Thomas, Bert (1883 - 1966)

Bert Thomas original cartoon artwork

Bert Thomas joined Punch in 1905 and contributed until 1935. Apart from Punch, he also drew regularly for The Sketch, The Humorist, The Bystander, London Opinion and the Daily Graphic. During the First World War he was in the Artist Rifles. Thomas' political cartoons started to be included in gallery exhibitions as artistic caricatures as early as 1913, in an exhibition on the Strand by the Society of Humorous Art. Bert Thomas also drew the famous First World War cartoon of a grinning soldier lighting a pipe with the caption “’Arf a mo’ Kaiser!”. The cartoon appeared in the Weekly Dispatch in aid of the paper’s tobacco-for-troops fund which raised around £250,000. This cartoon stayed with Thomas for the rest of his life. In 1936 his illustrations for a series of readers’ letters in the Evening News were labeled “Half a mo’ stories” and in the Second World War the cartoon reappeared with the caption “Half a mo’ Hitler”.