Comments on: Henry Mayhew’s Punch & Judy Man

By: Ann

Ann — Fri, 12 Feb 2016 05:20:39 +0000

My 2x great grandfather Thomas Aubrey Dean was a Punch and Judy Man. I came across this website from the 1841 census on brick lane. I think this might be the Deans I’m looking for T. Aubrey would be about 10 years old then. In his early 20’s he, his father Thomas, and brother George signed on with the Hudson Bay Company (1850) and went to Fort Nisqually in Present day Tacoma, Washington. In the Fort Nisqually journals they write of his Punch and Judy performances they were rather popular in the Northwest Frontier. He was also a fiddler and fiddle maker. Thanks for this article.

By: Paul Jackson

Paul Jackson — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 08:06:58 +0000

You see that’s what’s wrong. The two shows are markedly different, the supplier of Mayhew’s puppets; the old Italian had his show illustrated and those are the above pictures. The show that Mayhew records is a different show, different characters. One Italian, one English. Mayhew’s man includes a clown and publican and although this show predates the crocodile’s appearance it most certainly is not a natural evolution of his ‘masters’. Both are great but linking the pictures of one to the other, confuses and hides the fact that sometime around 1830 the Punch show changed, a period also coinciding with Grimaldi’s death.

By: Ros

Ros — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:12:32 +0000

And this is wonderful too, a forebear of yesterday’s post. Mayhew’s distillation of what the Punch and Judy man said about his life and trade is so empathetic and tells us so much about society and the human spirit at that time. I think you’ve inherited the baton of the Mayhew tradition and that he’d be delighted you were running with it.