MOTORING HISTORY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVII, Issue 4434, 22 August 1933, Page 3

MOTORING HISTORY.

THE STORY OP “MR. PUNCH.” SOME HUMOROUS INCIDENTS.

Many people find turning over the pages of old copies of "Punch" a fascinating pastime, says an English writer. If you would read the history of motors and motoring, you cannot do better than look out these early volumes of "Punch." You will see how the humorists have turned from laughing at motor cars and motorists to taking them for granted, and the drawings themselves will remind you of the amazing development of the motor car from a carriage with a. remarkably feeble and unreliable engine into a comfortable, fast, and beautiful vehicle.

The first motoring joke I find is in the 1896 volume. It shows a horseless carriage running backwards down a hill, to the alann of the driver and passenger, perched high up over huge wheels, and to the intense amusement of the village mongrel. It is headed "Decidedly uncomfortable," and the words are, "Awkward position of Mr. Newfangle, who, when half-way up a steep hill, discovers by the sudden retrograde movement of the auto-car that the motor has become exhausted." The language of motoring was

in its infancy, and this sounds like Greek to the modern motorist.

Early motorists apparently had their trials in the shape of joy-ride stealers. Street urchins were accustomed to hanging on to cabs, and the early car travelling at a maximum of 10 m.p.h. offered them opportunities for many free rides. So in 1897 we find Mr. Punch producing a picture of half-a-dozen ragged boys being violently thrown off the back of a "horseless carriage." The text is, "With motor cabs a substitute for 'whip behind' becomes a necessity. Messrs. Stuart and Jumpkin's patent galvank urchin tickler will be found most effective."

The pedestrian joke which has had a great vogue during the last few years apparently originated in 1900. I find a picture of an early pedestrian lying prostrate in the middle of the road, while two angry motorists who have just run over him look back and shout, "Why don't you get out of the way?" The reply of the victim is "What! Are you coming back?" Personally, I deplore jokes about pedestrians bei'ng run down, but it is an English characteristic to joke about things we take seriously, and I do not think the pedestrian jokes really infer that the motorist is callous or that the funniest sight in the world is a man being run over. But I think this joke in many forms has had its run, and might now be dropped. Many of the earlier jokes were directed at the unreliability of cars, engines, and drivers. Thus we have a farmer in a pony trap and a moorist dashing 'neck and neck down the road, with the caption, "Farmer: 'Pull up, you fool! The mare's bolting!' Motorist: 'So's the car!'" There are many jokes about motorists being towed home by horses—the R.A.C. "Get-you-Home" service had not been thought of. There are many jokes about road-side repairs, perhaps the best of which shows a motorist peering out from under his car amidst spanners and screws. The remark of a passing farmer is perfect in its naivete —"It's stopped raining, mister."

Car thieves are apparently by no means a post-war product. Thus, in 1912 we find the police constable with the inevitable note-book questioning a motorist who, having inadvertently left his car in charge of a'n expert thief, has had his magneto stolen. "Now sir," says the constable, "would you be prepared to swear that you had it when you arrived?" Thinking to-day of the early years of the War, we are apt to assume that the men who carried despatches under fire were provided with almost foolproof machines. But that this was not the case is forcibly suggested by a joke which appeared in 1914, presumably shortly before the outbreak of hostilities. At that time complicated wire puzzles were almost as popular as crosswords were to become at a later date, and road hawkers made quite a comfortable income selling fresh wire novelties from door to door. The scene is a country road near the middle of which kneels a grimed and half-frantic motor cyclist, surrounded with scores of bits and pieces, extracted from the mechanism of his refractory "mount" Just as he drags away a piece of the magneto, a tramp strolls up and, dangling a wire gagdet befoi'e his startled eyes, remarks with a studied lack of humour, "Buy a puzzle, sir?"

In 1922 the humorists became extraordinarily active in guying the cheap car which, was built rather with a view to covering the ground than to comfort or elegance of appearance. Many motoring jokes, good and bad, were perpetrated at this period. One of the best shows a car, which has been left running at the kerb, registering a truly phenomenal vibration. Inside sits a lady whose face shows merely as a blur, for the vibration causes her mouth to be at the spot where her eyes were a moment before. Out of a garage comes a motorist carrying two tins of petrol. He stares anxiously down a long line of furiously jolting cars, eventually approaching the one in which the lady is seated. To her he speaks anxiously: "Would you mind stopping your engine, madam? I want to see if you are my wife."

From this the wit of the motor car joker turned to speed, a complete reversal of the early days of motordriven traffic, when the inability of the motor car to cope over long- distances with the horse a'nd the push cycle was the root of most motoringjokes.