Australian Dictionary of Biography

  • Tip: searches only the name field
  • Tip: Use double quotes to search for a phrase

Cultural Advice

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website contains names, images, and voices of deceased persons.

In addition, some articles contain terms or views that were acceptable within mainstream Australian culture in the period in which they were written, but may no longer be considered appropriate.

These articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Australian National University.

Older articles are being reviewed with a view to bringing them into line with contemporary values but the original text will remain available for historical context.

Edward Scafe Scorfield (1882–1965)

by Peter Coleman

This article was published:

Edward Scafe Scorfield (1882-1965), cartoonist, soldier and sportsman, was born on 21 April 1882 at Preston, Northumberland, England, son of Joseph Scorfield, insurance agent, and his wife Rebecca Jane, née Taylor. Educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, Ted became a marine architect. An active member of the Tynemouth Amateur Rowing Club from 1906, he was to be made a life member in 1925. He captained (1910-12) the celebrated Percy Park Rugby Football Club, represented (1910-13) Northumberland County and played lock-forward for England against France in 1910. In the following year the Royal Humane Society commended him, on parchment, for his part in the rescue at Tynemouth of a drowning man who was being carried seaward.

In August 1914 Scorfield enlisted in the British Army. He served with the 66th Field Company, Royal Engineers, at Gallipoli (in the landing at Suvla Bay), Salonika (Thessaloniki), Greece, and Palestine. Promoted sergeant, he was twice mentioned in dispatches and was appointed to the Russian Order of St George.

After World War I, while employed in a Tyneside shipyard, he began to draw cartoons for the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle. On the advice of his agent Percy Bradshaw, he came to Sydney in 1925 and joined the Bulletin as a cartoonist and illustrator, replacing Norman Lindsay. At St James's Church of England, Sydney, on 4 October 1928 he married Helen Cecilia Olga Louise Pillinger, a 24-year-old Englishwoman; they were childless.

Scorfield's supple line, eye for detail and kindly humour made him a popular jokesmith. He used, with an infectious flourish, the stock devices of his time—philandering husbands, relaxed gaolbirds, punch-drunk boxers, blackened-eyed wives, devious fortune-tellers, stingy Scots, dopey Pommies, canny Jewish bookmakers, pitiless wowsers, prolific Catholics, 'mine-tinkit' Aborigines, flirtatious flappers and naughty ragamuffins. His comic sketches of animals, especially his cheeky dogs, were famous. He drew with a pen and dry brush, and his settings ranged from city slums to outback farms.

His political cartoons cheerfully followed the Bulletin line of the period, a combination of Australian nationalism and British conservatism. In the desperate days of World War II Scorfield lionized the Digger, exalted the Allies against the Japanese, and lampooned black-marketeers, strikers and 'white-feather conchies'. But he was almost never malicious: even his sinister Hitler, Stalin and Hirohito had a human, almost redeeming, fishiness about them. His acclaimed caricature of Dr H. V. Evatt—short, beefy, bespectacled, with a big head and jutting chin personifying relentless folly—was both devastating and affectionate. He published two collections of cartoons, A Mixed Grill (1943) and A Mixed Grill, No.2 (1952).

A self-effacing man and a generous friend, Scorfield regularly bought the work of hard-up artists for the Bulletin simply to give them an income. He was tall, muscular and slow to anger, but a formidable 'knuckleman' when aroused. Always a Geordie, he retained the regional accents of his youth and decorated his office with a picture of the Blaydon races. He resigned in 1961, soon after Sir Frank Packer bought the ailing Bulletin and began to transform the magazine. Scorfield died on 11 December 1965 in hospital at Mosman and was cremated; his wife survived him.

Select Bibliography

  • V. Lindesay, The Inked-in Image (Melb, 1970)
  • J. Kerr, Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White (Syd, 1999)
  • Bulletin, 25 Dec 1965
  • Royal Humane Society, London, committee minutes, 10 Oct 1911
  • private information.

Related Entries in NCB Sites

Citation details

Peter Coleman, 'Scorfield, Edward Scafe (1882–1965)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/scorfield-edward-scafe-11639/text20789, published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 30 March 2024.

This article was published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 16, (Melbourne University Press), 2002

View the front pages for Volume 16

© Copyright Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2006-2024

Life Summary [details]

Birth

21 April, 1882
Preston, Northumberland, England

Death

11 December, 1965 (aged 83)
Mosman, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Cultural Heritage

Includes subject's nationality; their parents' nationality; the countries in which they spent a significant part of their childhood, and their self-identity.

Occupation