Flo Lancaster was born Hilda Florence Collins in Bristol on January 27 1881, before being adopted by George and Eleanor Knight Lancaster of Hill Path, Banwell, Somerset. She married Paul Edwardes-Jones in 1917.
She wrote for women's magazines and girls' story papers before the First World War, and created The Oojah Paper, later The Oojah Sketch the children's supplement to the British newspaper The Daily Sketch, in 1921, for which she wrote the adventures of the elephant Uncle Oojah, illustrated by Thomas Maybank until 1929, and H. M. Talintyre thereafter. Lancaster continued writing the character in The Oojah Paper, his own annuals, and the weekly comic Jack and Jill, until the 1950s, when she retired. She lived in Hammersmith, London, and died in 1963, aged 82.
References
- Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, p. 90
- Steve Holland, Flo Lancaster, Bear Alley, 15 May 2010
- Oojah on Wikipedia