HASELDEN, William Kerridge

1872 - 1953

William Kerridge Haselden was born at Seville, Spain on 3 December 1872, second of the five children of Adolphe Henry Haselden (1834-21 July 1878), civil engineer, and his wife, Susanna Elizabeth née Kerridge (died 1929). His parents were both English but met in Seville where his father was a director of the Seville Gasworks. In 1874, the family moved from Seville to Linares, Spain where Haselden’s uncle was running the family mining business, but during a holiday in England in 1877, living at 62 Clifton Hill, St John's Wood, London, his father contracted pneumonia and died at 4 Carlton Road, Maida Vale in 1878. The family remained at St John's Wood, living off the income from shares in the family business, and William was sent to private school in Carlton Hill, St John's Wood. Following the sale of the family mines, and his mother's increasingly desperate financial straits, his education was curtailed when William left school having received no formal artistic training. Haselden, through the patronage of a family friend, obtained a post as an underwriter at Lloyd's of London where he remained for some thirteen years, he then took his first step in following a career as a cartoonist. In 1902, after indulging his recreation of sketching, he submitted a caricature of one of the Lloyd's underwriters to the periodical 'The Sovereign' and was invited to join the staff of the paper, drawing political cartoons along with theatrical sketches. However, 'The Sovereign' ceased publication in April 1903, when he produced freelance cartoons and sketches for 'The Tatler' and 'St James's Gazette' but through the offices of Arkas Sapp (1874-1923), obtained a full-time staff post with Alfred Harmsworth, who hired him at a salary of £5 a week for a new journalistic venture, the 'Daily Mirror'. Haselden started work on the 'Daily Mirror' in January 1904, under its new editor, Henry Hamilton Fyfe (1869-1951), originally starting with political work like that of 'The Sovereign'. By 1906, Haselden had settled on the formula which remained intrinsic to his work in the 'Daily Mirror' until his retirement in 1940. From April 1906, Haselden also contributed theatrical cartoons to 'Punch' and collections of these cartoons were gathered in twenty-nine volumes (1906-1935) of ‘Daily Mirror Reflections'. Haselden had been having an affair with his editor’s wife, Eleanor, and in May 1906 she left her husband to live with him when Fyfe petitioned for divorce, citing Haselden as co-respondent. After it was finalised in February 1907, Eleanor and Haselden were married, and Fyfe left the Daily Mirror. William and Eleanor Charlotte née Lane-Bayliff (9 June 1875–1944) had two children, Celia Mary and John Kerridge. Resident at 1 Pelham Place in south-west London for most of his career, from the mid-1930s he spent increased time at the family's holiday home, Dudley Dene, Lee Road, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where he eventually retired and spent the rest of his life. In 1939, a cartoonist, living at 11 Lee Road, Aldeburgh with his wife Eleanor and daughter Celia Mary (2 March 1908-1981), who was training for the Women's Land Army. William Kerridge Haselden died of natural causes at Dudley Dene, Aldeburgh on Christmas day 1953 and cremated at Ipswich on 31 December.

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Works by This Artist