A Cartoonist called L.R. Briautt, circa 1930-40s

[Redfyre]

I am interested in learning something about a Sheffield newspaper cartoonist from the 1930s and into the early 1940s. He signed himself as L.R. Briault, and worked for both the Sheffield Telegraph and the Green Un. Examples of his work was recently featured in the 100th anniversary edition/souvenir published by the Green Un, and his work can be found in some of the pre-war Sheffield Telegraph football guides. He did caricatures representing the local football clubs --United, Wednesday, Barnsley, Rotherham, Chesterfield etc.

I imagine that he lived in Shefield for much of his career, and he may have had a family, but I cannot find the name in a telephone directory.

If I knew when he either retired or died, it may well be that there was a write-up in the Telegraph.

[fleetwood]

Hi Redfyre -Would he have had any connection to the 'Heap' cartoons and caricatures you used to see in the Sheffield Telegraph & Star.

[Redfyre]

No, Harry Heap was always on The Star, and though he started at the same office as Briault (The Star and Telegraph were quite separate even though they shared the same premises) in the 1930s, he had a very different style and went on to become a sort of legend as a cartoonist. Plenty is known about Harry Heap, and a few people still remember that John Harris, the famous novelist, was also a cartoonist (though he was a Telegraph man) in the same era; but nobody seems to know anything about Briautt.

My own feeling is that he may have been called up during the war, and did not return to the paper.

[metalman]

Are you sure that's the right surname? If you do a search on FreeBMD for Briautt you get nothing, but if you search for Briault you get some possible births of the right sort of vintage, for example Louis Ranson Briault born in 1885 and Ronald L R Briault born in 1913.

[metalman]

Looks like the first of those two is your man. See here.

[Redfyre]

Thanks Metalman, you have solved a problem that has been puzzling me for some years, and even the late Peter Harvey wasn't able to get to the bottom of it. I have misread the signature on the caricatures I have seen, and seen the last two letters in his surname as tt when it was lt. Now I know he was Louis Briault, I shall probably be able to find even more about him, for the Telegraph probably carried an obit in Dec 1944.

Thanks again, Metalman.

[metalman]

Glad to be of service.

[Redfyre]

Metalman, if you can advise me how you were able to post your illustration, I will send a copy of a card I have made which features an Owls and a Blade done by LRB, plus the Heap character Alf.

[metalman]

I didn't post an illustration, it was just a link to a website which appears to be some sort of Dutch comics encyclopaedia. You can't post pics on here unless you upload them to Photobucket or something similar and then put them in as a link.

[dublugee]

Back to cartoonists and the First World War: in a History of the Sheffield City Battalion published a couple of years ago, a group photograph includes a Corporal O Bradshaw, who is understood to have been a cartoonist with connections to the Sheffield Telegraph. Has anyone out there heard of him?