A.H. Tatlow

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Full name: Arthur Higdon Tatlow

Lifespan: c.1870 England - 1934 Cape Town

Spouse: Married Emily Warburton (1868 England - ?) in 1898.

Occupation: Journalist, railway clerk

A.H. Tatlow (unidentified photographer)

Born in England, Tatlow worked as a railway clerk and journalist - a 1901 census shows him in Scotland working in that dual role. He moved to South Africa in the early 1900s (he was already active in Natal railways by 1905).

He was the editor of the Natal Government Railways (NGR) Magazine from 1905-1907 - from its very first issue. He personally handled all 18 monthly editions, proposed the whole concept, and got it approved by the NGR General Manager. In the final NGR issue he wrote a proud “literary parent” farewell.

Tatlow trout fishing.³

Tatlow became editor (then controlling editor) of the amalgamated South African Railway Magazine from 1907-1910, after the railways started uniting.

When the Union of South Africa formed and the railways were centralised under SAR&H, Tatlow was moved from Durban to Johannesburg and appointed Manager of the brand-new Publicity Department (SARPD) + Honorary Editor of the SAR Magazine.

He ran the department for the next 20 years (until 1930), turning it into South Africa’s main machine for international tourism and trade promotion. Under him it:

  • Edited the famous Natal Province: Descriptive Guide and Official Handbook (1911).
  • Commissioned photographers, graphic artists, posters, pamphlets, and guidebooks.
  • Flooded overseas magazines (e.g. The Illustrated London News) with ads calling South Africa “the Empire’s sun land”.
  • Built the huge photographic collection that were used in calendars and brochures.
  • Promoted the Blue Train era glamour, luxury travel, and the idea of South Africa as a modern, scenic, white settler paradise (a narrative that was very much of its time).
  • Designed international advertising campaigns, and opened the first overseas offices (starting with London in 1921.)
Tatlow is credited with inventing modern railway publicity in South Africa - a blueprint that later generations would expand. His successor was N.B. Hewitt.

"Mr. A. H. Tatlow, the former publicity manager of the S.A.R. has been taking charge of these posters here and in Durban. It is quite true to say that it is largely due to his initiative in the past that this is only the latest of several other exhibitions and that, to some extent, the S.A.R. has helped to encourage poster-art in South Africa. In these days of depression, the lot of the poster-artist is hard because there is always a tendency in such times to regard artistic development as a luxury." (SAAR, 1932)

Timeline

Sources

  1. South African Railway News. Dec 1958.
  2. The Railway Poster Exhibition. South African Architectural Record, Vol 17, No 3, March 1932.
  3. Trout Fishing in Natal. 1909. Tatlow, A.H.

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