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The Little Boy from Manly was a national personification of New South Wales and later Australia created by the cartoonist Livingston Hopkins of The Bulletin in April 1885.

Letter.

Innocent Triflers.



In 1885 Hopkins' creative imagination produced an enduring image that evolved to symbolise and personify the colony of New South Wales and in later years, a figurative representation of the Australian nation as a whole. In February 1885 William Bede Dalley, as acting-premier of the colony, offered to send a detachment of New South Wales troops to the Sudan to support British forces in the suppression of the Mahdist uprising. After the British acceptance of Dalley's offer, a wave of patriotic enthusiasm became evident and a fund was established to receive public contributions, both monetary and in kind, in support of the expedition. On 4 March 1885, the day after the troops departed from Sydney, 10-year-old Ernest Lawrence wrote to Dalley enclosing a sum of £25 from his savings (plus a contribution from his father) "with my best wishes from a little boy at Manly". The young boy's contribution received wide publicity, with his letter and Dalley's reply being published in the Sydney Morning Herald and other newspapers. A cartoon by Hop published in The Bulletin of 4 April 1885, 'Innocent Triflers; or, the Joys of His First and Her Second Childhood', features a figure labelled "The Little Boy at Manly". The boy is depicted depositing a coin into a money-box labelled "Patriotic Fund" held by "Old Granny". Behind the old woman and boy looms a spectral figure with labels including "Taxation", "War Expenses", "Pensions" and "Soldiers' Homes". Hopkins illustrated the 'Little Boy at Manly' as a young lad in early-Victorian costume in the style of English storybook schoolboys, wearing high-waisted pantaloons, a shirt with a frilled collar and a flat peaked cap. In the following decades the 'Little Boy from Manly' became a widely-known and routinely-used symbol of Australia's emerging nationhood in The Bulletin, featured in illustrations by Hopkins as well as other of the magazine's artists.



In March 1885, as the New South Wales Contingent was about to depart for the Sudan, a letter was addressed to Premier William Bede Dalley containing a cheque for £25 for the Patriotic Fund 'with my best wishes from a little boy at Manly'. It was Australia's first overseas military adventure, and the little boy became a symbol either of Australian patriotism or, among opponents of the adventure, of mindless chauvinism. Hopkins put the boy in a cartoon, dressed in the pantaloons and frilled shirt associated with English storybook schoolboys of the namby-pamby kind. Over the following decades, he became The Bulletin's stock symbol of Young Australia.

The 'Little Boy' has been identified as Ernest Laurence (1876-1963), later Alderman of Strathfield Council (1915-1920) and Mayor of Strathfield (1917-1918).

Hop 1904.

Boy by David Low.

Boy by Norman Lindsay.

Adverts. Adverts by David Low.

Boy by Tom Glover.

Boy at Hopkins' funeral.

Article. Hopkins, pages 18-19.