'The Brother Who Turned the Gas Full On. Save Fuel to Make Munitions for Battle'. Colour offset lithograph poster designed by Henry Mayo Bateman and issued by the Ministry of Fuel and Power during the Second World War. Great Britain, 1943.

Colour offset lithograph poster showing a man standing, holding a paper with his back to a gas fire, which radiates heat, his sister and a small dog look scornfully at him. 'The Brother Who Turned the Gas Full On. Save Fuel to Make Munitions for Battle' lettered in red and black. All against a white ground.

Given by Ogilvy Benson & Mather Ltd

Breaches of etiquette and 'good form' were the favourite subjects of cartoonist and social satirist H.M. Bateman. His talent for dramatising the 'gaffe' was cleverly chosen by the Government to illustrate a series of wartime posters encouraging voluntary fuel economies in British homes.

With many people fighting and others working long factory shifts, it was thought reasonable for those on 'The Home Font' to make some contribution to the war effort. In this design, a selfish brother is rebuked by his patriotic sister for wasting town gas (and indirectly its source, coal) needed to fuel the nation's armament factories. The old-fashioned chimney piece and primitive gas fire suggest that Bateman, ever alert to such matters, intended to depict a household of a lower social class to that shown in E.158-1973.

[Kevin Edge, 'British Design at Home', p.130]

Printed for H.M. Stationery Office by Fosh & Cross Ltd., London.

E.148-1973