Hi Martin

The Politically Correct Police rather than the Grammar Police I'd think. "Both as big and as black as he" was what the author (whose name escapes me) originally wrote, but as you are aware in the wider context and understanding of that Hiberno-English phrase it is open to being misinterpreted as a term of racial abuse rather than a colloquial expression.
Love to Josephine. Great stuff happening here in the big smoke around 1916. We'd love to see yis in the Góilín.

Ferg