John Wilson Bengough

John Wilson Bengough (Template:IPAc-en;Template:Sfn 7 April 1851 – 2 October 1923) was one of Canada's earliest cartoonists, as well as an editor, publisher, writer, poet, entertainer, and politician. Bengough is best remembered for his political cartoons in Grip, a satirical magazine he published and edited, which he modelled after the British humour magazine Punch. He published some cartoons under the pen name L. Côté.

Born in Toronto in the Province of Canada to Scottish and Irish immigrants, Bengough grew up in nearby Whitby, where after graduating from high school he began a career in newspapers as a typesetter. The political cartoons of the American Thomas Nast inspired Bengough to direct his drawing talents towards cartooning; a lack of outlets for his work drove him to found Grip in 1873. The Pacific Scandal gave Bengough ample material to lampoon, and soon Bengough's image of prime minister John A. Macdonald achieved fame across Canada. After Grip folded in 1894, Bengough published books, contributed cartoons to Canadian and foreign newspapers, and toured giving chalk talks internationally.

Bengough was deeply religious and devoted himself to promoting social reforms. He supported free trade, prohibition of alcohol and tobacco, women's suffrage, and other liberal beliefs, but was opposed to Canadian bilingualism. Bengough had ambitions to run for office, though Liberal leader Wilfrid Laurier convinced him against running for Parliament; he served as alderman on the Toronto City Council from 1907 to 1909. The Canadian government listed Bengough as a Person of National Historic Significance in 1938 and he was inducted into the Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame in 2005.

Life and career

Early life (1851–73)

John Bengough (1819–1899), father of John Wilson Bengough, in 1899

Bengough's grandparents John (d. 5 April 1867), a ship's carpenter, and Johanna (Template:Nee Jackson, d. 18 March 1859) were born in St Andrews in Scotland in the 1790s and immigrated with their children to Canada at an unknown date; they are known to have been in Whitby on Lake Ontario in the Province of Canada by the 1850s. They brought with them at least three children, including Bengough's father John (23 May 1819 in Scotland – 1899)Template:Sfn who became a cabinetmaker.Template:Sfn John Bengough was politically active: he advocated social reforms such as the Georgist single tax and had several Town Council appointments, though he never held political office. He used the title Captain, which suggests he may have sometime sailed ships out of Port Whitby.Template:Sfn

Bengough's father married Margaret Wilson, an Irish immigrantTemplate:Sfn born in Bailieborough in County Cavan,Template:Sfn and the couple had six children: five sons and a daughter.Template:Sfn John Wilson Bengough was the second,Template:Sfn born into the deeply Protestant familyTemplate:Sfn on 7 April 1851 in Toronto,Template:Sfn where the elder Bengough had run a shop on Victoria Street in the 1840s.Template:Sfn It is not known when they moved to Toronto, but it is known that by 1853 the family had moved back to Whitby.Template:Sfn

Bengough attended Whitby Grammar School, where he was an average student;Template:Sfn he won a prize one year for general proficiency, for which he received a book titled Boyhood of Great Artists.Template:Sfn He was an avid sketcher,Template:Sfn a talent which caught the notice of his teacher, who presented Bengough with a set of paints one Christmas. Bengough credited this act with setting him on the path to a career as an artist.Template:Sfn Whitby residents later reminisced of the young Bengough drawing chalk portraits of his neighbours on fences.Template:Sfn He described himself as a "voracious reader", particularly of the Whitby Gazette, a didactic weekly that stressed Christian values.Template:Sfn

After graduation, Bengough tried his hand at a number of jobs, including photographer's assistant,Template:Sfn and he articled to a lawyer for some timeTemplate:Sfn before getting a typesetting job at the Whitby Gazette.Template:Sfn The GazetteTemplate:'s editor was George Ham, an extroverted journalist who later worked as public relations chief for the Canadian Pacific Railway.Template:Sfn Bengough contributed short local-interest articles. In mid-1870, Ham issued a four-page daily to capitalize on interest in the Franco-Prussian War and commissioned Bengough to provide a serialized novel for it. The popular reception of The Murderer's Scalp (or The Shrieking Ghost of the Bloody Den) encouraged Bengough to devote himself to a journalism career.Template:Sfn The serial went unfinished because Ham cancelled the daily when the war died down.Template:Sfn The papers and magazines that came into the Gazette offices, in particular Harper's Weekly, introduced Bengough to the growing field of cartooning. Bengough reminisced,

I divided my time between mechanical duties for sordid wages and poetry for the good of humanity, and meanwhile I kept an eye on Thomas Nast the cartoonist.Template:Sfn

Template:Center Thomas Nast's cartoons of the corruption in Tammany Hall contributed to the fall of Boss Tweed, and inspired Bengough to bring political cartooning to Canada.

Bengough considered the politically and socially aware Nast a "beau ideal" whose "moral crusade against abject wrong"—in particular his relentless Boss Tweed cartoons—inspired the young Bengough to "emulate Nast in the field of Canadian politics".Template:Sfn Bengough so admired the cartoonist that he sent a cartoon to Harper's of Nast confronting the Tammany Hall political machine, rendered in Nast's style,Template:Sfn to which the editor returned a positive response and an acknowledgement from Nast.Template:Sfn

At twenty, Bengough moved to Toronto and became a reporter on politician George Brown's newspaper The Globe.Template:Sfn The Liberal paper was the most influential in the country; Bengough's family had supported the Liberal Party since before Confederation, and these connections probably played a role in his getting the position at the paper.Template:Sfn Editorial cartooning had no presence in Canadian newspapers at the time and was not to have one until Hugh Graham brought the practice to his Montreal Star in 1876;Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Bengough stated he did not consider the possibility of editorial cartooning at the time.Template:Sfn The lack of cartooning opportunities disappointed him, and he enrolled briefly in the Ontario School of Art, which he found pedantic and stifling;Template:Sfn he quit after one term.Template:Sfn

Grip (1873–94)

Portrait of Bengough from A Caricature History of Canadian Politics (1886)

Bengough told the following story of how he took up publishing: He had made a caricature of James Beaty, Sr., editor of the conservative Toronto Leader, and Beaty's nephew Sam found it so amusing that he made a lithographic copy for himself at the printer Rolph Bros. Impressed with his first exposure to lithography, and frustrated with the lack of opportunities to have his cartoons published, Bengough asked himself, "Why not start a weekly comic paper with lithographed cartoons?"Template:Sfn His brother Thomas remembered a somewhat different story in which Bengough first began distributing copies of his cartoons on the street.Template:Sfn Of his printed cartoons, only one of Liberal member Edward Blake has survived.Template:Sfn

In 1849–50Template:Sfn John Henry Walker's short-lived weekly Punch in Canada provided the first regular outlet for Canadian political cartooning;Template:EfnTemplate:Sfn others such as The Grumbler (1858–69), Grinchuckle (1869–70), and Diogenes (1868–70) did not last long, either. George-Édouard Desbarats's more conservative, Montreal-based Canadian Illustrated News (1869–83) lasted much longer. Bengough was to found the first major humour magazine in English Canada.Template:Sfn

A raven character in the Charles Dickens novel Barnaby Rudge inspired the name of the magazine Grip. Its pages carried political and social commentary along with satirical cartoons, and its debut issue of 24 May 1873 declared: "Grip will be entirely independent and impartial, always, and on all subjects." Bengough set the editorial policy and was the lead cartoonist.Template:Sfn

GripTemplate:`s initial financing came from Toronto publisher Andrew Scott Irving.Template:Sfnm Later in the year Bengough set up an office on 2 Toronto Street and with his four brothers formed the Bengough Brothers company.Template:Sfn Bengough continued to work at the Globe until Grip established itself. He used pseudonyms until he left the newspaper later in the year.Template:Sfn The editor's name appeared as a "Charles P. Hall" until Thomas Phillips Thompson took over as editor on 26 July under the pseudonym "Jimuel Briggs"; he lasted until the 6 September issue, when he printed a pro-alcohol article despite Bengough's prohibitionist views. The Toronto GlobeTemplate:`s R. H. Larminie then took on co-editing duties as "Demos Mudge" with Bengough as "Barnaby Rudge".Template:EfnTemplate:Sfn Regular contributors other than Bengough included R. W. Phipps, who produced the greatest amount of GripTemplate:`s poetry; Tom Boylan, who Bengough considered GripTemplate:`s best humourist; Edward Edwards, who wrote sombre topical articles in contrast to the humour of the rest of the magazine; and William Alexander Foster who wrote scathing editorials about Oliver Mowat's Ontario Liberal Party, which contrasted with Bengough's position and lent credibility to the magazine's assertions of non-partisanship. Writers such as Peter McArthur got their start with Grip.Template:Sfn

Template:Center John A. Macdonald proclaims "These hands are clean!"—scrawled on his hand is the message he had written to Hugh Allan: "I need another $10,000".

GripTemplate:'s early issues attracted little notice.Template:Sfn The Hamilton Spectator declared it "dull ... When Grip dies, which will be soon, Toronto will be much more cheerful. ... Grip is what Punch would be with all the spirit left out".Template:Sfn Events arising from the Canadian federal election of 1872 shortly gave Bengough sufficient popular material to lampoon: accusations of bribery and other improprieties involving prime minister John A. Macdonald and business magnate Hugh Allan inflated into the Pacific Scandal, the most closely followed scandal in the young nation's history. Macdonald's features lent themselves to caricature and gave Bengough the chance to proselytize.Template:Sfn Circulation rose to about 2,000 copies per issue at the time; Bengough's brother Thomas reported that each new issue was eagerly awaited at the House of Commons.Template:Sfn A 23 August 1873 cartoon entitled "The Beauties of a Royal Commission: When shall we three meet again?" drew praise from newspapers across Canada, as well as from Liberal MP Lucius Seth Huntington in a speech to the House of Commons.Template:Sfn

Despite their Liberal leanings, in 1878 Bengough and Grip took the side of the proposed Conservative National Policy of high tariffs on trade with the US, against the governing Liberal stance of free trade. The issue contributed to the loss of Alexander Mackenzie's incumbent Liberals to Macdonald's Conservatives in the election of 1878,Template:Sfn despite GripTemplate:`s prediction that Mackenzie would win again.Template:Sfn The magazine supported no party officially in its early years, but made its support for the Liberals explicit in the elections of 1887 and of 1891, after Wilfrid Laurier had become party leader. In the mid-1880s the Grip Printing and Publishing Company took on printing duties for the Ontario Liberal government. This support, however, resulted in no federal election wins.Template:Sfn

Grip had considerable influence on the public perception of politicians. That it was slanted in favour of Liberals and against Conservatives drove Conservative supporters to launch rival publications. The first was Jester, begun in 1878, which featured cartoons by Henri Julien that painted Macdonald in a benevolent light. Jester failed to find an audience to match Bengough's and folded the following year.Template:Sfn In 1886, Bengough reported a weekly circulation for Grip of 50,000.Template:Sfn

In March 1874, in the music hall of the Toronto Mechanics' Institute,Template:Efn Bengough began giving comic chalk talk performances,Template:Sfn which he later toured across the country.Template:Sfn He impressed audiences with his ability to capture the likeness of members of the audience in a single penstroke.Template:Sfn He continued his chalk talks throughout his life and travelled with them to the US, Australia, New Zealand,Template:Sfn and Britain.Template:Sfn He published an autobiography titled Chalk Talks in 1922, the year before his death.Template:Sfn

GripTemplate:`s readership declined under Thomas Phillips Thompson's editorship.

Early Canadian feminist writer Sarah Anne Curzon made regular contributions to Grip.Template:Sfn At Bengough's request in 1882, she wrote the closet drama The Sweet Girl Graduate for the book The Grip Sack. The drama tells of a woman who disguises herself as a man to attend university at a time when women were barred in Canada from post-secondary education.Template:Sfn

In 1883, Frank Wilson took over management of the printing of Grip.Template:Sfn Thomas Phillips Thompson became associate editor. He shared with Bengough a radical political outlook and a taste for satire, though was less open to new ideas than Bengough, who was quick to attach himself to new causes. Thompson was anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-militarist.Template:Sfn In 1892, the managers of Grip passed the editorship from Bengough to ThompsonTemplate:Sfn and Bengough's cartoons stopped appearing after the 6 August 1892 issue.Template:Sfn Years later, Bengough's brother Thomas blamed the board of directors at Grip, Inc., for the falling out over "general mismanagement",Template:Sfn which may have involved losses incurred in relation to a government contract.Template:Sfn

GripTemplate:`s tone became increasingly strident: anti-French, anti-Catholic, pro-socialist. This, and an increased use of racial caricature, seem to have alienated readers.Template:Sfn Under the new editorship readership fellTemplate:Sfn until Grip ceased publication in July 1893.Template:Sfn Grip, Inc., sold off assets, such as its printing machines, to repay debts.Template:Sfn

Bengough revived Grip in 1894Template:Sfn under a new company called Phoenix Publishing with a partner named Bell who had newspaper publishing experience in Belleville.Template:Sfn They softened GripTemplate:`s tone, but the content appeared rushedTemplate:Sfn and it lasted only from 4 January to 29 December 1894.Template:Sfn Macdonald had died in 1891, and Bengough blamed the publication's ill fortunes on the loss of such a target.Template:Sfn

Later life (1895–1923)

After Grip ceased publication, Bengough worked for the next quarter-century as a cartoonist for a variety of newspapers, including The Globe, The Toronto Evening Telegram, the Montreal Star, Canadian Geographic, the American The Public and The Single Tax Review, The Morning ChronicleTemplate:Sfn and Daily Express in England, and the Sydney Herald in Australia.Template:Sfn

Bengough toured giving chalk talks internationally.

Bengough continued to devote himself to political causes. He supported the Liberals' successful campaign in the federal election of 1896 with cartoons in the Toronto Globe and with a song he composed titled "Ontario, Ontario".Template:Sfn He belonged to numerous political and social clubs.Template:Sfn He was a founding member of the Royal Society of Canada in 1880,Template:Sfn to which the Governor General appointed him an Associate. He was professor of elocution at Knox College from 1899 to 1901.Template:Sfn He served as director of the Toronto Exhibition, auditor for the Canadian Peace and Arbitration Society,Template:Sfn member for three years of the board of directors of the Victoria Industrial School,Template:Sfn and president of the Toronto Single Tax Association, and took part in the People's Forum social activist group.Template:Sfn

In 1907, Bengough campaigned to join the Toronto City Council as an alderman for Ward 3. Major newspapers such as the Toronto Star promoted him, and the Toronto Daily World ran a photograph of him on its front page when he won.Template:Sfn He won again in 1908 and 1909.Template:Sfn He counted future Toronto mayor Horatio Clarence Hocken amongst his reformist allies on the CouncilTemplate:Sfn and promoted issues such as public ownership of hydroelectric power, but found little support for his ideas.Template:Sfn His successes included legislation restricting the issuing of liquor licenses, which found support when he made it an election issue in his 1909 campaign.Template:Sfn

In March 1909,Template:Sfn Bengough took a leave of absence from the Toronto City Council to tour Australia and New Zealand and gave up his post when he returned.Template:Sfn When the First World War broke out, he devoted his energies to promoting patriotism and the war effort, and supported conscription, a cause that was popular in English Canada but unpopular in Quebec and which ran counter to the Liberal Party position. Bengough nevertheless continued to support the party and used his cartoons to promote party leader William Lyon Mackenzie King in the federal election of 1921.Template:Sfn

Following a chalk-talk performance in Moncton, New Brunswick in 1922, Bengough suffered an attack of angina pectoris, attributed to overwork during a previous tour of Western Canada. He died of it on 2 October 1923Template:Sfn at his drawing board at his home on 58 St Mary Street in Toronto while working on a cartoon in support of an anti-smoking campaign.Template:Sfn At his memorial service on 22 November, the editor of the Hamilton Herald, Albert E. S. Smythe, declared him the "Canadian Dickens" and one of Walt Whitman's "great companions".Template:Sfn

Personal life

Bengough was of average height and had grey eyes and dark hair.Template:Sfn He married twice; neither marriage produced children. He married Helena "Nellie" Siddall in Toronto on 30 June 1880;Template:Sfn she died in 1902. He remarried to a friend from his school days, the widowTemplate:Sfn Annie Robertson Matteson, in Chicago on 18 June 1908.Template:Sfn Neither appears to have written about Bengough.Template:Sfn

Style

Bengough drew mainly political cartoons. His cartoons and writing tend towards the preachy and didactic; he believed that humour should serve the interests of the state rather than merely to amuse. Bengough tended in his writing towards satirical humour and puns, which George Ramsay Cook called "sometimes sophomoric".Template:Sfn He read Dickens, Shakespeare, and Carlyle with particular devotion.Template:Sfn

Bengough had little exposure to formal art education aside from one term at the Ontario School of Art.Template:Sfn His sketchy cartoonsTemplate:Sfn derived from a mid-19th century engraving style;Template:Sfn while often drawn well, they were crowded in composition and sometimes borrowed from other sources.Template:Sfn Bengough could draw in contrasting styles, as evidenced by cartoons he did under the pseudonym of L. Côté.Template:Sfn As typical of political cartoonists of the time, Bengough aimed less at laughter than at social satire and depended more on readers' understanding of densely packed allusions.Template:Sfn

Bengough's cartoons are best remembered for fixing his renditions of Macdonald in the public imagination.Template:Sfn Bengough's bulbous-nosedTemplate:Sfn politician often appeared baggy-eyed with bottles of alcohol in his hands as a sombre symbol of corruption, in contrast to the work of John Henry Walker, another prolific caricaturist of Macdonald who depicted the prime minister's drunkenness to make light of him.Template:Sfn Bengough continued to hone his draftsmanship after Macdonald's death, but the wit and inspiration of his Macdonald cartoons continue to draw the most attention.Template:Sfn

Bengough's chalk talks have left less of a mark on the public memory, though audience members have passed down Bengough's renditions of them as heirlooms. Bengough delivered humorous anecdotes and made impressions as he caricatured audience members and well-known locals in a flamboyant manner, adding the identifying details only at the end.Template:Sfn

Politics

Template:Center John A. Macdonald was a favourite target of Bengough's, notably during the Pacific Scandal.

Bengough's reputation was as a supporter of the Liberal Party of Canada and its pro-democratic platform.Template:Sfn His family had been supporters since before Confederation; his father had supported Oliver Mowat and both his brother Thomas and sister Mary worked in Mowat's provincial government. Members of his family were to play roles in the Liberal Party into the twentieth century; Bengough and his brother Thomas had ties close enough with Wilfrid Laurier to ask for favours, and both were also close to William Lyon Mackenzie King.Template:Sfn Bengough had ambitions to run for Parliament, but Liberal leader Laurier convinced him against it;Template:Sfn Laurier also turned down a request of Bengough's for a Senate appointment as reward for a lifetime of Liberal support.Template:Sfn

GripTemplate:'s political stance was one of disinterest, but a large portion of Bengough's income came from Liberal publications, and Macdonald and his Conservatives were favourite targets of Bengough's cartoon attacks, notably during the Pacific Scandal.Template:Sfn His association with the Liberals was so strong that Charles Tupper quipped in Parliament that Grip should change its name to Grit—a popular nickname for Liberal Party members. His best-remembered cartoons were those aimed at Macdonald and the Conservatives, but his criticisms targeted Liberals as well—Edward Blake had his subscription cancelled when he was the victim of a particular cartoon.Template:Sfn Macdonald's Conservative Daily Mail, launched in 1872, provided a rivalry with the Liberal Globe that provided fuel for Bengough's satire, as did infighting in the Liberal Party over The Globe, which allowed Bengough to distance himself to a degree from criticism of Liberal partisanship.Template:Sfn

Bengough was a proponent of such issues as proportional representation, prohibition of alcohol and of tobacco, the single taxTemplate:Sfn espoused by Henry George, and worldwide free trade. He held progressive views on women's suffrage;Template:Sfn in 1889 supported the Dominion Women's Enfranchisement Association efforts to have a bill proposed by Liberal MP John Waters that would have granted suffrage to Canadian women.Template:Sfn He expressed anti-imperialist ideals until the mid-1890s, after which he supported imperialism.Template:Sfn He supported Canada's involvement in the Second Boer War and First World War.Template:Sfn Bengough contributed to the ongoing debates concerning the development of a Canadian identity during the nation's early years.Template:Sfn He showed a marked ethnic nationalism in that he promoted English as the nation's sole official language, and the separation of church and state, a view that was directed particularly at the Catholic, French-speaking Québécois.Template:Sfn He depicted the Québécois as backward and Quebec politicians as always demanding money.Template:Sfn Bengough declared he looked forward to:Template:Sfn

Template:Center John A. Macdonald caught between English and French opinion on whether to execute Louis Riel.

Bengough had liberal views on race relations, and painted a picture of Canada as being more open to integration than the US during the Reconstruction era; according to David R. Spencer, his views on race were not likely widely shared in Canada at the time.Template:Sfn While Bengough sympathized with the plight of Canada's native peoples, he condemned the 1885 North-West Rebellion and called for the execution of Métis rebel leader Louis Riel, and celebrated Major-General Frederick Dobson Middleton's victory at the Battle of Batoche in Saskatchewan with a poem.Template:Sfn His racial caricatures could, according to Carman Cumming, lead a modern reader to see him as "a racist chauvinist bigot":Template:Sfnm they distort facial features and behaviour in ways typical of cartoons of the era and employ such derogatory terms as "coon" for blacks and "sheeny" for Jews.Template:Sfn Bengough called for restrictions on Chinese and Irish immigrationTemplate:Sfn and his work shows a bias against immigrants who did not conform to Anglo-Saxon Protestant ideals.Template:Sfn

Bengough intended his didactic cartoons to impart moral instruction.Template:Sfn He expressed a deep devotion to religion. He had a Presbyterian upbringing, though as an adult he subscribed to no denomination. He promoted Christian ideals as solutions to social issues and thus, for example, opposed streetcars running on Sundays.Template:Sfn He proclaimed a Protestant work ethic widely expressed by Canadian artists and intellectuals of the late 19th century.Template:Sfn In his writing he frequently made statements about the role of Man in God's world,Template:Sfn and insisted that politics should conform to the will of God.Template:Sfn The editor of Canadian Methodist Magazine William Henry Withrow declared Bengough "an Artist of Righteousness"Template:Sfn who was "always on the right side of every moral question".Template:Sfn

Legacy

As Nast had in the US, Bengough succeeded in establishing editorial cartooning as a force in journalism in the late 19th century.Template:Sfn The church minister and Queen's College principal George Monro Grant called Bengough "the most honest interpreter of current events Template:Interp to have" and declared he had "no malice in him" but had "a merry heart, and that doeth good like medicine".Template:Sfn The reformist English newspaper editor William Thomas Stead considered Bengough "one of the ablest cartoonists in the world".Template:Sfnm

Outlets for political cartoons were mostly limited to illustrated magazines until they found a home in daily newspapers in the 20th century.Template:Sfn Bengough's busy, moralizing style began to fall out of favour by the 1890s in contrast to the cleaner style practised by such cartoonists as Henri Julien and Sam Hunter.Template:Sfn His caricatures nevertheless left an impression on the public consciousness in Canada for generations to follow.Template:Sfn

Bengough's caricatures continue to illustrate Canadian textsTemplate:Sfn—examples in which they are prominent include Creighton's biography John A. Macdonald (1952–55), Armstrong and Nelles' The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company: Sunday Streetcars and Municipal Reform in Toronto, 1888–1897 (1977), and Waite's Arduous Destiny: Canada 1874–1896 (1971). Historians use the cartoons to demonstrate issues and attitudes of Bengough's era,Template:Sfn as well as for their artistic qualities, removed from their satirical contexts.Template:Sfn Historian Peter Busby Waite considered Grip "one of the most interesting sources for the social history of Ontario in the latter nineteenth century".Template:Sfn

Bengough's artistic legacy rests chiefly on his caricatures of Macdonald.Template:Sfn To Peter Desbarats and Terry Mosher, Bengough's bulbous-nosed caricatures of Macdonald as "ungainly, boozy, and corrupt ... engraved itself on the public mind, particularly in the days before newspapers published photographs of politicians".Template:Sfn Macdonald nevertheless deflated much of the power his caricaturists might have had as he often made light of his own alcoholism.Template:Sfn Bengough met the prime minister in person only once.Template:Sfn

Though his cartoons have continued to thrive, Bengough's life and career as a writer has drawn far less attention.Template:Sfn Bengough biographer Stanley Paul Kutcher considered his poetry "undistiguished".Template:Sfn Historian George Ramsay Cook commended Bengough's approach to have "nurtured the growth of social criticism in late Victorian Canada without much of that humourless self-righteousness that so often characterizes reformers".Template:Sfn Historian Carman Cumming's Sketches of a Young Country provides an in-depth analysis of GripTemplate:`s politics.Template:Sfn

The town of Bengough, Saskatchewan, incorporated 15 March 1912, was named after the cartoonist.Template:Sfn On 19 May 1938, the Canadian government listed Bengough as a Person of National Historic Significance and dedicated a plaque to him at 66 Charles Street East in Toronto.Template:Sfn Bengough was inducted into the Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame in 2005.Template:Sfn The McMaster University Library in Hamilton, Ontario, holds the J. W. Bengough papers in its Division of Archives and Research Collection.Template:Sfn

Published works

John Wilson Bengough (1900)

• 1875 – The Grip Cartoons. Rogers and LarminieTemplate:Sfn
• 1876 – The Decline and Fall of Keewatin. Grip Publishing Co.Template:Sfn
• 1882 – Bengough's Popular Readings: Original and Select. Bengough, Moore and BengoughTemplate:Sfn
• 1882 – The Grip-Sack: A Receptacle of Light Literature, Fun and Fancy. The Grip Printing and Publishing Co.
• 1882 – Grip's Comic Almanac for 1882. Bengough, Moore and Bengough
• 1886 – A Caricature History of Canadian Politics (two volumes). The Grip Publishing and Printing Co.Template:Sfnm
• 1895 – Motley: Verse Grave and Gay. William BriggsTemplate:Sfnm
• 1896 – The Up-to-date Primer. Funk & WagnallsTemplate:Sfn
• 1897 – The Prohibition Aesop. Royal Templar Book and Publishing HouseTemplate:Sfn
• 1898 – The Gin Mill Primer. William BriggsTemplate:Sfn
• 1902 – In Many Keys. William BriggsTemplate:Sfnm
• 1908 – On True Political Economy (The Whole Hog Book). American Free Trade LeagueTemplate:Sfn
• 1922 – Chalk Talks. The Musson Book Co.Template:Sfn

No copies remain of the comic opera Hecuba; or Hamlet's Father's Deceased Wife's Sister, a comic opera with score by G. Barton Brown. Publisher F. F. Siddall registered it for copyright in 1885. The opera may have been an earlier version of Puffe and Co., or Hamlet, Prince of Dry Goods, for which an undated and possibly unpublished script exists, and for which Clarence Lucas had written a score that Bengough appears to have rejected.Template:Sfn

References

Works cited

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Further reading

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External links

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• A Caricature History of Canadian Politics (1886) at HathiTrust
• On True Political Economy (The Whole Hog Book) (1908) at Wealth and Want