The Pictorial Press: Its Origin and ProgressJackson, Mason
History
The Pictorial Press: Its Origin and Progress
Jackson, Mason
Illustration of books; Newspapers -- Illustrations
Macaulay describes the unlicensed press at this period as being worked
in holes and corners, and producing large quantities of pamphlets which
were a direct infraction of the law subjecting the press to a
censorship. 'There had long lurked in the garrets of London a class of
printers who worked steadily at their calling with precautions
resembling those employed by coiners and forgers. Women were on the
watch to give the alarm by their screams if an officer appeared near the
workshop. The press was immediately pushed into a closet behind the bed;
the types were flung into the coal-hole, and covered with cinders; the
compositor disappeared through a trap-door in the roof, and made off
over the tiles of the neighbouring houses. In these dens were
manufactured treasonable works of all classes and sizes, from halfpenny
broadsides of doggerel verse up to massy quartos filled with Hebrew
quotations.'[1] The pamphlet I have just quoted probably issued from a
press of this kind; but he must have been a bold printer who dared to
put his name and address to a work wherein Jefferies was openly referred
to as 'that bloody and cruel Judge Jefferies.'
Large broadsides continued to be the favourite form of illustrated
journalism for some time after this. One gives a 'true and perfect
relation' of a great earthquake which happened at Port Royal, in
Jamaica, on Tuesday, June 7th, 1692, and is illustrated with a large
woodcut. On the death of Queen Mary, the consort of William III., an
illustrated broadside was published, plentifully garnished with skulls
and cross-bones, entitled, '_Great Britain's Lamentation; or the Funeral
Obsequies of that most incomparable Protestant Princess, Mary, of ever
Blessed Memory, Queen of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, who
departed this life the 28th of December, at Kensington, 1694, in the
Thirty-second Year of her Age. She Reigned Five Years, Eight Months, and
Seventeen Days. And was conducted from Whitehall to Westminster Abbey,
in an open Chariot of State, on black cloath, by the Nobility, Judges,
and Gentry of the Land, on Tuesday, the 5th of March, 1694-5._' The
large woodcut shows the funeral procession, and I have copied that part
of it containing the funeral car, with the body of the deceased queen
resting under a canopy.
[Illustration: FUNERAL OF QUEEN MARY, 1695.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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