Pages from Pearson's - 12 January 1935

Some illustrations from the pages of Pearson's Weekly for 12 January 1935 . . . and I'm struck again by the similarity of the subject matter in an issue of this 1935 magazine and magazines of today. Articles included that ever-green subject "What's wrong with television?", although part of the problem back then was the quality of the images, with the author of the opinion that "when television eventually becomes a domestic utility the pictures will be split up into at least 200 lines." These, I suspect are the horizontal scanning lines of today's PAL (in the UK) or NTSC (in the USA) systems, which are  625 lines and 525 lines respectively.

Another subject was "Why Are We Living Longer?" which boasted that a healthy man could expect to live to 66. That has now risen to 79 (and 82 for women).

Elsewhere in the magazine there was a hand-wringing article asking "Can modern youth repair the havoc we middle-aged people have wrought?", a news piece claiming that middle-aged men were paying 250 guineas for face lifts, an article about a footballer and a worrying piece about waste disposal.

Apart from one illustration (the first below) by Clive Uptton, the main illustrator for Pearson's – this issue at least – was B. J. Dawson, who illustrated three of the stories. Apart from also contributing to Wild West (the British boys' paper published by Amalgamated Press), I know nothing about Dawson, so any additional information would be welcome.

 

 

 

 

(* all illustrations © IPC Media.)