Advent Calendar: 10 December – Father Christmas
Illustration of Father Christmas “Up-to-Date” by the illustrator Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914), published in the magazine Punch, or the London Charivari, 26 December 1896 (per AP101.P8 Volume CXI). Tenniel was a political cartoonist for Punch for fifty years but is possibly more commonly known as the illustrator of Lewis Carroll‘s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865).
The illustration shows Father Christmas on an early car. In 1896 the first speeding ticket was issued to a driver of a motor car who was four times over the legal speed limit – he reached 8 miles per hour and was fined 1 shilling, having been caught by a policeman on a bicycle!