‘Life after Death’: Legacies of Executed Criminals in the Nineteenth Century

A Mapping Crime case study by Rosalind Crone, The Open University.

Crime broadsides are often said to represent the poor man’s newspaper in the nineteenth century. By the 1820s at least, printers had established a specific formula whereby a series of cheap, but highly decorous sheets of various sizes were produced for notable, especially violent crimes, capturing the event, the trials of the accused and the moment of his or her execution. The resources linked to the large number of crime broadsides in the John Johnson Collection as part of Mapping Crime highlight the relationship of these sheets to the newspaper and periodical press of the time, where these crimes were similarly reported.

An edition of the Newgate Calendar from 16th September 1824, including the trials, and sentences, of the prisoners tried at the Old Bailey, this Sessions... together with the lamentation of those who are cast for death.

However, the resources linked to the broadsides also show that for at least a significant cluster of gruesome crimes the memory of these events was fanned by various cultural phenomena. In other words, a number of criminals were kept alive in popular culture for long periods after their deaths. This is, at first, most obvious in the links to the online Newgate Calendar. At least ten nineteenth-century criminals who feature in the broadsides in John Johnson also have entries in the Newgate Calendar: apart from two forgerers (Fauntleroy and Hunton) and one traitor (Thistlewood) the rest appear to have achieved notoriety through the crime of murder. The Newgate Calendar was a collection of biographies of criminals, most of whom were British and active from the eighteenth-century onwards. The publication first appeared in the 1770s, and although it was based on earlier, similar voluminous collections, it was more lavish and moralistic than anything that had appeared before with a price tag which suggested a more affluent audience eager to include the books in their libraries. The edition which features as part of the Mapping Crime resource was published as late as 1926, highlighting the persistent demand for both the publication and stories of significant crimes from times past.

The Rugeley poisonings... The trial of William Palmer, at the Central Criminal Court, London, for poisoning John Parsons Cook...

Newgate Calendars were not the only publications produced in the wake of a criminal scandal with the aim of generating high sales from a public anxious to keep the memory of the crime alive. Internal links within the John Johnson Collection supplied as part of Mapping Crime highlight the production of a range of more durable sheets, pamphlets and volumes which brought together the key elements of the crime and its punishment and, unlike disjointed broadside or newspaper reports, presented the events as a digestible narrative. Many of these publications were produced by established newspapers as way of generating extra revenue. For instance, attached to the broadside printed for the execution of the infamous serial poisoner, William Palmer, at Rugeley in 1856 is the forty-page pamphlet produced by the Illustrated Times complete with the transcript of the trial, memoir of the prisoner and sixty illustrations. Similarly, items connected with the execution of James Blomfield Rush for the murders at Stanfield Hall include the series of engravings commissioned by the Norwich Mercury at the conclusion of the trial. Evidence from other historical sources suggests that some purchasers would use these illustrations to decorate the walls of their dwellings.

The examples of such pamphlets, volumes and other types of crime ephemera contained in the John Johnson Collection represent just the tip of the iceberg. Following the link provided to the British Library Newspapers reveals the extent of this practice. For example, after the execution of Frederick and Maria Manning for the murder of their lodger, Patrick O’Connor, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper advertised the publication of ‘The Trial of the Mannings’, reminding readers to ask the newsagent for ‘Lloyd’s Edition’. Those newspapers that did not publish their own pamphlets on famous crimes did not refrain from advertising those produced by others. Searches in British Library Newspapers for ‘Bishop and Williams’, the metropolitan Burkers (or body snatchers), active during the early 1830s, returns advertisements in the Morning Post for Pierce Egan’s book, The Murder of the Italian Boy, published in December 1831 and sold for 1 shilling sixpence.

The trial of Corder, for the murder of Maria Marten, at Polstead, Suffolk

Books and pamphlets were not the only form of criminal legacy in the nineteenth century: links in the Mapping Crime resource also draw our attention to the performative characteristics of the legacies of the executed. Audiences could experience and remember a crime through its performance, not just through reading. The additional resources from the John Johnson Collection which appear alongside the broadside printed for the trial of William Corder are particularly instructive. Corder murdered his paramour, Maria Marten, in the Red Barn located in a Suffolk village in 1826; it was, more or less, a straightforward domestic crime. However, the discovery of Maria’s body apparently through the prophetic dreams of her step-mother ensured the crime gained notoriety throughout the country. By the time Corder was executed in 1828, the murder had become a popular melodrama played in theatres all over Britain. One of the playbills from the Lincoln Theatre survives in the John Johnson Collection.

A beautiful cyclorama of the mysterious murder of Maria Marten, by William Corder...

As does a catalogue from a waxwork exhibition on Pentonville Hill in London which advertised a ‘Cyclorama’ of the tragedy, treating viewers to key scenes of the murder. This link provides strong inducements to dig deeper. After all, the most famous waxwork exhibition in London, Madame Tussaud’s, featured a chamber of horrors which contained effigies of some of the most famous criminals of the nineteenth century. Again, following the links in Mapping Crime to the British Library Newspaper resource reveals a treasure trove: searches for specific criminals from the John Johnson Collection at times returns results which contain advertisements for the addition of wax effigies of these men and women to Tussaud’s ghastly chamber. Only a month after the execution of James Greenacre for the murder of his former lover, Hannah Brown, the Morning Post published this advertisement: ‘The Execrable Greenacre. Madame Tussaud and Sons, anxious to obey the wishes of their numerous visitors, have completed a full-length model of the fiend Greenacre. The likeness, taken from the best authority, represents him as he appeared at his trial’.

It is clear that a range of cultural phenomena existed to keep alive the memory of a select number of criminals in the nineteenth century; but were memories kept alive? The impact of these publications and performances is first evident in the broadsides themselves. Broadside authors at times made reference to notorious past crimes when reporting on a current tragedy, perhaps with the intention of creating a similar sensation out of the crime at hand. Mapping Crime highlights some of these links. When news broke of the discovery of a horribly dismembered and burnt corpse in aSurrey barn in 1842, broadside printers immediately compared the events to those of the Greenacre-Brown tragedy of 1837. One author stated Daniel Good’s appalling murder of Jane Jones ‘in the annals of crime, has only been equalled in atrocity by that of Hannah Brown, by Greenacre, and that of Mr Paas, at Leicester’. Connections between past and present murders could also be used to illustrate the didactic value of crime. Eliza Grimwood, for example, did not take warning from the murder of Maria Marten by William Corder, despite being ‘on a visit at a friend’s in the neighbourhood and the first person who entered the Red Barn and saw the mangled corpse of that ill-fated girl’. Instead, Grimwood went on to lead a reckless, immoral life and hence suffered a similar fate.

Finally, there is some very slight evidence that ordinary people at times invoked the names of famous murderers to describe particular human interactions, especially violent ones. Some of this evidence can be found in the transcripts of trails at the Central Criminal Court housed at the Old Bailey Online. Mapping Crime links crime broadsides directly to trials. But searching for the names of specific criminals generally in the Old Bailey Online database highlights the use of those names in other trials to describe violent encounters. For example, After the especially gruesome murder and mutilation of Hannah Brown by James Greenacre in 1837, several criminal trials followed in which witnesses claimed that the accused had invoked the name of Greenacre much to their concern and fright. During a robbery in June 1837, victim Catherine Crawford of the Hutchinson Arms in Ratcliffe claimed that the thief stated: ‘“If you do not give [the money] to me, it will be the worst day’s work you ever did, for I will serve you as Greenacre served Mrs Brown’ – I am quite sure he used that expression – he repeated several times about Greenacre, and I was very much alarmed’.

Images:

Newgate calendar. Including the trials, and sentences, of the prisoners tried at the Old Bailey, this Sessions. Together with the lamentation of those who are cast for death.  John Johnson Shelfmark: Broadsides: Murder and Executions folder 1 (2). ProQuest durable URL

The Rugeley poisonings… The trial of William Palmer, at the Central Criminal Court, London, for poisoning John Parsons Cook : With a complete memoir of the prisoner, and a full account of the numerous cases of poisoning in which he is suspected to be implicated. Illustrated with sixty engravings, comprising… every place or object of interest connected with these startling crimes.  John Johnson Shelfmark: Broadsides: Murder and Executions folder 11 (36). ProQuest durable URL

The trial of Corder, for the murder of Maria Marten, at Polstead, Suffolk.  John Johnson Shelfmark: Broadsides: Murder and Executions folder 5 (11). ProQuest durable URL

An entire new exhibition, at 16, Pleasant Row, Pentonville Hill, near Battle Bridge [A beautiful cyclorama of the mysterious murder of Maria marten, by William Corder…].  John Johnson Shelfmark: Waxworks 3 (6). ProQuest durable URL

Copyright © 2009 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Reproduced with the permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Comments are welcome for sharing with other users, but regrettably the editors of Curators’ Choice are not necessarily able to respond to enquiries.

Charles Peace and Kate Webster

A Mapping Crime case study by Alice Smalley, The Open University.

Charles Peace and Kate Webster were both executed in 1879, more than a decade after the abolition of public executions.  Moreover, the crimes of Peace and Webster both excited considerable public interest, although the press representations of these characters differed significantly.  Despite his execution for the murder of a Mr Dyson, Charles Peace was ‘primarily celebrated for hid larcenous rather than his murderous achievements’.[1]  Conducting a number of burglaries in Hull, London, Sheffield and the surrounding areas, and on many occasions outfoxing the police, Peace became something of a celebrated and comedic character.  Conversely, Kate (Catherine) Webster was a much darker figure, presented in the press as a typical female recidivist.  Webster was found guilty of murdering her employer, Mrs Thomas, after she had been dismissed from her job as a servant in 1879.  The Mapping Crime resources in the John Johnson Collection can be used to explore the ways in which these criminals were represented, and so to draw some conclusions about methods of crime reporting in the late-nineteenth century.  Mapping Crime links together a considerable amount of data: a range of periodicals from both the 19^th Century UK Periodicals and British Periodicals; an overwhelming number of newspaper articles from the British Library 19^th Century newspapers online (850 and 350 hits for “Charles Peace” and “Kate Webster” respectively); broadsides from the John Johnson collection; and the trials of criminals contained in Old Bailey Proceedings Online.  These sources offer the researcher a variety of avenues to explore, including the close relationship between older and newer forms of print and the connections between the provincial and metropolitan presses in the nineteenth century. 

Trial & execution of Charles Peace for the murder of Mr Dyson at Banner Cross, 1879

The decade of the 1850s, we have been told, witnessed the decline of broadsides and the rise of the Sunday newspaper.  This Sunday Press, whose expansion was aided by the repeal of taxes upon knowledge, was described by Raymond Williams as a ‘transitional stage’ in British journalism, an important move away from ‘popular matter in a political sense…to popular matter in a commercial sense’.[2] However, Mapping Crime illustrates some of the continuities which existed in print culture.  There were important similarities between the older print form of the broadside and the supposedly new and ‘transitional’ newspapers.  A broadside was produced to commemorate the executions of both Kate Webster and Charles Peace, a practice which was only continued by the more ambitious broadside printers for major executions after the 1860s.  Such broadsides can be found in the John Johnson Collection.   The John Johnson Collectionshows that the printed woodcuts of the execution scenes of both Charles Peace and Kate Webster were identical.  Moreover, the first paragraph of each was also identical, outlining the execution scene and the moment that ‘the unhappy criminal was ‘launched into eternity’.  Both broadsides also included a ballad, as well as more general details of the crime and the proceedings of the court. 

Trial, sentence & execution of Kate Webster for the murder of Mrs. Thomas, at Richmond

Coverage of the executions of these murderers was not peculiar to the broadside.  The Illustrated Police News (accessed in the British Library’s 19^th Century Newspapers Online), similarly produced stock accounts of the execution of Kate Webster and Charles Peace.  The front-page illustrations of the execution scene encouraged readers to act as a ‘spectator’ of the execution, despite the fact that it had taken place inside the walls of the prison.  Although more detailed than the broadside woodcut, the woodcut illustrations featured in the Illustrated Police News were nevertheless highly stylized. 

EXECUTION OF PEACE. The Illustrated Police News etc (London, England), Saturday, March 1, 1879; Issue 785.

The illustrations of Webster’s and Peace’s executions were almost identical, showing the criminals with a noose around their necks, receiving their last prayer, and surrounded by prison guards.  Also included were portraits of the criminal as well as a picture of Marwood (the hangman).  These large front-page illustrations suggest that the Illustrated Police News, like the earlier broadsides, could be bought as a memento of these famous executions.  They possessed the same ‘totemic’ value as their broadside ancestors; woodcut illustrations were at the centre of the Illustrated Police News, making iconic meanings explicit.[3]

EXECUTION OF CATHERINE WEBSTER AT WANDSWORTH GAOL. The Illustrated Police News etc (London, England), Saturday, August 2, 1879; Issue 807.

The weekly instalments and updates in the cases of both Peace and Webster were not peculiar to the Illustrated Police News.  As Mapping Crime illustrates, interest in Peace and Webster was widespread.  The crimes were regularly reported in weekly and daily newspapers, and in the London and provincial press.  The City Jackdaw (1875-1880), a Manchester weekly which advertised itself as ‘humorous and satirical’, criticised the levels of interest taken in Kate Webster’s execution by both the Lancashire and metropolitan press.[4] The reporter noted that the Lancashire dailies (including the Courier, Guardian, Evening News, Evening Mail, Liverpool Courier and Liverpool Mercury) devoted ten columns to the execution of Webster, which the newspaper claimed was ‘really above a joke’, given ‘the dose we have had during the past few weeks’.  However, the magazine noted that London fared no better, and in four seemingly respectable newspapers (Times, Standard, Telegraph and Daily News), there were seven columns devoted to the reporting of the execution.[5]  This demonstrates that provincial audiences were equally interested in metropolitan crimes.  The City Jackdaw was similarly critical of the public response to the Charles Peace murder, noting the universal interest in criminals and crime.  The periodical notes: ‘for some weeks the whole of our reading population have been absolutely besotten with Peace-worship.  No sooner has a really notorious criminal become convicted at the bar of English justice than he is immediately set up by the newspapers as a nucleus to both a paper and contents’ bill.  Young and old rush impetuously to bow at the shrine of criminal worship.’[6] 

Whilst this case study has focused predominantly upon what Mapping Crime can tell us about the reporting of crime in the nineteenth century, the resource can also be used to examine how both murderers infiltrated the popular culture of the late-nineteenth century.  Moving from simply comparing the various news reporting styles of the differing types of print culture, this resource allows us to examine the role occupied by these criminals in the public psyche, and can help to illuminate public perceptions of crime more generally.  Both Kate Webster and Charles Peace featured in a number of advertisements and other articles, demonstrating the intense public interest in these characters, and their subsequent commercial value.  Advertisements for the Madame Tussaud’s exhibitions of both criminals appeared soon after their execution and Kate Webster also featured in a satirical piece on ‘The Art of Flirting’ in Judy on 13 August 1879.  Despite the supposedly serious and threatening nature of her crime, Kate Webster was still given a celebrity status, and her crime could be discussed in a flippant manner.  The article provides its ‘young lady’ readers with a list of possible questions to ask on a date, which were sure to lead to ‘serious flirtation’.[7]  The article suggested that women ask their dates ‘Wasn’t it a shame they didn’t allow the reporters to go to Kate Webster’s execution?’.

Mapping Crime shows a society and a popular culture that was obsessed with murder.   Such an observation is not just true of the Victorian period.  As late as 1925 The Bookman would note the increasing tendency to retell stories of past famous crimes and trials, including accounts of Kate Webster herself.  The article questions ‘what fiction writer could have conceived…a Kate Webster?  Kate Webster, who, after she only half killed her victim, commenced to cut up her body’.[8]  However, this interest in crimes past was not simply a phenomenon of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. One only has to look at the expansion of Ripperology to see that society today continues to be fascinated with crime and popular representations of crimes past.  Mapping Crime not only allows an insight into how past societies perceived and encountered crime, but on a much baser level it also satisfies our own curiosities and ‘human interest’.

Bibliography:

‘Caws of the Week’, City Jackdaw, 1 August 1879, p. 300.

‘Criminal Worship’, City Jackdaw, 21 February, 1879, p. 117.

Illustrated Police News, 19 July 1879, p. 2.

‘The Art of Flirtation’, Judy, 13 August 1879, p. 75.

Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland

Eds. Brake, Laurel and Marysa Demoor. London: The British Library, 2009. Vol. 1. 1 vols. Print.

Altick, Richard D. Victorian Studies in Scarlet. London: Dent, 1972. Print.

Fox, Warren. “Murder in Installments”: The Newspapers and the Case of Franz Muller (1864).” Victorian Periodicals Review 31 (1998). Print.

Gatrell, V. A. C. The Hanging Tree : Execution and the English People, 1770-1868. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Print.

Images:

Trial & execution of Charles Peace for the murder of Mr. Dys[on] at Banner Cross.  John Johnson Shelfmark: Broadsides: Murder and Executions folder 11 (13). ProQuest durable URL

Trial, sentence & execution of Kate Webster for the murder of Mrs. Thomas, at Richmond. John Johnson Shelfmark: Broadsides: Murder and Executions folder 11 (18). ProQuest durable URL

Copyright © 2009 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Reproduced with the permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

EXECUTION OF PEACE. The Illustrated Police News etc (London, England), Saturday, March 1, 1879; Issue 785.

EXECUTION OF CATHERINE WEBSTER AT WANDSWORTH GAOL. The Illustrated Police News etc (London, England), Saturday, August 2, 1879; Issue 807.

Copyright © 2010 Gale, British Newspapers 1600-1900.

Comments are welcome for sharing with other users, but regrettably the editors of Curators’ Choice are not necessarily able to respond to enquiries.

---

[1] Richard D. Altick, Victorian Studies in Scarlet (London: Dent, 1972)., p. 231.

[2] Warren Fox, “Murder in Installments”: The Newspapers and the Case of Franz Muller (1864),” Victorian Periodicals Review 31 (1998). P. 274.

[3] V. A. C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree : Execution and the English People, 1770-1868 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). P. 175.

[4] ‘City Jackdaw’ in Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland

eds. Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor (London: The British Library, 2009), vol. 1, 1 vols., p. 121.

[5] ‘Caws of the Week’, City Jackdaw, 1 August 1879, p. 300.

[6] ‘Criminal Worship’, City Jackdaw, 21 February, 1879, p. 117.

[7] ‘The Art of Flirtation’, Judy, 13 August 1879, p. 75.

[8] ELLIS, S M, STORIES OF CRIME., Bookman, 68:407 (1925:Aug.) p.259

The Chocolate Girl; or, The maid who became a princess

 The Chocolate Girl (known also as La Belle Chocolatière, or Das Schokoladenmädchen) is one of the most famous works by the Swiss artist, Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789), and depicts a pretty maid serving a tray of hot chocolate.

The Chocolate Girl: an engraving by A. H. Payne, c. 1840

The charming story behind the commission of the painting reads like a romantic fairy-tale. It is thought that the girl in the picture, Anna Baltauf, lived in Vienna and worked as a server in one of the chocolate shops which had become hugely popular throughout Europe during the 18th century.  As the daughter of an impoverished Viennese knight, she had little chance of good marriage, however in the summer of 1745, a young Austrian nobleman named Prince Dietrichstein visited the shop. He fell in love with Anna and asked her to marry him, despite his family’s objections, and so the chocolate girl became a princess. As a wedding present to his bride, the prince commissioned the portrait from Liotard, an artist of the Viennese court. Anna is shown in the maid’s costume she was wearing when her future husband first saw her.

Das Schokoladenmädchen: the original portrait by Jean-Etienne Liotard

It is impossible to say just how much truth there is to this tale, however it is certain that in 1881 Henry L. Pierce, then president of the Walter Baker chocolate company, visited the painting in the Dresden Art Gallery and was captivated by it and by Anna’s story.  He immediately registered La Belle Chocolatière as one of the first US trademarks and the image has graced the company’s boxes and packaging ever since. The original portrait of Princess Dietrichstein, the Chocolate Girl, still hangs in the Dresden gallery, where it remains one of the museum’s most popular attractions. – Ken Gibb

Images:
The chocolate girl. John Johnson Shelfmark: Cocoa, Chocolate and Confectionery 5 (54) (ProQuest durable URL)

Copyright  © 2009 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Reproduced with the permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Comments are welcome for sharing with other users, but regrettably the editors of Curators’ Choice are not necessarily able to respond to enquiries.

Momotarō: ‘Peach-Boy’.

At first glance, these matchbox labels may transport the inexperienced phillumenist instantly to childhood memories of Roald Dahl’s ‘James and the giant peach’. On further inspection, however, the characters illustrated in these Japanese wood blocks reveal a more obscure origin.

The story of Momotarō, although largely unfamiliar in the West, is a well known and loved Japanese folk-tale. Momotarō (often directly translated as ‘Peach Boy’) was the miracle child of an elderly couple who had not been favoured with the good fortune of having their own children.

Whilst washing clothes in the river one day, the old woman heard muffled cries coming from inside a giant peach which she had found floating downstream. She had pulled the peach out  of the water with the idea of sharing it with her husband for lunch. On breaking open the peach, she found Momotarō in the middle and claimed him as her own son. The old couple was very happy finally to have a child of their own and lavished upon the boy love, attention, and a good education.

When Momotarō reached the age of about 15, filled with a love of his country, and desirous of an adventure, he set off on a quest to rid Japan of the ogres which had been plaguing the Japanese people for a number of years. On his travels he befriended a monkey, a dog, and a pheasant, all of which joined him on his quest. When the party reached the Island of Ogres, between them, Momotarō and his friends managed to outwit and destroy each and every ogre. They returned home triumphant, carrying many riches and precious jewels. By ridding the land of ogres, Momotarō and his animal companions not only released the Japanese people from the terror of ogres, but also became very rich and famous. Momotarō and his parents lived happily ever after.

Matchbox labels are eminently collectible today, and there are numerous websites and exhibitions which display fabulous collections ranging in subject from World War II propaganda to portraits of famous actors and actresses. The Japanese matchbox industry started somewhat slowly, as the local market was hindered by suspicions that matches were Christian magic. Once established, however, Japan soon became one of the leading manufacturers of matches, and arguably amongst the most interesting in terms of design and production of the labels.  Those illustrated here were produced in Japan from 1876 to about 1890, using traditional woodblock printing techniques. – Elizabeth Mathew

Reference: Japanese prints: Japanese matchbox labels: Ramat-Gan, The Yechiel Nahari Museum of Far Eastern Art, 2005.

Images:

Carrying the peach. John Johnson Shelfmark: Labels 12 (83a) Proquest durable URL

Emerging from the peach. John Johnson Shelfmark: Labels 12 (83c) Proquest durable URL

Lifting the peach. John Johnson Shelfmark: Labels 12 (83b) Proquest durable URL

Copyright © 2009 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Reproduced with the permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Comments are welcome for sharing with other users, but regrettably the editors of Curators’ Choice are not necessarily able to respond to enquiries.

The life and adventures of Toby, the Sapient Pig

Handbill advertising Toby, the Sapient Pig

Billed as ‘the greatest curiosity of the present day’, Toby the Sapient Pig trotted into the limelight around 1817. He made his London debut at the Royal Promenade Rooms, in the Spring Gardens, where he captivated audiences with his promises to ‘spell and read, cast accounts, play at cards; tell any person what o’clock it is to a minute by their own watch… tell the age of any one in company’, and, most remarkably, ‘discover a person’s thoughts’, a trick indeed ‘never heard of before to be exhibited by an animal of the swine race’. Unsurprisingly, his enterprising handler Mr. Hoare was a former magician, who had turned to training novel animal acts (he would later appear in company with a Learned Goose). 

An earlier sapient pig going through its tricks.

There had been a previous wave of performing pigs in the late 18^th century, but something about Toby appears to have particularly gripped the public imagination. Verses were written comparing him favourably to the greatest actors of the day, like Edmund Kean, and ‘Toby’ quickly became the generic name for all of his porcine competitors. His fame was such that, boasting he was ‘the first of my race that ever wielded the pen’ (an earlier literary pig had merely dictated its memoirs), Toby even wrote his own autobiography, The life and adventures of Toby, the sapient pig: with his opinions on men and manners. Written by himself (London, c. 1817). 

Embellished with a frontispiece showing ‘the author in deep study’—or Toby settled comfortably in a pigsty with his nose in a book—the work was full of playful conceits. Describing his father as an ‘independent gentleman, who roamed at large’, and his mother as a ‘spinster… of a prolific nature’, Toby mused on the idea that his unusual talents resulted from his mother’s love of books:  

‘My mother, in the early stages of her pregnancy, unwittingly entered a gentleman’s flower garden; where … she came obliquely to the entrance of his library…she entered, and in a short time cast her eye over the numerous volumes it contained; such was her haste, she disordered some, while others she minutely perused, nay absolutely bereived [sic] of their leaves, chewing and swallowing them, so great was her avidity’. 

Toby told of being talent-spotted at a young age by his trainer (who made him a special cart to ride around in), claimed to have been named for whether he might be famous or not in a pun on Hamlet’s soliloquy ‘To be, or not to be’, and described an upbringing to rival that of any clever schoolboy. He also talked at length about the performance advertised in this very handbill, and confessed that he felt nervous before his London debut, convinced it would ‘make me or mar me for ever’. Happily for Toby, he was apparently a raging success: 

‘…the house was crowded at an early hour by persons of the first rank and fashion: such an assemblage of beauty I had never before witnessed. My first appearance was greeted with loud and reiterated plaudits; from every part handkerchiefs waving—fans rapping—placards exhibited; in fact, the tumults of applause were greater than ever was known before.’ 

Priced at one shilling, Toby’s magnum opus was printed and sold—and, one suspects, also authored—by Nicholas Hoare, Toby’s canny trainer and manager. The autobiography was, of course, also a powerful advertisement for Toby’s performances, as suggested by the verse with which ‘Toby’ chose to conclude his tale. Supposedly written by a gentleman much moved by the sight of Toby spelling out his letters, it was carefully calculated to entice curious punters: 

His symptoms of sense, deep astonishment raise,

And elicit applause of wonder and praise…

Of the crowds who the Sapient Toby have seen,

Not one of them all disappointed have been;

But all to their friends have been proved to repeat,

That a visit to Toby, indeed is a treat.

But then, for a shilling, who wouldn’t queue up for a look at a mind-reading pig called Toby? – Amanda Flynn

Images:

Toby the Sapient Pig. John Johnson Shelfmark: Animals on Show 2 (70). ProQuest Durable URL

The wonderful pig of knowledge. John Johnson Shelfmark: Animals on Show 2 (74). ProQuest Durable URL 

Copyright © 2009 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Reproduced with the permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Comments are welcome for sharing with other users, but regrettably the editors of Curators’ Choice are not necessarily able to respond to enquiries.

Evenden’s Digestive Ginger Candy for indigestion, spasms, flatulence, &c.

The majority of items that the conservators are repairing for the project are paper based. This particular item is a little more unusual in that the print on paper, with a decorative paper border, is adhered to a wooden board. It may possibly have been the lid to a box.

Before conservation

As can be seen in the first image, the board was found to be broken into two parts. To make it easier to handle during the scanning process and to preserve it for the future, the item was repaired.

First, the paper along the split edges was lifted 1cm away from the board using spatulas and a scalpel.

 Meanwhile, over a gentle heat, 2gsms of leaf gelatine was dissolved in 50 mls of reverse osmosis water.

 The gelatine was applied with a fine brush along the broken edges and the two parts brought together. It was then clamped and left to dry.

During conservation

To make the joint stronger, small splints of parchment were placed along the joint on both sides of the object. The edges of the splints were pared so that they were unobtrusive and they were adhered to the wooden surface with gelatine. Parchment was selected because as the splints dried they tightened.

After the splints had dried, the lifted paper was pasted back down over the parchment splints using wheat starch paste as the adhesive.

After conservation

This work was undertaken by a trained conservator. – Julia Bearman

Evenden’s Digestive Ginger Candy for indigestion, spasms, flatulence, &c.  John Johnson Shelfmark: Patent Medicines 3 (7)

Copyright  © 2009 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Reproduced with the permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Comments are welcome for sharing with other users, but regrettably the editors of Curators’ Choice are not necessarily able to respond to enquiries.

Adventure and Morality: The Boy’s Own

While other parts of the John Johnson Collection may certainly be prettier, the prospectuses of books and journals are the unsung heroes of the booktrade section. There is a wealth of information contained within their pages which illuminates the world of popular fiction and essay writing of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In particular, prospectuses of children’s serial publications provide us with a glimpse into the function of journals in family life. The latter half of the nineteenth century saw an explosion of cheap publication and it is during this period that children’s serial literature was produced on a mass scale. The most well-known of these journals is perhaps the Boy’s Own Paper which was first published in 1879.  The Religious Tract Society created the journal in order to bring moral instruction to young boys through a heady mixture of adventure, sport, humour and suspense.

A prospectus of the Boy's Own Paper from 1895

This prospectus from 1895 demonstrates the lively illustrations used in the Boy’s Own Paper, designed to capture the eye of booksellers and readers alike. The authors who are listed in this prospectus include popular writers such as George Manville-Fenn (1831-1909), who was prolific in his production of fiction for both children and adults.   

The heroic boy reading his Boy's Own in 1893

Adventure, health, courage, all seen as essential to the British character, were promoted alongside articles by the clergy which set these attributes in a religious context.  Famous writers such as Jules Verne and sporting heros, such as W. G. Grace, also contributed regularly to The Boy’s Own Paper, making it, perhaps, the most successful magazine of its kind.

Journals were also produced specifically for girls. While the boys were reading high adventure, valiant sporting prowess and wholesome humour, the girls were learning how to cultivate calm, helpful characters, as the image in this prospectus for The Child’s Companion and Juvenile Instructor from 1898 shows.

A girl reading her Child’s Companion in 1898

These prospectuses give us a glimpse into the life of children in the late nineteenth century and the role some sectors of the book trade created for themselves as instructors of the next generation. – Elizabeth Brewster

Images:
Prospectus of The Boy’s Own Paper. John Johnson Shelfmark: Prospectuses of Journals 8 (12**d) ProQuest durable URL

Prospectus of The Boy’s Own Paper.  John Johnson Shelfmark: Prospectuses of Journals 8 (15) ProQuest durable URL

Prospectus of The Child’s Companion and Juvenile Instructor. John Johnson Shelfmark: Prospectuses of Journals 12 (52a) ProQuest durable URL

Copyright © 2009 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Reproduced with the permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Comments are welcome for sharing with other users, but regrettably the editors of Curators’ Choice are not necessarily able to respond to enquiries.

A lady of pictures: the connoisseur in caricature

A lady composed of pictures

This female connoisseur holds her lorgnette at the ready, poised to prove her aesthetic sensibility and fashionable taste. Yet her own body is composed of the very miniatures, prints and portraits upon which she would train her quizzical gaze. On her broad skirts hang an assortment of landscapes, cameo portraits, popular prints of romantic figures such as Byron and Napoleon, and animal paintings, while she is crowned with a number of intimate miniatures in place of a hat. Even her feet appear to have been replaced by prints.

The image plays light-heartedly with ideas of what it means to be an individual, and about the power of things to represent the self. Teasingly, the paintings bestow meaning and animation on the connoisseur even as she pretends to define their own worth. They make up her identity; without the art there would, quite literally, be no connoisseur.

A composite picture, ‘The connoisseur’ lies in the tradition of Giuseppe Arcimboldi (1527-1593), the Italian painter best known for his curious portraits composed entirely from fantastical arrangements of vegetables, fruit, fish and beasts. Designed by George Spratt, she belongs to a series of whimsical lithographs called ‘Twelve original designs’, published c. 1830 by Charles Tilt (1797-1861).  Her unusual companions include, amongst others, an ‘Antiquarian’, his body made up of medieval fragments and pieces of stained-glass window, a ‘Conchologist’ composed from her collection of rare and beautiful seashells, a ‘Mineralogist’ constructed from a selection of polished crystals, marbles and other minerals, and an ‘Entomologist’ with limbs formed from a living tangle of beetles, butterflies and grasshoppers. – Amanda Flynn

Image:

The connoisseur. John Johnson Shelfmark: Trade in Prints and Scraps 2 (1).  ProQuest durable URL

Copyright © 2009 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Reproduced with the permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Comments are welcome for sharing with other users, but regrettably the editors of Curators’ Choice are not necessarily able to respond to enquiries.

Bitter pills and blood-letting: 19th century medicine in satire

A patient undergoes bloodletting, or the euphemistically termed 'breathing a vein'.

Medicine, in the early nineteenth-century, was not a pleasant experience for the patient. It was an age of “heroic” medicine that consisted of “copious bleeding and massive doses of drugs.”¹  In 1804, James Gillray produced this series of satirical etchings that brilliantly charts the progress of disease in one unlucky patient…

In ‘Breathing a vein’ the patient stoically begins his treatment with a course of bloodletting, or phlebotomy. Beloved by both physicians and quacks in the early nineteenth-century, it was a standard medical practice (and, indeed, one of the oldest, dating from classical antiquity). It entailed drawing blood from one or more of the larger external veins, such as those in the forearm, in order to ‘cure’ a disease and restore the body’s natural balance —frequently physicians would take so much blood in one sitting that the patient would be left faint and swooning. Gillray plays with cruel wit upon the contrast between the title, ‘breathing a vein’, which suggests a light and pleasant experience, and the reality, as indicated by the fountain of blood gushing from the patient’s arm and his glum expression.

The patient awaits the effects of his purgative emetic...

His condition not having improved, the patient is shown in the second print trying a ‘Gentle emetic’ instead—a dose intended to cause a bout of (anything but gentle) vomiting. The pale-looking patient sits beside a waiting bowl, while the physician holds his head in readiness. 

The patient swallows his bitter tasting medicines.

In the third of the series, ‘Taking physick’, the patient—looking ever more wretched—screws up his face against the sour taste of his medicine. Few effective drugs existed, and those that physicians did prescribe were sometimes more harmful than helpful—and the effects they produced were ripe for caricature. In this case the man is probably taking a laxative intended to purge the system of deletrious material. A labelled bottle is clutched in his hand, and two others stand waiting on the mantelpiece. Physicians would often prescribe drugs to be taken repeatedly, many times over in a day, and the patient’s unshaven, dishevelled state suggests that he has been subject to this treatment for some time. Indeed, Gillray’s sly depiction of the man’s unbuttoned trousers and trailing shirttails suggests that he has spent much of his treatment in close confinement with his chamber pot.

In celebration of his recovery, the patient joyfully tucks into dinner.

In the fourth print, ‘Charming well again’, the patient is finally recovered (probably despite rather than because of his treatment), and beams with delight. His relief seems due not just to feeling well again, but also to having exchanged his noxious doses for a hearty meal of roast chicken. Clearly, he hasn’t wasted a moment of his recovery on such trifling matters as changing out of his sick clothes and nightcap; having paused just long enough to tuck a napkin under his chin, he has launched straight into dinner.  – Amanda Flynn         

¹Lois N. Manger, History of Medicine, New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1992, p. 205.

Images:

Breathing a vein. John Johnson Shelfmark: Trade in Prints and Scraps 8 (64). ProQuest durable URL

Gentle emetic. John Johnson Shelfmark: Trade in Prints and Scraps 8 (70). ProQuest durable URL

Taking physick. John Johnson Shelfmark: Trade in Prints and Scraps 8 (73). ProQuest durable URL

Charming well again. John Johnson Shelfmark: Trade in Prints and Scraps 8 (67). ProQuest durable URL

Copyright © 2009 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Reproduced with the permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Comments are welcome for sharing with other users, but regrettably the editors of Curators’ Choice are not necessarily able to respond to enquiries.

Exporting to the Empire: labels of the British cotton trade

A cotton label destined for the Indian market

The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera holds many thousands of rare advertising labels representing every imaginable product. Among the most visually striking are these chromolithographed labels produced by British companies for the export of cotton cloth.

Cotton as a commodity was of great importance to the British Empire of the 19th and early 20th centuries; the cotton industry had experienced massive expansion during the Industrial Revolution and by the mid-1830s cotton textiles accounted for more than the half the total value of all British foreign exports.

"East meets West" was a popular theme for exporters

Raw cotton was brought to mills in Scotland and the North West where it was processed into bolts and bales of cloth. Before leaving the mills each bolt was stamped with the mark of the exporter and a colourfully-decorated paper label was often added. These labels, also referred to as tickets, were attached to the ends of the bolts and acted as trade marks, identifying a particular mill or producer’s product in the marketplace. They were designed to be visually appealling to the cloth buyer and individual labels were often created to target a specific market. Bright, colourful designs were instrumental in selling British cotton to far-off markets in India, Africa, China and Japan.

As bale and bolt labels were supposed to catch the eye of the shopper, they often employed local scenes or symbols which would be familiar to intended buyers. The example below is one of many produced for the Indian market which show scenes of the state visit by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, in 1875-6. Edward returned from India with four Asian elephants for London Zoo.

"For the King": a delightful label from the early 1900s

One of the earliest references to the labelling of cloth is mentioned in Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann’s The cotton trade and industrial Lancashire 1600-1780. Describing the textile trade with Africa in the late 17th century, the authors talk of fabric “packed in a stiff paper cover with a gaudy picture of an elephant , the device of the Royal Africa Company on the outside.” The gaudy elephant is probably an early version of the bale label, not too different from the one shown here. – Ken Gibb

Images:
Indian prince. John Johnson Shelfmark: Labels 17 (8) (ProQuest durable URL)

Rug merchant. John Johnson Shelfmark: Labels 17 (28) (ProQuest durable URL)

Elephant. John Johnson Shelfmark: Labels 17 (10) (ProQuest durable URL)

Copyright  © 2009 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Reproduced with the permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Comments are welcome for sharing with other users, but regrettably the editors of Curators’ Choice are not necessarily able to respond to enquiries.