Mark Lemon – First Editor of ‘Punch’

The speaker at our October meeting was Charles Kay, leader of our annual London walks, who spoke about someone most of us had never heard of. Mark Lemon, the first editor of Punch, was a close personal friend of Charles Dickens. Because of his portly frame he was known to the Dickens children as ‘Uncle Corpus.’ Sadly, a quarrel between the two men led to an irreparable schism between the two families.

Charles highlighted the parallels between the two men – both were magazine editors, both enthusiastic actors and both died within two weeks of each other.

The first edition of punch was published in 1841 and, although it got off to a shaky start, it became famous for its satirical cartoons. The magazine lasted 151 years, closing down in 1992.

Lemon spent the last twelve years of his life in Crawley where he became very much involved in the community, among other things, organising the Crawley Fire Brigade.