THE DUNDREARY JOKER

Lord Dundreary is a character of the 1858 British play “Our American Cousin”  by Tom Taylor . He is a good-natured, brainless aristocrat. The role was created on stage by Edward Askew Sothern. The most famous scene involved Dundreary reading a letter from his even sillier brother. Sothern expanded the scene considerably in performance. A number of spin-off works were also created, including a play about the brother.

His name gave rise to two eponyms  rarely heard today – “Dundrearies” and “Dundrearyisms”. The former referred to a particular style of facial hair taking the form of exaggeratedly bushy sideburns, also called “dundreary whiskers” (or “Piccadilly weepers” in England) which were popular between 1840 and 1870. The latter eponym was used to refer to expanded malaproisms in the form of twisted and nonsensical aphorisms in the style of Lord Dundreary (e.g., “birds of a feather gather no moss”). These enjoyed a brief vogue. (Source: Wikipedia)

When Russell and Morgan started making playing cards, their Congress line used Lord Dundreary as the joker. Sothern died in 1881, and I believe Russell and Morgan used the image to pay homage to him. The joker was used into the mid to late 1890s, when it was replaced by the “matching” joker. There are five versions of this joker, shown below.

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