Tom Riley (tattoo artist)
19th century English tattoo artist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tom Riley (born 1870) was a prominent English tattoo artist in the late 19th century and early 20th century, nicknamed "Professor".[1] Riley's work, alongside rivals Alfred South and Sutherland MacDonald, was part of establishing an English style of tattooing.[2]
Riley was born Thomas Clarkson in 1870,[2] from Leeds, Yorkshire. He was apprenticed as a bricklayer but chose not to pursue that profession.[2] Riley enlisted in the British Army in 1889; while in the army, he learned tattooing and worked on many other soldiers and officers.[2]
Riley also fought in the Second Boer War between 1899-1902 and in Sudan.[3]
Riley took drawing classes at a mechanics' institute in Leeds and opened a tattoo shop in Liverpool near the docks.[1][4] He then went to Glasgow and built a reputation there, was invited to tattoo at the Royal Aquarium in London, then opened his own shop on the Strand in London.[1] Riley tattooed King Edward VII.
Riley's style was fine-lined and influenced by Japanese tattoo designs.[2]
Some sources credit Riley with patenting the first single-coil tattoo machine in 1891, soon after Samuel O'Reilly received an American patent for the first electric tattoo machine.[5]
In 1903, an interviewer noted that Riley was using a single-coil tattoo machine and said that Riley had co-invented it with O'Reilly, however a tattoo historian could not find any records of a British patent by Riley.[6] Another tattoo artist, George Burchett, had said that Riley had received a British patent for a tattoo machine in December 1891, improving on Samuel O'Reilly's design.[6] Burchett may have been misremembering Sutherland MacDonald's work, who received the first British tattoo machine patent in December 1894.[6]
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