Design and Art Australia Online

political cartoonist, lithographer, publisher and printer, was born in Cork, son of John Baker Manly and Sarah, née Reagan. Manly drew the great majority of the lithographic cartoons which appeared fortnightly in the Tasmanian Punch (published from 21 July to 29 December 1866), being co-proprietor of the journal with Major Lloyd Hood. Mahood calls him 'an artist whose political sense and business enterprise were not matched by his draughtsmanship’. Generally signed with his cipher 'J.H.M.’, most of his cartoons are crude localised adaptations in both style and subject of the London parent magazine, including full-page illustrations of political figures in incongruous settings, for example, Charles Meredith, the Tasmanian Colonial Treasurer (husband of Louisa Anne Meredith ), in the role of nursemaid attempting to sooth a crying “Baby Tasmania” by offering it a nice 'railway sop’ (4 August 1866).

Hood and Manly parted company after the issue of 29 December 1866. Hood alone was listed as proprietor of what was renamed the Hobart Town Punch , where Manly’s cartoons apparently continued to appear although Manly had set up a rival journal, Fun; or, the Tasmanian Charivari , the first number of which appeared on 13 April 1867. It lasted only until 28 September and appeared spasmodically after the first two issues. Fun too, was modelled on the London Punch . Its cover, like that of Tasmanian Punch and its successors, retained the figures of Mr Punch and his dog but, unlike the others, replaced these as the central figures on the wrapper illustration with the head of a man (possibly Manly himself) wearing cap and bells. As “A Trumpeter”, Manly also illustrated two satirical pamphlets by “Barri Couta”, Railwayiana and Salmoniana (on the importation of salmon ova into Tasmania), both published in Hobart in 1866.

Subsequently moving to Victoria, Manly died of tuberculosis in his residence off Little Collins Street, East Melbourne, next door to the Colonial Bank Hotel, and was buried on 31 July 1871 in the Roman Catholic section of the Melbourne General Cemetery. He was twenty-eight years old. The best preserved and most complete sets of Fun and the 1866-67 Punch are in a bound volume in the Allport Library. No Victorian work is known.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

1989