Plate

This ceramic plate is transfer-printed with a cartoon showing two men in a trench above the line ‘Well, if you knows a better ‘ole, go to it.’ The cartoon was drawn by Captain (Charles) Bruce Bairnsfather (1887-1959), who had spent his early years in India before coming to England in 1895. After failing entrance exams to Sandhurst and Woolwich Military Academies, Bairnsfather joined the Cheshire Regiment but resigned in 1907 to study art. At first unsuccessful in his new vocation, he worked as electrical engineer and in 1914 joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Bairnsfather served with a machine gun unit in France until 1915 when he was hospitalised with shellshock and hearing damage sustained during the Second Battle of Ypres. He began to develop a humorous series for the Bystander about life in the trenches featuring ‘Old Bill’, a curmudgeonly soldier with a walrus moustache and balaclava. The print on this plate by Grimwade’s of Stafford, who made many similar wares showing cartoons of the artist, is one of Bairnsfather’s most famous.