British Literary Institution Lost Its Punch--and Its Subscribers : Media: The humor magazine was once a model for others around world. But changing times took their toll.

Punch: born July 17, 1841; died April 8, 1992.

In between Punch became a national institution, the firm link with home for the British expatriates who carried the white man’s burden around the world; publisher of such famous artists and writers as Sir John Tenniel (illustrator of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books) and novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, and model for humor and literary magazines around the world.

The only magazine to be cited in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Punch begat one-liners such as:

“Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow.”

“You pays your money and you takes your choice.”

“It’s worse than wicked, my dear, it’s vulgar.”

The final Punch cover showed Mr. Punch, his companion, Judy, and his dog Toby stumbling into the sunset. Inside was a cartoon of a gravestone inscribed: “Mr. Punch 1841-1992. Not as alive as he used to be.”

Exactly. For many years before its demise, the magazine had lost its biting wit and satire and was widely viewed, rightly or wrongly, as inoffensive fare without punch (pun intended); no reading material for bright, upscale young people.

Also it could never shake off its image as a superior, middle-class journal of Tory politics, making fun of working people and mocking their speech, clothes and habits, an attitude that persisted into the 1930s.

Ironically the magazine achieved its peak circulation--175,000 a week--in 1948, when the British Empire was already in precipitous decline.

No one found a formula for arresting the postwar decline. Malcolm Muggeridge, editor from 1953 to 1957, sharpened the style and brought in major literary names such as poet John Betjeman and novelist Anthony Powell. Bernard Hollowood, whose decade as editor ended in 1968, added a women’s page. Alan Coren, editor from 1978-1987, was noted for writing spoof columns by Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin and President Carter’s mother, Lillian.

United Newspapers, which owned Punch since 1969, closed it on April 8 after its 7,888th issue.

David Thomas, Punch’s 13th and last editor, said the magazine was “talked down” by opinion-formers who never bothered to read it.

Graham Wilson, managing director of United Newspapers, said print advertising was increasingly moving into newspaper magazine supplements and Punch had lost $2.1 million last year.

It was selling 33,000 copies a week, up from a low of 30,000 three years earlier, and advertising was up 15%. But Wilson said Punch needed to double both figures.

In its Victorian heyday, Punch was quoted worldwide and was instantly recognizable by the extraordinary cover that graced it for 108 years, drawn by Richard Doyle.

His beak-nosed Mr. Punch, in pointed cap, grinned slyly after sketching a crowned British lion while his dog Toby, in feathered hat, sat on a pile of bound volumes. Below was a drawing of what looked like Mr. Punch on his way to an orgy.

Punch first appeared on July 17, 1841, the year that explorer-missionary David Livingstone went to Africa, Britain took over Hong Kong and Thomas Cook invented railway excursions and pioneered tourism.

The magazine was founded on capital of $125 by Ebeneezer Landells, a wood engraver, and Henry Mayhew, a journalist still famous for a classic social survey, “London Labour and the London Poor.”

The first issue cost 3 pence, then 2 cents, and sold 6,000 copies.

The Somerset County Gazette, a weekly newspaper, welcomed Punch’s first issue: “It is the first comic we ever saw which was not vulgar. It will provoke many a hearty laugh, but never call a blush to the most delicate cheek.”

Punch’s professed purpose was to attack social abuses and the pomp and privileges of the great. Its early radicalism mellowed and Punch for most of its life was very much the upholder of the status quo.

Mark Lemon, a 31-year-old pub keeper who looked like Karl Marx, was the first editor and held the job until his death in 1870.

Lemon kept his tavern, The Shakespeare’s Head, but he preferred to crack jokes and write the plays that paid Punch’s early debts.

Someone on the staff invented the title by saying: “We’ll call it Punch, for it’s nothing without Lemon.” The staff was later thankful not to have taken up its first choice of a title, The Funny Dog With Comic Tales.

Punch began to prosper when it produced annual almanacs, the first in 1842 selling 90,000 copies. It was taken over that year by publishers Bradbury and Evans, and sales moved briskly when they put it on train station bookstalls of the railways that were extending throughout Britain.

Punch’s historian, the late R.G.G. Price, said the magazine did well because it was extensively advertised; being a weekly it could scoop the monthlies, which contained the wittiest writing, and it had family appeal because it was respectable.

Punch had no competition on its own level and it attracted the finest illustrators such as Doyle, John Leech, who drew the follies and foibles of the day in town and country, Charles Keene and Tenniel.

But in the 20th Century, the sharpest political cartoonists had switched over to newspapers.

Miles Kington, a contemporary humorist, says it’s impossible to think of laughing at anything in Punch from the 19th Century that wasn’t a cartoon. “Yet the artists were always second-class citizens, subject to the final decision of the writer,” he says.

Punch jokes and phrases entered the language, the best known being “a curate’s egg.”

In George du Maurier’s 1895 cartoon, a bishop at a breakfast table fears his curate got a bad egg.

“Oh no, my lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent,” was the reply.

Every week, Punch held a lunch at which the proprietors and staff and later the contributors and distinguished people discussed the full-page political cartoon.

The Punch lunches continued to the end--once every two weeks under the last editor--around the original, legendary deal table, the surface now covered with glass to protect the initials traditionally carved in the wood by the staff, Lemon’s being the first.

Only six outsiders were ever invited to carve their initials on the table top. American humorist James Thurber and four living members of the royal family did so but Mark Twain declined. Seeing the initials of novelist W.M. Thackeray, Twain said two-thirds of Thackeray would suffice for him.

Thackeray was a long-serving contributor who said he wrote for Punch “only because of its good pay and great opportunity for laughing, sneering, kicking and gambadoing.” He resigned twice and told his mother in 1842 that Punch was “a very low paper.”

Women were not admitted to the Punch lunches until 1975, when Margaret Thatcher, then the leader of the Conservative opposition, came to dine.

“I expect the table will go to a museum,” said Punch’s librarian, Amanda-Jane Doran, who is still in place, surrounded by models of Mr. Punch, hundreds of bound volumes and vast files. Punch published nearly 500,000 cartoons altogether.

During its heyday, Punch’s readers tittered over the cartoons, the innuendoes and the lampoons but what people really want--and get these days--is gossip that names names.

Tabloid newspapers retailing scandal now sell in millions every day. More serious tales of dark doings in high places appear first in Private Eye, a biweekly of gossip, exposure journalism and ferocious cartoons that sells 210,000 copies an issue.

Peter Wallis, a market and management consultant, told the company it would be hard for Punch to survive.

“The picture the market had of Punch was of a bland personality,” Wallis said.

“We found the bright, young, upscale people who were supposed to be Punch readers were not,” Wallis said. “Punch was my dad--middle-aged fun for middle-aged people in another age.”