William Haselden

Who was William Haselden?

William Kerridge Haselden was an English cartoonist and caricaturist.

He was the second of five children of Adolphe Henry Haselden and his wife Susan Elizabeth. Haselden's parents were both English but met in Seville, where his father was director of the Seville Gasworks.

Haselden's father died During a family holiday to England in 1874, and the remaining family stayed in England, settling in Hampstead. The young William's education at a private school was cut short due to the family's financial problems, and he left school at the age of 16 with no formal artistic training.

He worked unhappily as an underwriter at Lloyd's in London for thirteen years before some of his sketches were accepted for the periodical The Sovereign. When this ceased publication a few months later, he obtained some freelance work on the Tatler and St. James's Gazette. After approaching the offices of Alfred Harmsworth in 1903, Haselden managed to obtain a full-time post on Harmsworth's new venture, the Daily Mirror. Here he remained until his retirement in 1940.

At the Mirror, Haselden originally started with political cartoons, but soon settled into his trademark style of gentle, conservative social commentary reflecting on middle class fashions and manners. His cartoons usually consisted of a single frame divided into a number of panels, for which he has been viewed as the father of British strip cartoon.