The Eric Parker Story

From the files of Peter Haining this draft of a piece by W.O.G. ('Bill') Lofts on the great Sexton Blake illustrator Eric Parker (1898 - 1974). It was published in the early 1980s in the Australian magazine Collector's Digest.

The Eric Parker Story.

By W.O.G. Lofts.

For over twenty years, it was my good fortune and privilege to meet many Directors, Editors, sub-editors, authors, and artists, not only down Fleet Street, but in the home of it all at Fleetway House in Farringdon Street, the home of the mighty Amalgamated Press. I use the expression 'fortune' in the sense, that living in London, it was quite easy for me to make these short trips.

Always firmly believing in sharing information with others not so fortunate, I used to write up many of these events in the various magazines circulating at the time. Nearly all personalities I'm glad to say, freely gave me information not only about themselves, but about the papers they were connected with in pre-war days. Papers that gave so much pleasure to us,

Bill Lofts - the journey of a collector and researcher

More material from the Haining archive, this by his friend and colleague W.O.G. ('Bill') Lofts. Some of it is covered by Bill's piece on market places. As a researcher pre-internet he haunted the British Museum and saw himself as a kind of knowledge sleuth (hence the title).

INVESTIGATIONS UNLIMITED

by W.O.G. LOFTS

Like most normal children I started reading the coloured nursery comics at an early age:    'Chicks Own' and 'Tiny Tots', for example. With their hyphenated script underneath they helped us a great deal in learning to read. W. Howard Baker recently - and without any prompting from me related how it taught him to read in his home in Cork, Ireland. Later I went on to the older, 'Rainbow', 'Tiger Tim's Weekly' category, and later still to the black and white comics such as 'Chips’, 'Comic Cuts', 'Larks', 'Jester' and 'Funny Wonder'. I think my favourite was 'Larks'. That had Dad Walker on the front page, and was drawn by Bert Brown whom I was to meet many decades later, and whose originals I greatly treasure.