It is important to put the early work of Fred Spurgin into context and at the time he was starting to produce comic cards with the London View Company the market leader was drafting was Tom Browne, working for Davidson Brothers. Tom was one of the first artists to take advantage of the divided back - which meant that the whole of the picture side of the card could be used. For this reason I have included a pretty random selection of Tom Browne's early cards.

I have come across no cases where "F S" directly copied Tom Browne drawings - but undoubtedly there Tom's work influenced Fred Spurgin and there was some cross-feed of ideas and subjects - as was common at the time.