“Ben Sarto” [Frank Dubrez Fawcett]: The Oldest Profession. London: Modern Fiction, 1952.

“Griff”: Crooked Coffins. London: Modern Fiction, 1952.

Quite what Potts was doing in the years immediately either side of what was evidently a relatively brief incursion into the world of pulp fiction covers, I am not at all sure, although his early career in the 1920s and 1930s seems straightforward enough.

He was born in in Bradford, Yorkshire, on the 27th May 1902, the younger son of Charles Alexander Potts (1863-1934) and his wife Elizabeth Ann Calow (1866-1951), both Mancunians in origin, who had married at Hulme in 1890.  He was baptised at St. Philip, Girlington, on 29th June 1902, the family then living at No. 188 St. Leonard’s Road — a road of long incline down from Girlington towards the centre of Bradford and hence perhaps his name.  His father was a dyer in the cotton trade and later a trade union representative of some sort.  The family were back in Manchester, living in Moss Side at No. 19 Normanby Street, by 1911 and I assume it was there that Potts was schooled and grew up.

The Real Thing — Almost. From The Tatler, 30th January 1929. © Illustrated London News Group. Image created courtesy of the British Library Board.

Where he trained as an artist, I know not.  The release of the 1921 census returns next year may well elucidate this, but my guess for the moment would be at a London art school, for London was where he made his career — although his connection with the painter George Holland (see below) might perhaps mean that they were contemporaries at Leicester College of Art.  By the early 1920s Potts was much employed as an illustrator on the popular magazines of the day, his work frequently encountered in The Detective Magazine between 1923 and 1925.  Work of the same period and a little later includes advertisements as well as illustration credits in The Pillar-Box; The Red Magazine; The Yellow Magazine; Chums; The Scout; The Boy’s Own Paper, and in particular Cassell’s Magazine.  Between 1928 and 1930, he was responsible for a whole sequence of full-page (and some double-page) coloured illustrations for The Tatler — his work at this stage already moving towards his later distinctive style, but rather more elaborate and still signed with his full name in a style almost florid.

The Decoy. From The Tatler, 29th May 1929. © Illustrated London News Group. Image created courtesy of the British Library Board.

In the years either side of 1930, he was living at No. 40 Bramerton Street in Chelsea, a road running south off the King’s Road.  By 1934 he had moved to No. 44 Redcliffe Road in West Brompton — the area where it merges with Chelsea and South Kensington.  He married Doris Blakey (1902-1977), herself I believe from Lancaster, at Kensington in 1938 and lived with her at Redcliffe Road.  The rather better-known and much more easily looked-up portrait and landscape painter George Herbert Buckingham Holland (1901-1987) and his wife Beryl Claridge (1906-1991) were also at this  address – the large studio windows, although probably not now in their original form, must have particularly appealed to these two contemporary if rather different artists, both from the provinces, both not long married, and possibly friends since college days.

No. 44 Redcliffe Road

Leonard Potts may well have been the man of that name who saw war service in the Royal Artillery between 1940 and 1944, but I have been unable to verify this.  Post-war, he moved back to No. 40 Bramerton Street for a couple of years before settling at No. 1 Carlyle Studios, on the King’s Road.  This must have been where most of his work for the leading pulp-fiction publishers of the early 1950s was executed.

“Griff”: Shoot to Live. London: Modern Fiction, 1953.

Most of that particular group of publishers — Ralph Stokes, Edwin Self, Modern Fiction, Comyns — disappeared in the wake of the obscenity trials of the mid-1950s, and quite what Potts made of the rest of his career remains a mystery.  If anyone knows, do please get in touch.  He and Doris remained at Carlyle Studios until 1960, before moving again to No. 7 Chelsea Manor Studios in Flood Street, just round the corner from Chelsea Town Hall.  The Chelsea Manor Studios were built in 1902 and are now billed as luxury apartments, but they still hosted an enclave of artists of various kinds in the early 1960s.

“Jean-Paul Valois” [Lisle Willis]: Confessions of Corinne. London: Edwin Self, ca. 1953.

No. 53 Mossbury Road

The death of Doris Potts was registered in Chelsea in the early part of 1977, so I assume they were still living there at that time, but Potts himself died in Battersea the following year — on the 4th May 1978.  He was then living at No. 53 Mossbury Road, just off Lavender Hill, near Clapham Junction.  Just across the road from my bank as it happens, so easy enough to take this snap of it.  Probate on his modest estate of just over £3,000 was granted on the 1st June and there his story, to the somewhat limited extent to which I have been able to trace it, comes to an end.

“Hank Spencer”: Bad-Luck Cutie. Modern Fiction, 1953.

If anyone remembers him at all, knows anything more, or has anything cogent to

“Ben Sarto” [Frank Dubrez Fawcett]: City of Sin. London: Modern Fiction, 1952.

For more work by Leonard Potts, see the Pinterest board at Leonard Potts on Pinterest.