Friday Fun: "And this is Rachel, our head girl." 1951

The Victoria & Albert Museum

This macabre cartoon puts one immediately in mind of the American cartoonist and author, Charles Addams, however, this work from 1951 comes from a similarly-skewed British artist—Ronald Searle.  Captioned, “And this is Rachel, our head girl,” the cartoon depicts a headmistress showing another lady into a room where the “head-girl,” Rachel is sharpening her knife on a lathe. On a shelf above her are the heads of other school-girls.  This wicked play on words is both gruesome and delightful. 

This work of  pen and ink and wash on card bears the following inscriptions:

Ronald Searle 1951
And this is Rachel - our head girl.
Lilliput (crossed out)
LILLIPUT
5 APR 1951
RONALD SEARLE / STUDIO TWO / 77 BEDFORD GARDENS / W.8. / (Tel: Park 4519)
(among various other markings)

The drawing was intended as an illustration for “Lilliput” Magazine and, then, for a book entitled “Back to the Slaughterhouse.”  This was part of Searle’s series of drawings set at the fictional St/ Trinians School, a series he began in 1948. His St. Trinians characters later inspired a series of films.

Searle’s biographer Russell Davies said of him: “He was not making the world look funny, but experiencing it as funny; it was less a style than a psychological condition.”  The artist started work at the early age of fifteen as a professional cartoonist for the Cambridge Daily News, later  working for a series  of newspapers and magazines, including ‘Punch,’ well into the 1950s.  His works graced a number of books until 1989.