The Bulletin had its small stable of regular cartoonists and many more like Bert and Will Dyson who were freelancers in the 1890s…. I’d imagine they would pick up a few shillings each time they had something published. Bert would court controversy in 1899 for a number of his sketches that re-affirmed the Bulletin’s views on immigrants, and in this case, Jewish residents.

Bert addressed the issue twelve years later in 1911, when he returned to Australia describing it as ‘his lot’ to illustrate Hebrew jokes for the Bulletin.

Here are three of the ‘Hebrew jokes’ that Bert illustrated that raised the hackles of the Melbourne journalist that Bert references above)

And the controversy that followed