, I’ll be darning your socks, Dave darling.”/ “Don’t want to worry about that. I c’n knock 'em off once we’re married”’ 1933 (ill. Rolfe, 167); A Day in the Life of a Press Photographer 14 November 1934 (male photographer snapping women’s legs as they play tennis, jump hurdles and get their dresses caught in the wind, then berating his wife for wearing a revealing backless evening dress); Be kind to animals but not too kind, published 16 March 1938 (original in private collection); WWII drawing [terribly old-fashioned – looks like WWI] of a soldier saying to a bag lady, “'Oppit, Mata Hari!” 5 November 1941, 14 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 267 – original unlocated); WWII bush cartoon '“Lend me some of your kids, Joe – the manpower bloke’s coming to see me today”’ 1942 (ill. Rolfe, 292); “'Evven 'elp 'Itler now, Spike” (sailor observing two servicewomen) 1942; pro-conscription Battle Dresses 1941; “It’s things like 'er wot tears the veil of mystery from us girls” (two old bag ladies about a smart young thing wearing trousers) 1942; two soldiers in the jungle watching another being carried off by a giant mosquito, “Don’t shoot, Rod – it’s the sarge” 1943 (ill. Rolfe, 294); “How’s that for size?” (land army girls shoeing a horse as if it were being fitted in a shoe shop) 1943.

1947 political cartoons by Scorfield are illustrated in Coleman & Tanner, 72, and Rolfe. A 1948 migration joke shows a couple with pram and luggage in the empty bush with the caption, “All right. Maybe we shouldn’t have got off at Darwin“ (ill. Rolfe, 288). Anti-Communist and Korean War cartoons are illustrated in King (162-69). Others include Logical Consequence (Aboriginal couple claim Australia) 1945; '“There’s modern education for y’! Diploma in domestic science and doesn’t even know how to hold an axe”’ (two men sitting on fence watching woman chopping wood) 1950 (ill. Rolfe, 195); anti-ALP cartoon 1953 (ill Rolfe, 293); political parody of Laocoon with Evatt, Caldwell and {Santamaria?} struggling with a snake labelled 'The Movement’ annotated: '(Based partly on reports by Homer and Virgil, and partly on conflicting accounts by Dougherty, Santamaria, Colbourne, Mullens, Jack Lang, and the victims themselves)’ 1955 (ill. Rolfe, 288). Among his numerous cartoons featuring dogs is Kindness in Another’s Trouble (about enemy aliens – all dogs), Bulletin 1939 (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 129). In the 1940s he also made etchings and posters, according to Roger Butler’s NGA website.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007