Photograph depicting George Speaight posing with the Tiller troupe marionette of Tim Bobbin surrounded by an audience, ca. 1951. This marionette is now in the collection of the V&A, S.311-1999. George Speaight Punch & Judy Collection.

Black & white photograph depicting George Speaight posing with a puppet surrounded by an audience.

Accepted by HM Government in Lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the V&A in 2010.

This photograph shows George Speaight (1914-2005) with the marionette of Tim Bobbin that is now in the museum's collection, S.311-1999. It is one of the set of Tiller marionette and some of their original backcloths that had been stored in a blacksmith's shop in Lincolnshire for over thirty years, and that were bought by Gerald Morice and George Speaight in 1945. After cleaning and re-stringing, most of the marionettes were restored by Gerald Morice and George Speaight who began working on recreating some of the puppets' original repertoire. Since the original cloths were too fragile for performance, new backdrops were painted, and in August 1951 as part of The Festival of Britain celebrations, the marionettes took to the stage again as The Old Time Marionettes, at the Riverside Theatre, Festival Gardens, Battersea Park. A photograph in the collection, S.1120-2010, shows George Speaight holding this marionette. In the 1980s George Speaight lent the troupe to puppeteers in Germany but in the late 1990s he sold them to John Phillips, an expert puppet carver, manipulator and puppet historian, whose widow sold them to the Museum after his death in 1998.

Photograph depicting George Speaight posing with a puppet surrounded by an audience, ca. 1951. George Speaight Punch & Judy Collection.

S.1120-2010