Our Hall of Fame honour is bestowed upon those who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of the art of Punch & Judy

 

GEORGE SPEAIGHT (1914 - 2006)
Puppeteer and historian whose extensive research led him to write the first definitive history of the Punch & Judy show.

Without George's fine history published in 1970 few of us would know about the fascinating history and evolution of our national puppet. All the Professor's who give talks and lectures freely quote from it. We therefore owe George a tremendous debt for all the hard work and research that he put into writing this famous, informative and fascinating book.

Also, at his instigation, a plaque was inscribed on the front wall of St. Paul's Church Covent Garden in 1962, honouring Samuel Pepys, his diary and the first recorded Punch show in England in the year 1662. At the 325^th celebration of this event, George donned wig and costume and acted the part of Samuel Pepys.

George was an honorary member of the Punch & Judy Fellowship and along with his wife Mary, attended many of our Festival. In Harrogate, Yorkshire, George opened the proceedings by cutting a string of sausages. He was a most likeable gentleman with a loveable streak of English eccentricity and had a warm and generous nature. The PJF was proud to have this outstanding puppeteer, historian and writer as a member of its organisation.

He told me that he first saw Punch & Judy in Hatfield Park when he was about seven years old. This was the age when he first started to play with Model Theatre to act out plays, which of course he continued to do all his life. He recalled the Punch show quite clearly but sadly not who performed it.

Later on his first job was to be a bookseller, but one who gave toy theatre performances every Christmas in the shop. At that time he became aware of other types of puppet and joined the British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild. A little later still, he went through a stage of his life in which he thought that it would be good to be a farmer and went to work on the little plot of land that Eric Gill owned in Buckinghamshire. This didn't last long and he remembered standing up, straightening his back and thinking: This is not the kind of life that I want. What on earth can I do with it? He said to himself: "I know, I'll write the history of Punch and Judy." He was about twenty-five years old at the time.

Straight away he began taking out library books that would give him some information. At that time, 1937, there didn't seem to be any books about Punch's history, but by the time the War broke out he had made a good start. He then joined the local Fire Service where the principle was that you had to be ready in the fire station all day, every day, for a week. The next week it was every night for a week, and so on. As there were no air-raids in the early months of the war the personnel were able to sleep at the station, though of course wearing their clothes. So the days were free and George discovered the library of books in the British Museum and all day long he read all sorts of books that were a great help in studying the history of Punch, books which he would never have found in his local library. So he had made a excellent progress, but of course that could not last.

He served as a radio operator in the Merchant Navy and later the Royal Navy. His ship Bickerton was sunk while in convoy to Murmansk. He was sent to Gibraltar and then to Ceylon. The War ended as soon as he arrived there and fortunately he received a commission to write a book about the Toy Theatre, which was mostly done in Ceylon. He then came home and got married and was engaged to run a Toy Theatre Shop, it was about 1947 and it didn't look as if the shop could afford to pay him.

During all this time he had kept the notes he had made about Punch & Judy so he returned to the British Museum and the old newspaper library and read and read and read. It became obvious to him that he could not write a book about Punch alone; it had to include all the other puppets and so it became 'The History of the English Puppet Theatre' which was finally published in 1955. Punch occupied quite a lot of pages in the book but was to some extent rather swamped by the other puppets.

In 1970 he had the opportunity to extract the Punch pages, he ignored the notes and appendices, added a short chapter on Punch's foreign cousins, included some colour illustrations and a text of the play. The result was 'Punch and Judy: A History'.

I asked George, during the eighties, if he would consider updating the book and republishing it. This was not possible but he did tell me about further research that he had undertaken and some of the new things that had come to light:

When he began reading in the British Museum there were no Italian books that gave any information about the history of the puppet Pulcinella. When visiting Italy George tried to see as many Pulcinella shows as possible. He bought recordings of Pulcinella shows from a Roman performer but in no case could he find any similarity with the English Punch show. So he stated in his book, "There is a clear case for claiming a purely English origin for Punch and Judy." Of course he knew that Punch had developed from Pulcinella who had been introduced to England in 1662 by an Italian performer, but he deduced that all the subsidiary characters seemed to have been introduced as the show developed in England.

In the course of time a few writers like Micheal Byrom in England and Hans Purschke in Germany began to dispute George's theory. They just could not accept it. But where was the proof?

As the years passed he began to seek out the proof for himself and when he was in Venice he happened upon an exhibition of paintings by Pietro Longhi, one of which showed a live dog taking part in a Punchinello performance in a glove puppet booth.  The painting was dated about 1760. A dog is not illustrated in prints of a Punch show in England until about 1825. So it suggested that the Italians got in first with a dog, which became so popular in England.

Then in 1982, an Italian puppeteer Bruno Leone was invited to London by the Punch and Judy Fellowship and performed a Pulcinella who was condemned to be hanged but tricked the hangman into letting himself be hanged.

George thought that he was copying the English show, but in 1986 Bruno published a collection of traditional texts that had been preserved by a Neapolitan puppeteer who had the reputation of keeping the authentic style more perfectly than any other performer. His name was Nunzio Zampella and in one of the plays the hangman is tricked into placing his head into the noose and Pulcinella pulls the rope. There is no clear evidence that the hanging scene in Punch and Judy is any earlier in England than the Payne Collier text in 1828 so here too the indication is that it was known in Italy at an earlier date.

George produced and article for a scholarly magazine called Theatre Research International in 1995 which he headed 'The Origin of Punch and Judy: A New Clue'. In this he gave what he felt was a complete picture, in which the Punch and Judy show was partly descended from Italian and English traditions. There are still many characters in the show that are purely of English origin, chiefly Judy, the baby, the doctor, the foreigner and the clown, but crocodile seems to have come from Germany.

Books written by

Juvenile Drama: The History of the English Toy Theatre 1946
The History of the English Puppet Theatre 1955
The History of the English Toy Theatre 1969 Revised edition
Punch and Judy: A History 1970
The Book of Clowns 1980
A History of the Circus 1980
John Wright and the Little Angel Theatre 1980
Comedy Characters: Harlequin, Punch, Pierrot, in England 1985
Collecting Theatre Memorabilia 1988
The History of the English Puppet Theatre 1990 Revised edition

George also wrote countless articles in a wide variety of Journals.

Des Turner
President of The Punch & Judy Fellowship

The portrait puppet of George Speaight (shown above) was made by Geoff Felix for the 2006 May Fayre in Covent Garden

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PERCY PRESS Snr (1902 - 1980)
Known as the Uncrowned King of Punch & Judy Men, for many years Percy had a regular pitch on Hastings Pier and outside Madam Tussauds in London.

Inside St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden (Known as the Actors Church) there is a memorial plaque to Percy Press Snr.

 

Bryan Clarke, Chairman of The Punch & Judy Fellowship, pays tribute to and shares his memories of Percy Press Snr.

 

"I first met Percy Press Snr, when I was 12 years of age, at a British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild (BPMTG)  Exhibition at the Royal Hotel in Russell Square, where I'd been asked to perform by the Exhibition Organiser Harold Aidleberry, as I'd appeared on Television (In the days of Black & White TV).

 

I was to use Percy's own Booth, however, the first obstacle I encountered was that he used a wire inside the Booth, to hang the puppets on (each puppet hang a hook attached) rather than individual hooks - but we sorted this out and I went on to perform my show and I immediately became acknowledged and recognised as a performer. From then on, Percy became my mentor and a friend and spent many hours teaching me the secrets of his performance, how to handle an audience and deliver a joke.

 

His show was so special, the timing superb and the manipulation of the puppets was amazing. His speciality was the twisting and swirling of each puppet around the slapstick. This is not very easy to do, but it was very effective.

 

He gained his comedy timing and humour from his many years involvement with the Music Hall as well as his ability to entertain on the streets with Magic. You name it, and he'd done it all and if proof were needed, it really did show in each of performances.

 

Being short of stature, Percy performed his Punch show with his hands above his head, enabling Mr Punch to literally walk around the Booth, strutting like a Cock Hen.

 

His counting routine really was something else and he had many variations to it. But of all his routines, my favourite was that of the Hangman, great Pantomime indeed. In all the shows I saw, never once did I see him do the Boxing Match or for that matter use a Policeman, but he always had a Beadle. In fact Percy didn't bother with novelty routines at all and if he did, I didn't ever see him perform them. His was a truly traditional show.

 

For many years he was Chairman of the BPMTG, a role which suited him well. Everyone in show business knew Percy Press Snr. Yet he was very humble about what he did, to Percy it was a job which allowed him to bring up his family on the earnings he made.

 

What a privilege it was for me to have known him. But most of all to have watched and enjoyed the best Punch & Judy show I have ever seen - Cheers Percy."

 

Bryan Clarke

Chairman of The Punch & Judy Fellowship

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