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| Picture No | 10837366 |
| Date | 1917 |
| Description | Bystander front cover, Bairnsfather cartoon, German shells |
| Details |
"Alas! My poor brother" Cartoon by Captain Bruce Bairnsfather on the front cover of The Bystander showing a stereotypical German munitions worker pouring glycerine into a shell case and opining, "Alas! My poor brother."
The cartoon was a comment on unsubstantiated claims in the British press, specifically the Daily Mail, about the existence of the Kadaververwertungsanstalten (literally "Corpse-Utilization Factories"), also sometimes called the "German Corpse-Rendering Works" or "Tallow Factory" A story was spread that because fats were so scarce in Germany due to the British naval blockade, German battlefield corpses were rendered down for fat, which was then used to manufacture nitroglycerine, candles, lubricants, and even boot dubbing. It was supposedly operated behind the front lines by the DAVG-Deutsche Abfall-Verwertungs Gesellschaft ("German Offal Utilization Company"). It was one of the most tasteless anti-German propagandist rumours of the war, and magazine cartoonists used it as a theme at the time the story broke such as in the case of this cover by Bairnsfather. By the 1920s, it became clear that the story had been fabricated.
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| Source | Illustration by Captain Bruce Bairnsfather on the front cover of The Bystander, 2 May1917 |
| Credit | © Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans |
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