Strange Stories UK: Tattooing people and Stories from the UK.

Some offbeat stories about tattooing in the UK since the late Victorian period up to the modern day. Told in one take outside in the garden, lo fi and with a replacement microphone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello, Stream Stories UK here. Sorry, having some microphone problems this evening. I'm recording outside, just hoping this is gonna work. Anyhow, this podcast is going to be niche. It's an attempt to give a brief history of some of the personalities and stories connected with the art of tattooing in the UK since the later Victorian period. It's not a history of tattooing or an explanation of the science behind it, just an attempt to tell a few off-beat stories. However, just for the record, tattooing has a very long history. Early evidence of tattooing has been found on bodies preserved in glaciers and on Egyptian mummies dating back around 5,000 years. So this podcast looks at how tattooing developed from a rough, secretive and marginal tray connected with sailors, soldiers, fairgrounds, and sideshows into a more professional, commercial, hygienic, and socially accepted art form. In the old days, tattooed performers played an important part in making tattooing known to the British public. Victorian tattooed performers evolved partly from the early displays of so-called painted savages, who returning British explorers and showmen had been exhibiting publicly since the seventeenth century. One early example was Prince Giolo. He was a heavily tattooed native of Myangus Islands in the Philippines. He was brought to England by the maritime adventurer William Dampier in nineteen sorry in 1691 and put on public display in London. More than a century later in 1828, the Manchester sailor John Rutherford first exhibited himself as a tattooed curiosity in Bristol after his alleged capture and forcible tattooing by a Maori tribe. Another important tattoo performer was James Burke, who was born in Bristol in 1846. He was a former British Army soldier who had served in the South Hampshire Regiment of Foot, and he acquired some traditional Burmese tattooing while serving in Burma in 1875. To compete with fully tattooed attractions, Burke decided to add modern Western designs and had his whole body tattooed. Burke began his professional career as a tattoo man travelling through America, exhibiting at dime museums, fairs and circuses. In 1884 he approached Elmore Getchell, a professional tattooer in Boston. Getchell filled Burke's skin with ships, stars, anchors, flags, all sorts of different images. On Burke's back he tattooed the crucifixion of Christ with Jerusalem in the background. Burke then appeared under the stage name Frank De Berg, the Tattooed Man, and he earned up to sixty dollars a week with the circus. The Titchbourne case also gave tattooing unusual public attention. The case came to dominate the news when it reached the court and became one of the most famous identity trials of Victorian Britain. The claimant was known as Thomas Castro or Arthur Orton, and said he was Sir Roger Titchbourne, the missing heir to the Titchborne Baronessy, who disappeared after a wreck of the ship the Bella in eighteen fifty four. The link with tattooing was that the real Roger Titchborne was said to have had distinctive tattoos, including a heart, a cross, anchor, and the initials RCT on his arm. The claimant did not have these marks. This became damaging evidence against him, especially when Lord Bellow testified that he had seen and helped make some of Titchborne's tattoos. For tattoo history, the case history matters because it showed that tattoos being used publicly as proof of identity, and it revealed that the tattooing was not confined to sailors, soldiers or criminals, but was also found in upper class men. One of the best known tattoo performers of the later Victorian period was Captain George Kostentenus, whose body was almost completely covered in tattoos. A book called The 388 Tattoos of Captain George Kostentenus describes him as an Albanian of Greek heritage. He claimed that while in Burma he had been captured and forcibly tattooed for months as punishment for his activities as a pirate. He was exhibited by Pete Barnum, who made him the world's most famous tattooed man. He first visited the UK in 1881 when he performed at the Royal Aquarium in London, which was intended to be a respectable entertainment venue. It was an aquarium with a theatre, an art gallery, and a reading room, until its distinguished boards of directors quickly discovered that its highbrow performances did not bring in the crowds or the income. During the 1880s, the Royal Aquarium developed into a mixture of aquarium, theatre, music hall, circus, sideshow, skating rink, and a promenade attraction. G. A. Farini, aka the Great Farini, was hired as a technical advisor, but in reality he was in charge of the entertainment, and he put on various acts, becoming known for sensational circus style acts, curiosities and human exhibits. This included Captain George Costentenus, the tattooed Greek. Farini was William Leonard Hunt, a Canadian type, a tightrope walker, inventor, promoter, traveller, and later painter. There were so many stories about Ferini. He introduced the Human Cannonball Act using theatrical flames and a spring mechanism. This was first performed in 1877 at the aquarium. He had an adopted son who pretended to be a female and was a typerope walker. He was promoted as a female, a famous female aerialist called Lulu. When he was outed later as a male after he had an accident and the medical team realized that he was male, he continued to be advertised as Mademoiselle Lulu, Queen of the Air. There was also the Lost City of Kalahari incident when Farini took photographs of an African city in a desert when he was doing his travelling. This caused a sensation when he returned to the UK and published the pictures. The story inspired many later searches, but no real city was ever found. Later explanations suggest that he'd probably seen natural dolorite rock formations that looked like manufactured constructions. Farini also put on acts at the aquarium that were later criticized, such as the Friendly Zulu Act and Koroa, the missing link. Koroa was a girl aged about eight years old, dark skinned, and suffering a medical condition that made her very hairy. According to her promotional pamphlet, Koroa was a long sought after missing link between monkeys and human beings, which of course was interest after Charles Darwin's Origin of Species that had been recently published. Well Captain Costetanus was an act book by Farini, the tattooed Greek. He was seen as exotic and extraordinary, and he helped popularize tattoos in the UK. Audiences may not have believed his stories, but they came to see his tattoos, which were described as mostly blue and covering much of his body with plants and animals. As the book suggests, each tattoo was supposed to tell a different story. For example, there was Burmese writing on his fingers, which when translated said he was a bad or disruptible character. This was similar to the tattooing of criminals and slaves during the Roman Empire, where they could be used to warn others about a person's background. Captain George toured Europe and was last heard of in Egypt in the eighteen nineties. He was part of a wider world of tattooed performers. There were other famous tattooed people in the UK at this time, including figures known as the Zebra Man and the Leopard Man, who made their living as sideshow performers. Around 130 years ago, tattooing in the UK was still strongly associated with sailors and soldiers, dock workers, fairground workers. However, there was also another side of tattooing, with the upper class taking an interest. King George V was tattooed long before he became king, probably whilst serving as a naval cadet in Japan. He had a large blue and red dragon and a tiger tattoo, while his brother had a dancing crane, much to their grandmother's Queen Victoria's displeasure. Other members of the royal family and the aristocracy also had tattoos, often influenced by the Japanese tattooing. George V's father, Edward VII, had at least one tattoo, and this helped make tattooing fashionable among some upper class men in the late Victorian and Edwardian period. By the 1920s, George Burchett had become one of the best known tattoo artists in Britain. He tattooed wealthy clients, European royalty and performers. One of his clients was Horace Ridler, who was known as the Great Ormy, or the Zebra Man, and became one of the most famous tattoo personalities of the period. Tom Norman, who was Britain's equivalent of the American showman Barnum, said that almost anything could be exhibited. As it was not the show, it was the tale that you told. Among the Norman's top performers were Mary Ann Bevan, who was said to be the world's ugliest woman. John Chambers, the armless carpenter, Leone, the lion faced lady, and Joseph Merrick, the elephant man, who he famously displayed in London. There were other tattooed artists that were popular in the Victorian period. In December 1889, John Williams had an engagement at Worth's Palace Museum in New York, where up to five thousand people a day were said to come to visit and view his tattooed torso. Williams was born in Leeds in 1853, had the nickname Ratty, and recently married a fellow carnival performer who was known as the Moss Haired Girl. He introduced her into his stage act. When John and Elizabeth Williams came to England, they joined Womwell's Menagerie, touring group of wild animals and human performers, which was part zoo, part circus, and part freak show spectacular. Williams was billed as the Tattooed Man and his wife, Odina, the beautiful Circassian lady. On the 16th of January 1890, John Williams debuted the electrical tattooing device to the British public at the Theatre Royal in Sheffield. He tattooed his wife on stage and offered to tattoo any audience member who wished to come forward. He said the device was safe and painless and claimed to have tattooed animals including pigs and dogs, guinea pigs, rats and geese. When considering the more recent past, during which time tattooing has become mainstream, Sean Hobden's book called Tales from the Old School of Tattooing tells of the stories that he experienced during the 1980s when he worked in Portsmouth and Brighton Pier. He describes a trade that was rough, informal, secretive, and often unhygienic by modern standards. Hobden says that when he began tattooing, tattooists generally did not wear gloves. Sean Hobden was from the traveller community, and although he's said to be retired, his son Josh has carried on the tattooing tradition in his family. Hobden said that he saw Don Ed Hardy at the UK Convention in 1984. Hardy was a Californian tattoo artist who helped tattoo the who helped the tattoo renaissance from the 1970s which saw it become an art form, and he popularized Eastern designs into Western tattooing. Hobden said he saw Watching Hardy was the first time he'd seen gloves and disposable equipment being used alongside chart boxes and clinical waste bins. Hobden had not used such items other than washed out tin cans and the like. When Hobden started tattooing he said that hygiene practices were very different. Before the 1980s, tattooists used Listerine, Detal, alcohol, hibert, and various homemade mixtures for cleaning, spraying and mixing colours. Some smoked while working and might brush ash away with ungloved hands. If ash got into a tattoo, it would be said that the ash was sterile and it would give the tat more personality. Spray bottles were relatively new. Older tattooists had used buckets and sponges. Needles were not prepacked. Tattooists often made them themselves, they cleaned and autoclad them, and sometimes stored them in Vaseline to stop them rusting. Needle bars were reused, and old needles broken off and new ones soldered on. The AIDS scare around 1985 was a turning point. It frightened customers, making some tattooists wonder if the trade might collapse. And it forced tattooers to become more hygienic. Customers increasingly wanted reassurance that new needles were being used, and the later arrival of prepacked needles was seen as a major improvement. Old tattoo shops were described as basic and often hidden away. They were found in back streets, basements, upstairs rooms, dock areas, red light districts. Landlords and neighbours were often reluctant to have a tattooist nearby, and shops were fitted out cheaply with second hand furniture. There was little in the way of modern consultation. A customer would come in, choose a flash design, said where he wanted it, and the stencil went on and the tattooists got on with their job. Barber's chairs or dentist chairs were often used. Saturdays were especially important because many customers were paid weekly in cash and they spent their money on tattoos at the weekend. Tattooists were not closed on a Saturday if they could help it. The social world of these shops were confrontational. Some tattooists kept weapons or heavy objects to deal with trouble such as drunken customers and people asking for money. The tattooists themselves often came from military, naval, fairground, travelling, or criminal backgrounds. Many were self-taught, independent, entrepreneurial. Hobden admired the skill and character of this world, but he did not sentimalize its roughness. Old tattooists often developed stock answers and outrageous stories because they were constantly asked the same question. Some were said to be entertaining showmen, while others were serious, blunt, rude or unsociable, which Hobden later said he understood as being possibly linked to being very focused personalities. He said today modern tattooists often openly praise one another's work, while old school tattooists rarely praised individual tattoos. The strongest compliment was often that's alright, which in their world meant very good. Hobden contrasts old tattooing styles with modern ones. Today sleeves, which is tattoo work on a person's arm, are usually planned as a complete theme design. In older systems, sleeves were often developed bit by bit over years. A customer collected individual bits of flash wherever they fitted. Flash refers to the tattoo designs shown on the wall of a tattoo parlour. It allowed a quick choice, it allowed tattooers to repeat popular designs efficiently. Before modern custom tattooing became more common, much tattooing was based on flash. Classic flash designs would be an anchor, a dagger, snakes and swallows, as were hearts with a name being also popular. When space ran out, tattooers filled the gaps with black work, scales, clouds, bubbles, lightning or other backgrounds. The result could be a mixture of unrelated images. Tattooists drew their own flash work, so their work was recognizable, and Hobden said that he could often identify the work of particular tattooists. Hobden said that the photocopy had changed flash culture. Designs were copied, swapped and traded widely, and often with any with that little attention to copyright. Yet even when designs became more standardized, tattooers could still leave their mark through colouring and execution. Hobden contrasted the old flash shop system where designs were displayed on a wall with later custom shops where designs might be kept in books or cupboards and presented as individual work. He suggests that tattooing may eventually come full circle with future tattooists rediscovering the value of putting designs back on the wall. Hobden told about the old timers Tattoo Club, which is described as a private invitation only club with a maximum full membership of fifty. Prospective members were recommended, invited as guests, and then invited to join if nobody objected. But if one vote was against them, that could stop somebody joining. The club was presented as one of the last survivals of an inner circle culture in tattooing. Earlier organizations existed which ran newsletters, meetings and conventions, but the Old Timers Tattoo Club was portrayed as more private and professional. Hobden said his authority came from being the youngest member of the Old Timers Tattoo Club, and from listening to older tattooists in newsletters, phone calls and bars. He said old type, old school tattooists always had something to complain about. Suppliers, conventions, body piercing, apprentices, scratchers, territory, reality TV shows, and eBay starter kits. I looked this up, you could buy an eBay starter tattoo kit for as little as £25 online. Suppliers were also a major issue. When Hobden started tattooing, supplier addresses were treated as secret information. To get them a newcomer either had to pay a lot of money or earn the trust of an established tattooist. In the 1970s and 80s, some tattoo shops were broken into because this was the only way a scratcher could get professional equipment. Scratcher. As the name suggests, a scratcher was an amateur or background tattooist that had no training. Receiving a full colour tattoo supply guide was remembered by some tattooists as extremely exciting. Hobton thinks that modern tattooists were spoilt by easy access to catalogues and supplies. Conventions were similarly double-edged. They helped tattooists meet, exchange ideas, promote the trade, but they also popularised tattooing and encouraged new people into the business. Older tattooists did not object to every newcomer, but they disliked uncontrolled entry. They believed that people should struggle, serve time and prove themselves as being a tattoo artist. Body piercing also caused resentment. Many older tattooists had pierced ears, but they disliked the rise of modern body piercing, feeling that it used tattooing as new respectability while dragging the trade backwards towards dere was also the issue of old school tattooists and their refusal to tattoo hands, faces and necks. This was partly a moral position and partly a defensive trade policy. In the 1970s, even visible arm tattoos could attract hostile attention. A face or neck tattoo could seriously damage someone's life. Older tattooers feared that if a wrong person, especially a minor or someone connected to an influential family, were given a highly visible tattoo, the press could attack the whole profession. Refusing such work was seen as protecting the trade. Hobden seems to talk up the background of the OTTC, which was formed in 1899. Sorry, 1989. Earlier tattoo organisations including the ETAA, which was formed in 1977. It had its own newsletter. There was also a journal called the Tattoo Buzz. This was connected with the ETAA the European Tattoo Artists Association. This is more of a trade publication rather than a magazine, although it helped keep British and European tattooists informed about meetings, news, personalities and professional matters before the tattoo world had modern magazines and the internet. Portsmouth was often thought of as the spiritual home of maritime tattooing in Britain because of its long connection with the Royal Navy. There was a steady demand for Western nautical designs and early recorded commercial tattooists were often retired Royal Navy seamen. Japanese tattooists were also reported as working in Portsmouth and South Sea, adding another strand to the town's tattooing history. Portsmouth tattooing had a reputation for toughness. This was partly because of its naval setting and the heavy trade from sailors stories from the old school period described fast work, late nights drunken customers, rivalry between tattooists and the need for tattooists to defend their premises Ron Atkers worked at the archers with Joe Cleverly. He was said to be rooted customers were wearing work by rival tattooists which shows the competitive and sometimes confrontational culture of the trade. Ron Ackers he got his first tattoo at the age of fourteen he opened his first tattoo shop in 1952 and moved to Portsmouth in 1966 where he became known for his freehand tattoos. Ackers was regarded as an old school artist who used modern methods. Gary White worked with Ackers and came out of this Portsmouth tattooing background. Hobden describes Gary Gary White is an old school figure. He first met him in 1982 in a tattoo parlour at the end of Brighton Palace Pier. This is the pier that still exists today. It's regarded as the working class pier in Brighton. The other pier, West Pier, was seen as the the Posh Pier, and that would have been unlikely to have a tattoo parlour in the old days. Not much of the West Pier remains today, better known as a roosting place for starlings in the winter. When Hobden met White on the pier in 1982 he described him as short stocky heavily ormented with gold and from a Romani traveller background. White had come from Portsmouth and had been tattooed by several well known tattoo artists. He told Hobden stories about working in Portsmouth where American ships came into port and the tattooists worked through the night, charging much higher prices to the American sailors. Local people who wanted tattoos were told to come back later unless they were prepared to pay American prices up to three times the normal rate. Brighton was much more laid back than the naval ports. Gary White had taken over the pitch on the pier which had previously been worked by Bob Bomwick, who retired in 1982. Bob was also known as Pegaleg Bob because he had a prosthetic leg after a crash. He was said to have a trapdoor through the floor of the pier in his tattoo parlour so he could fish between tattoo appointments as well as using the the hole in the planks as a place to dispose of rubbish. Gary White learned how to work quickly and profitably. One technique was three weighing where a design was repeated repeatedly reduced so that the final tattoo was smaller, quicker and simpler. Detail was simplified, solid colour was avoided where possible and shading was used efficiently. Hobden praised Gary White as extremely fast while still being neat and crisp. The old method was to price flash as high as possible and complete it quickly without losing quality Hobden contrasts this with modern hourly pricing and appointment based tattooing which he sees as less profitable relative to skill trades than the old street tattooing had been. After leaving the pier Gary opened a shop in Gloucester Road in an arcade called Aladdin's Cave in Kensington Gardens which was the alternative hippie area of Brighton. When he had to leave he had two friends build a new tattoo shop from scratch on the corner of Kensington Gardens using timber that they'd acquired. The shop had no planning permission, no proper address, a makeshift water supply from a neighbour's hose pipe and electricity splice from another neighbour. Gary was said to ignore official looking brown envelopes. There was no landline but a red public phone box stood outside and White gave this as his phone number and expected passers by to answer the ringing phone and tell him that somebody wanted to speak to him. It was around this time that the Blue Dragon Tattoo studio was established by Danny Fuller. It became Bright's longest running tattoo studio. It was a corner shopfront with a large blue dragon lettering and dragon artwork which made it a well known part of the city's tattoo landscape and Fuller was another popular local personality. Another well known tattoo family was the Scus family. Hobden gave a description of how in the 1950s they worked in fairgrounds with a tattoo store with two chairs, a decorator's table sheets of flash several bottles of savon and a petrol generator there would always be a large queue of and tattooing continuously went on through the day only stopping to refill the generator hobden tells stories of the fairground attractions of the time large tents with banners and signs such as Come and see the world's fattest lady come and see Mickey Mouse alive there were stripper shows, flea circuses and the like an example being Meet the Werewolf somebody appearing to be half manfinds which later proved to be made of rubber when the tent was full he would jump out and everybody would run away screaming. Fairground side shows disappeared around the mid-1970s because of legislation political correctness and the Trade Descriptions act there were also the boxing booths. The fairground boxing booth fighters had a hard life because they took on allcomers and they also acted as fairground security. The referee was usually biased in favour of the booth fighter the slow counts for the booth fighter and faster counts for the challengers I think if a challenger went and knocked down one of the booth fighters they'd get ten pounds or something or five pounds. Challengers were divided into drunken amateurs showing off for friends and more serious fighters such as good amateur boxers or hard street fighters. The booth fighter could play with the first type but often had to work hard against the second type Hobden explains how the Scos family were an example of the world where many tattooists emerged travelling fairs the tough world of tricks exaggeration and rough entertainment. Les Goose was the founder of the British Tattoo Club and one of the major figures in postwar British tattooing. Bill Schoos, sometimes known as Billy Schoos, was Les Goose's son. Bill was also the brother of Danny Schoos, who was known as Les Goos Junior When Les died in 1973 Danny took over the Meena Road Shop in Bristol while Bill was tattooing in his old shot studio. Bill Schoos was married to Janet Field, better known as Rusty Schoos, who became famous as one of Britain's most heavily tattooed women after World War II tattooing in Britain had declined and was often associated with a low crowd of soldiers sailors, rough entertainment criminal types. Les Scose tried to raise standards he organised tattooists and made tattooing look more respectable. He encouraged professionalism. The British the Bristol I beg your pardon Tattoo club became a social meeting point for tattooed people and tattooists and in the 1950s it attracted press attention. The club helped create the time of tattoo meetings that later developed into the modern tattoo conventions. He moved away from his very fine single needlework and liked stronger outlines and traditional imagery. His studio photographs show a classic flash on the walls, white coated professionalism and a mixture of ordinary customers, heavily tattooed club members and show people Hobden reflected on the end of the world of the old school tattooists when they were able to keep trade secrets and outsiders away for more than a century. He thought that tattooing in the modern world had become open to almost anybody. Big business had entered tattooing was now a normal job involving hard work and competition. Hobden says that before the year 2000 tattooists really did live an outsider lifestyle but now tattoos are so common that not being tattooed might be seen to be a more rebellious choice. Hobden also described his own development he gave up drinking in 2001 he modernized his shop and now works alongside his son who specialises in realism portraits and appointed appointment based sleeve work. The shop therefore combines an old walk-in culture and modern custom tattooing Hobden identifies two political attitudes to tattooing. One side wanted to popularise tattooing and made it respectable the other side saw tattooing as an underground folk art on the edge of society and believed its outsider status gave it mystery and value. He said that both sides meant well but the first side won completely and tattooing became more popular than anybody expected became totally mainstream Liverpool was regarded as a centre of British tattooing outside London and was thought to have more tattoo artists than any other city in Britain. Today there are around sixty registered tattooing businesses in Liverpool but the true number of tattoo artists is probably well over a hundred when studio artists, freelancers and apprentices and guest artists are included. Liverpool's importance as a tattooing centre stemmed from its role as one of Britain's busiest ports. Its docks, sailors, soldiers, pubs, boarding houses, theatres, entertainment venues created an ideal environment for tattooing and generated a strong demand for traditional Western nautical designs. During the First World War Liverpool also benefited from the arrival of American troops and the first electric tattoo machines imported from the American the United States when they were brought into the city. One of Liverpool's leading tattooists at that time was Tom Riley who rose to prominence during the late Victorian period and remained influential in the early 20th century. Many other well known tattoo artists worked in the city. A common feature of their backgrounds was the use of assured names often adopted to avoid detection by the police or the armed forces as some were on the run for various reasons. The transient way of life also helps explain why fairgrow tattooing was so common as many artists rarely stayed in one place for long. London's best known late Victorian tattooist was Sutherland Macdonald who lived from 1860 to 1942. His studios was at the Hammond Turkish Bath at 76 Germain Street where he tattooed wealthy and fashionable clients including the during the late Victorian Wardian period. His clients were said to have included aristocrats, military men, foreign royals, wealthy travellers and according to some claims Winston Churchill Macdonald first encountered tattooing among soldiers and sailors. They used tattoos to record their lives, loves and travels like a pictorial diary on their skin. The methods were often crude and the artwork basic. He began tattooing with sewing needles and Indian ink, improving his work by trial and error. Before long he was tattooing officers and senior ranks as well as ordinary servicemen. He helped move tattooing from a sailor and soldier trade into more fashionable upper class work. He presented himself almost like a medical man respectable premises. One recent history of tattooing described him as a society tattooist who advertised in publications such as Country Life and Sporting Times. He helped create the idea of a professional tattoo studio, private rooms, artistic designs, respectable surroundings and tattooing presented as a skilled decorative art. Some of his designs were copyrighted so only a wealthy patron could wear that particular image Macdonald first used hand tools but later became associated with the new electric key electric tattooing machines. In the 1890s he received a British patent for electric tattooing machine making one of the key figures in the modernisation of professional tattooing in the UK his work was strongly influenced by Japanese tattooists and the Japanese design. A journalist writing in the Globe in October 1892 described Macdonald's tattooing room at the Turkish baths he said the room contained armchairs, ordinary chairs, incandescent light, Japanese designs on parchment, vars of cocaine, coloured inks, an electrical machine, champagne bottles and Nubian cigarettes. The description gives a vivid impression of tattooing as something exotic, fashionable, artistic and faintly medical Macdonald was also involved in early cosmetic tattooing. One contemporary account described a woman who was tired of rooging her cheeks and went to him to have more permanent colouring applied. He may also have done colour work connected with skin grass for accident victims which gives him an unusual place between tattooing cosmetics and medical looking skin work. Macdonald spent about fifty years tattooing at 76 Germain Street and in April 1941 during the Second World War a Luftwaffe parachute mine exploded early one morning destroying the Turkish baths. By then Macdonald's long career had already helped transform tattooing in London from a rough maritime practice into a fashionable and professional art. George Burschett who lived from 1872 to 1953 was another well known London based tattoo artist. Like Sutherland was said like Sutherland Macdonald he was said to have tattooed wealthy upper class clients and royalty. He was born George Burschett Davis in Brighton in 1872 according to the Tattoo archive he tattooed schoolmates as a boy. He joined the Royal Navy at the age of 13 and later jumped ship at Jaffa and did not return to Britain for another twelve years. In that account he dropped the surname Davis and became George Burchett in order to avoid the authorities. Burchett became began with an ordinary pictorial tattooing but later developed an interest in cosmetic tattooing. His wife Edith served as an early experimental subject before he offered permanent complexion work, lip colour and eyeshadow to female clients. He started out at Marle End in the East End of London before moving to premises near Waterloo Station. During the First World War the demand for patriotic and military tattoos brought him considerable business. In the 1930s he helped popularize cosmetic tattooing including tattooed eyebrows and permanent makeup effects for women. Birchett also encouraged his brother and sons to enter the trade and after his death in 1953 his son Leslie Burchett took over the family studio in Waterloo Road. Birchett's own legend later became heavily embroidered Memors of a Tattooist published in 1958 were said to have twisted the truth and were compiled from family oral history by people who wanted George to become a tattooing legend. This means that some stories about him needed to be treated carefully especially when they depended on later family tradition rather than contemporary evidence. George Bigmore represents a different side of tattooing in London. Unlike Macdonald, South or Burschett he was not a society tattooist. He was a working class London tattooer who served soldiers, sailors, dock workers and ordinary customers in the Bow and Delston areas in the East End. Born in nine in 1876 he learnt the trade of bootmaking but he saw tattooing as a way to support his family. He worked through the Boer War, the First World War and the Second World War. By 1956 he described himself as the oldest tattooist left in London. His shop in Delston was had walls covered with his own designs and catering to regular customers especially soldiers. He died in 1960 aged 84 after a career of around 60 years and his designs later survived through his son and other tattooists and they continued to be copied reputation was important in the tattooing world. Successful artists had to distinguish themselves from imitators and inferior rivals. It was not unusual for travelling tattooists to set up a booth or tent in a town and forcibly advertise themselves as one of the better known London tattoo artists. This could guarantee a steady flow of eager customers for the impersonator especially in rural towns where the average person would never have met the Sutherland Macdonald or Tom Riley or Elf Self in person but he might have read about them in newspapers. Many established tattoo artists had to warn the public about deception. Their permanent addresses were printed in adverts, leaflets and newspapers so the public could identify genuine tattooists. During the first part of the 20th century patriotic feeling imperial imagery aristocratic fashion all helped create demand for tattooing in Britain. During 1914 as Britain moved towards wartoing demand rose sharply. Young recruits wanted patriotic designs crests, monograms, flags, crowns, portraits of the king, sweetheart tattoos and regimental badges. George Burchett, Elf Sutherland Macdonald still dominated the fashionable end of cosmetic tattooing for wealthy London women, but fair ground and travelling tattooers had made tattooing popular with a wider public. Many older showmen were still travelling the country tattooing at fairs and markets up in until the Second World War. Meanwhile professional tattoo artists operated in many coastal towns and ports places listed including Aberdeen, Edinburgh, New Haven, Fleetwood, Swansea, Newport, Barrie, Southampton, Margate, Plymouth and so on. Elf South was another London based artist and one of the late 19th century tattooing pioneers. He belonged to a wider group of professional tattooists active in London during this period. Some of these people worked from established premises while others operated from pubs, markets, fairs or their own homes. Together they showed the range of late Victorian and Edwardian tattooing, from society studios and cosmetic work to rougher working class military and fairground tattooing. When Elf South began his career in April 1897 he had already been extensively tattooed. A magazine article from that year illustrated with a poor quality photograph of his torso claimed that the tattooing had been carried out by somebody with considerable skill. This raises the possibility that the artist who tattooed South may have also trained him was thought to be the the Japanese master Horateyo who was the only known tattoo as training pupil pupils in London at that time although this is not known for certain. South worked at the Royal Aquarium in London and one of the best known entertainment Venues of the period. He seemed to have attracted a wide range of clients, including military men and fashionable customers. One story claimed that a German officer who had served in the Franco-German War had all his meadows tattooed on his arm, while a well-known British colonel had the heads of all his race horses tattooed on his back. Stories like these show the mixture of military pride, personal display, and spectacle that surrounded tattooing in the late Victorian period. The most serious episode connected with South was the Lewis Montgomery Forbes case at the Royal Aquarium in 1899. Forbes first received small tattoos on both arms from South, then returned for a much longer sitting in which South tattooed a line on his chest. The operation lasted about ten hours. Forbes became ill soon afterwards and died a few days later from suspected blood poisoning. South gave evidence at the inquest after it was discovered that Forbes had recently undergone the long tattooing operation. South defended himself by saying he was a professional tattooist. He tattooed thousands of people without incident, and his inks were perfectly safe. He also pointed out that both he and his wife were heavily tattooed, without suffering from any harm. The jury accepted the medical evidence and placed no blame on South. One newspaper mistakenly named him as Smith, which may have helped protect his reputation. Even so, the case showed the risks and rough conditions that could surround late Victorian tattooing. Very long sittings, alcohol, exhaustion, possible infection, and uncertain medical understanding. Al South died on the 6th of May 1934 in London. His career places him among the important London tattooists of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. It also shows a rougher and more public side of the trade than society tattooing associated with figures such as Sutherland MacDonald. So in conclusion, British tattooing grew out of many overlapping worlds. It belonged to sailors, soldiers, criminals, aristocrats, clerks, dockers, fairground people, travelling performers, Japanese masters, mail order suppliers, machine makers, sign writers, shopkeepers, photographers. It was shaped by law interest, tattoo performers, famous public stories such as the Titchborne case, and the rise of electric tattooing. Much of the history was hidden, dismissed, or lost because tattooing was often seen as disreputable, secretive, shocking, or meaty commercial. It was not always treated as art or social history. Later collectors and historians, including Jimmy Scus and Paul Ramsbottom, were credited with preserving photographs, letters, painted banners, machines, and family memories and other evidence. Without collectors like them, much of the trade's history would have disappeared with the old tattooists themselves. Old school tattooists often felt that some parts of their trade had been lost. These included the secrecy, the character, the independence, the speed, the flash culture, informal apprenticeships, rough humour, and the outsider identity of the old tattoo shop. Modern tattooing may be more acceptable, regulated, and artistically varied, but the older world had its own distinctive atmosphere, shaped by the street, the fairground, the port barracks, and the background studio. Anyhow, that concludes this podcast. I'd like to thank anybody listening. I'd like to thank Damselfly for the background music, and until next time, I'll say goodbye.