Tattoo-for-three Special – Frank McNally on becoming the father of an all-tattooed family

On WhatsApp during the week, I received one of those messages every parent dreads. It was from my youngest child, now 19, and accompanied by photographs of him and his brother and sister, exposing their arms. Congratulations, the message said: “ur kids are all officially tatted.”
It wasn’t a complete surprise, I must admit. Their plans to get simultaneous tattoos had been mentioned in passing a few times recently, as if to seek approval. But equally mentioned was the fact that they were all adults now, so that approval was not a requirement.
Nor, despite my reply to the Whatsapp pictures (“I blame the parents”) was it granted. Instead, I placed on record the usual reservations about disfiguring their bodies forever in a style still largely associated with criminals and professional soccer players. Separately – and with no doubt wiser words – their mother had counselled against too. All of which had now been overruled.
A consolation was that their tattoos were small, discreet, and devoid of any social or political messaging they might outlive.
And it was I suppose touching that they had done this together, as a bonding exercise. When I was growing up, we were told: “The family that prays together, stays together.” Now the rule seems to be: “Kids who get inked, stay linked.”
I was still adjusting to life as the father of an all-tatted family, however, when given welcome reassurance from, of all places, the latest issue of the Times Literary Supplement. There, scanning the letters page, my eyes were drawn to the subheading “Tattoos” over a series of replies to an essay in the previous edition.
One was from a man who, along with 2,094 other volunteers, had allowed himself to be the canvas – or page – for a short story by the American writer and artist Shelley Jackson. The story is called Skin, aptly, and was printed only on volunteers’ bodies, one word each.
Even more comforting, culturally, was the second letter, which reminded me that famous tattoo wearers down the decades have included the austerely intellectual George Orwell. This dated from his time as a policeman in colonial Burma, for reasons disputed.
According to one account, it was in line with local superstition “to protect him from snake bites”. But more recently, an Oxford literary thesis has argued that it was in part a “psychological attempt to cathect his feelings of guilt about … complicity in colonial injustice by remaking his ‘skin ego’.”
Delving deeper into the tattoo archives, I learned that other high achievers who had them included Winston Churchill (an anchor on his forearm), Franklin D Roosevelt (a family crest on his chest), and Thomas Edison (five dots on an arm). Edison used his own electric pen for the job, so may just have been practising with a view to patenting the invention.
But he never did patent it.
And lo! – as I have only now discovered – it was left to a first-generation Irish American named Samuel O’Reilly (1854-1909) – to go further and invent the original electric tattoo machine in 1891.
For those who fret about their children making bad tat decisions, O’Reilly may be both cautionary tale and inspiration.
He was for a time a burglar, and not a successful one. As a teenager, he was jailed with friends for robbing a grocery store. On release, this time with his parents as accomplices, he robbed a second shop and earned another five years in prison.
But at some point, O’Reilly reinvented himself as a tattoo artist in 1880s New York. And seeing the potential Edison hadn’t, he was soon leaving an indelible mark on both history and thousands of his customers.
Clientele included the usual sailors seeking anchors. Irish-Americans looking for intertwined flags and the slogan “Erin go Bragh” were good customers too.
As, increasingly, were adventurous members of higher society.
A New York snob and arbiter of social taste, Ward McAllister, lamented the phenomenon’s growing popularity as “the most vulgar and barbarous habit the eccentric mind ever invented”. The debate continues today.
My son’s WhatsApp reminded me of an old TV programme in which Billy Connolly (I think) gets his first tattoo at an advanced age and then quotes the tattooist saying: “One more of us, one less of them”.
The art’s counter-cultural associations have greatly waned even since that. On current trends, tattoos may soon become the rule rather the exception. In the meantime, I’m also reminded of an expression Nigella Lawson once used to me in an interview.
We had something in common at the time: being parents of two. But in her case that would be the total – her first husband was terminally ill – and she regretted this. “I’ve always thought parents should be outnumbered by their children,” she said.
My wife and I were to be outnumbered soon afterwards, as it happened. That was nearly 20 years ago now. But until very recently, it had never occurred that we would one day be outnumbered in the sense that Billy Connolly’s tattooist meant as well.
Then this week suddenly, with the stroke of a mechanical pen, there were two of us and three of them.