Syd Nicholls fame amongst the public largely rests on his most famous creation Fatty Finn. However the artist was also responsible for one of Australias most controversial cartoons of the First World War. In another achievement he produced Australias first comic book and helped launch the careers of a number of well known Australian artists in the process. The following article details his career and his many battles with publishing industry bosses. Sydney Wentworth Nicholls was born in Tasmania in 1896. Originally named Jordan he became Nicholls when his mother remarried. He spent much of his childhood in New Zealand where his stepfather worked constructing railway bridges. In 1910 he got his first job with the NSW printing firm of W.E. Smith. At the same time he began studies at the Royal Art Society in Sydney under the tutelage of Norman Carder and Dattilo Rubbo. Two years later, at the age of 16, he had his first cartoon published in the pages of the International Socialist. The satirical piece featured an attack on the former radical turned Prime Minister, Billy Hughes. By 1914 he had work published in the Bulletin and was reportedly hanging out with a variety of wild bohemians. Throughout his career his work appeared in radical and union journals such as The Worker, The Tribune, The Seamans Journal and Education. Direct Action anti war cartoon Most famously he contributed a series of vociferous cartoons to the Industrial Workers of The World (I.W.W.) newspaper Direct Action. Beginning his work during the first week of World War One Nicholls caught the I.W.W. in its most combative phase matching the groups articles with scathing attacks on politicians, capitalists, religious leaders and all the others who rode on the back of the working class. One of his works ran on December 4th and was created in disgust at the raising of a $20 million war loan by the Federal Government. The cartoon featured a capitalist vampire draining money from the veins of a crucified soldier. At the bottom of the page Direct Actions editor Tom Barker noted that PM Hughes has offered another 50 000 men as a fresh sacrifice to the modern Moloch. Politicians and their masters have always been generous with other peoples lives. This piece was to win Nicholls a place in history as it led to Australias only prosecution of a newspaper editor for running a cartoon. Tom Barker recalled the situation in discussions with Eric Fry in 1965 when he said We had a good cartoonist at the time, Syd Nicholls. He was a young fellow who could get a bright idea... the prospectus for a new war loan had appeared, pointing out that this was a good investment, because the interest was far higher than in normal times. So Syd got this idea. He made a cartoon of a gigantic field gun with a soldier crucified on top of it and top hatted persons collecting his dripping blood in bowls. Underneath it we put this piece from the prospectus of the new war loan... nothing happened for a couple of months. Then, in a big training camp in Western Australia, an officer came upon this and made a big song and dance about it. I was brought to court... and convicted of Prejudicing Recruiting. They didnt make any mistake. They kept me tied up and when I came back before the beak he fined me 100 pounds or twelve months. Of course I refused to pay the fine and my appeal was dismissed. I had to go to jail. Due to the I.W.W.s anti war efforts in Australia and abroad, the authorities targeted them extensively, infiltrating the group and using any means available to harass them. The cartoon prosecution was just another example of the campaign against the IWW although Barker noted that the paper may have had a friend in the censors office because much of their material had previously passed by unscathed. As the publisher of the paper Barker copped the sentence and Nicholls remained at large. Within a short time a number of other leading IWW members in WA and NSW were to join him behind bars on framed up charges of conspiring to cause explosions as well as sedition.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 19:27:30 +0000
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