Broadsides; Chapbooks; Street literature -- Great Britain
At length Catnach, from the possession of greater capital and business
acumen, became--to use the words of our informant--“the Cock of the
Walk,” and continued so until his retirement in 1839. In his Will--or
LAST DYING SPEECH--which was proved April, 1842, “James Catnach, of
Dancer’s Hill, South Mimms, in the county of Middlesex, gentleman,
formerly of Monmouth Court, Monmouth Street, printer, bequeathed the
whole of his estate to his sister Anne, the widow of Joseph Ryle, in
trust, nevertheless, for her daughter, Marion Martha Ryle, until she
obtain the age of twenty-one years. Witnesses--William Kinsey, 13,
Suffolk St., Pall Mall, Solr. Wm. Tookey his clerk.”
The present street literature printers and publishers are Mr. W.
S. Fortey (Catnach’s successor), of 2 and 3, Monmouth Court, Seven
Dials. Mr. Henry Disley (formerly with Catnach), 57, High Street, St.
Giles’s. Mr. Taylor, Brick Lane, Spitalfields. Mr. H. Such, 177, Union
Street, Borough; and Mr. J. Harkness, 121, Church Street, Preston. From
whose “establishments” upwards of two thousand street “papers” and
“ballads” have been obtained, and from which--together with a private
collection--we have made our selection to form “THE CURIOSITIES OF
STREET LITERATURE.”
With such a vast amount of “material” to hand, it is somewhat difficult
to know which to retain and which to reject. It being utterly
impossible to reproduce the whole, the only thing to be done is to
make the attempt to divide them into something like classes. We have,
therefore, arranged our collection into four divisions, which may be
briefly alluded to as--I. “COCKS,” OR “CATCHPENNIES.” II. ROYALTY AND
POLITICAL. III. BALLADS ON A SUBJECT. IV. DYING SPEECH AND CONFESSIONAL
PAPERS.
During the progress of our “Collection” through the press, we had, by
a special appointment, an interview with Mr. John Morgan, a street
author, and who may be said to be the oldest of his peculiar class.
“I’m the last one left of our old crew, Sir,” he observed during our
conversation. He is now upwards of 70 years of age, and formerly
wrote for “Old Jemmy” Catnach, with whose personal history he is
well acquainted, and still continues to write for the “Seven Dials
Press.” A street ballad from his pen will be found at page 103 of our
work. In allusion to Mr. John Morgan, the writer of an article on
“Street Ballads” in the _National Review_ for October, 1861, makes the
following remarks:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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