I’ve written before on this blog about my love for the cartoons of Carl Giles and the education they gave me as I started to explore British social history of the 20th Century. Recently I found myself looking for inspiration for an image to include in a birthday card for our good friend, Martin Heaphy, proprietor of Sounds That Swing records of Camden, and keeper of the flame of the true Teddy Boy spirit (truly Edwardian and free from day-glo drape suits!). That gave me the prompt I needed to complete a little project I’ve been meaning to embark on for a long time, to trawl through my collection of Giles annuals from the 50s and early 60s, and find all the cartoons featuring Teddy Boys and other youth cults of the era. The images speak for themselves, and chart the evolution from the early Teds, through Hipsters and Ton Up Boys, though I drew the line at scruffy teenagers more generally – only because Giles included an awful lot of them and the pile of images to be scanned would have grown exponentially.
So, for Martin and all the others keeping the spirit of the original Teds alive, plus other devotees of the Giles style, here’s a parade of youthful n’er do wells, starting with the years 1955 to 1957 (click on each to enlarge)..
And then the back end of the 1950s…
And on into the 1960s…
