Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain Read online

  Time, and the spending of it, began to take on more urgency. (It would become a more compelling subject still with the arrival of the railways; see pp. 194-5.) Advertisements for stagecoaches before the turnpike age had said that coaches would arrive ‘in about two days’, or ‘if the roads are good’. Now the Post Office was determined that outside conditions should not interfere. In 1789 snow had caused a driver on the Glasgow route to spend twelve days almost entirely on the road, ‘to get the coach through on time’; he was so exhausted by this feat that he had to stay in bed for a week afterwards, but the Post Office paid for his recuperation period in order to encourage others to emulate his dedication.21 In a similar manner, while newspapers continued to be carried free if they were brought to the post office before 7 p.m., there was a surcharge of 1/2d. per paper if they came after that hour, to discourage late delivery and permit the eight o’clock mailcoach to depart on schedule.22 (Although this is not to say that there was not always a way around the schedule: the General Evening Post struck a deal with the Post Office, paying a flat fee so that, even if its papers were late, the mailcoaches would wait for them.)23

  Getting the post to the country was, in many ways, the same thing as getting the news to the country. In the 1810s, some newspapers began to produce boards with breaking news on them, to stand outside the offices of local distributors and to hang on the sides of the mailcoaches as they raced through towns and countryside. In 1837 the Reading Mercury had placards on mailcoaches giving the news of William IV’s death, and ‘in less than an hour…there was scarcely a person within the borough’ who had not heard: unimaginable speed.24 In the 1770s, during the American Revolution, and through the late 1780s, with the impeachment and trial of Warren Hastings, the concept of parliamentary reporting in the newspapers was created. There were no facilities for writing in the House of Commons, so the Gazetteer paid ‘impecunious barristers’ to sit in relays, listen, then rush across to the newspaper’s office and scribble down a précis of what they had heard for publication. Evening newspapers, with the day’s news in them, could by 1875 reach some parts of the country by morning: the Courier went from selling 1,500 copies to selling 7,000 in four years (it was also the first paper to have a second edition).25

  All this created a demand for news, and newspapers, but what really drove the engine was advertising. This had been fundamental to local papers from the earliest days: Dicey and Raikes’s Northampton Mercury had carried advertisements for retailers in Northampton, St Ives, Daventry, Loughborough and Boston.26 As early as 1750 the advertisements in many local papers swallowed up half of the available space (there is a reason, after all, that ‘Advertiser’ was a popular name for newspapers).

  Sophie von la Roche, in 1786, wrote to her family in Germany describing the contents of the daily papers (which she numbered in London at twenty-one). The proportion of news to advertisements and announcements was fairly standard:

  The notices in to-day’s paper run:…

  Plays produced at the Haymarket theatre; names of actors and actresses…followed by the prices of the seats…

  Plays at the small Sadler’s Wells theatre, where to-day’s programme offers a satire on magnetism and somnambulism in particular, and where tumblers and tight-rope walkers may be seen…

  At the Royal Bush, Mr Astley’s amphitheatre;* men, boys and girls in trick-riding; fireworks; short comedies and ballets…

  Bermondsey Spa, a place where firework displays are held, announces that the scaffolding has been well and strongly made.

  The royal Circus; adults and children in trick-riding, children in comedy and pantomime; Italians in dancing and buffoonery.

  Two fine large green tortoises for sale.

  A notice against some piratical printer.

  Discovery of new pills.

  Notice of maritime matters…

  On the docks at Woolwich all kinds of old ships’ timber and nautical instruments to be sold.

  Notice that…the South Sea Voyagers’ company will meet.

  Fifty guineas reward for information concerning attack of a customs officer by one or more of the shipping hands…

  A pleasant villa in Fulham to be sold; with orchards and fish-pond.

  Bitter stomach pills…

  Notice that the king and queen returned here yesterday from Windsor…and all the names of the gentlemen presented: further, that the list of criminals committed to die was placed before the king; that yesterday evening in the queen’s palace a concert was given for the Archduke and duchess of Milan.

  That the East India Company offers several million pounds of tea for sale, terms of disposal consequently much lower.

  That on the continent there is a rising against papal power…

  More congratulations to the king from various cities for having escaped the mad Nicholson woman’s attack…

  Discovery that the bottom of a fishing-smack was exclusively laden with French brandy…

  That the commercial pact with France would mean permanent peace.

  That all those gentlemen opposed to the minister Pitt are gone to the country to increase the number of their supporters…

  A match [i.e. prize-fight] between a Jew and a harness-maker in the Epping Forest…

  Miss Farren reprimanded for having been ashamed to repeat an epilogue for the fourth time…

  A reminder to change the post-time…

  News from Paris.

  From Plymouth.

  Horse-racing, breed and virtues of horses.

  Short verses.

  Shipping news - who, where and whither.

  Bills of exchange, per cents, and bank news…

  A desirable residence, eighty-four years’ lease. In all these cases a separate breakfast-room is mentioned…

  Several estates, all laying particular stress on the fact that fruit-trees are planted there, and are watered by a canal…

  In addition several more houses, mills and farms. With the houses there is always a note to the effect that they do or do not contain many mahogany pieces…

  Sixty kinds of coaches for sale.

  Horses of all descriptions.

  All kinds of wines, 110 bottles.

  Inquiry about two missing men…27

  Provincial papers did not have this quantity of notices and advertisements, but in their own markets they satisfied their customer base. Circulations remained small - in 1795 the daily circulation of the Morning Post was 350;28 even multiplied by 30 readers per copy, that was a tiny number. But, properly focused, it was enough. Chester had a population of 10,000 in 1700, and that sustained two newspapers, the Courant and the Chronicle, which covered, according to their advertisements, the areas across Chester, north Shropshire, north-east Wales, south Lancashire (including Liverpool, Wigan and Manchester) and north Staffordshire. Itinerant sellers found it worth their while to advertise that they would be ‘at the Wolf’s Head, Watergate Street’, to sell ‘foreign china’, or ‘at Mr Maddox’s Cork Cutters Shop…with great choice of China Ware’. Other retailers advertised their shops selling seeds, bankrupt stock, thread, drapery and alcohol. Many stressed their London connections: those selling fashion items like shoes, fabric, upholstery and furniture all had advertisements suggesting their stock had just been purchased in London, or was ‘in the present fashion’.29

  The advertisements for patent medicine were the mainstay of many newspapers. The New Bath Guide, a satire, mocked the fashionable doctor and herbalist John Hill and those who were dosed by him:*

  He gives little Tabby a great many Doses

  For he says the poor creature has got the chlorosis,

  Or a ravenous pica, so brought on the vapours

  By swallowing Stuff she has read in the papers.31

  Many newspaper owners, or their agents, were heavily involved in the patent-medicine business. By 1730 William Dicey and Robert Raikes were in partnership with Thomas Cobb and Benjamin Okell to sell Dr Bateman’s Pectoral Drops. John Newberry, the publisher of the fi
rst children’s magazine,† had a quarter-share in Dr Hooper’s Female Pills, and from 1746 he owned the rights to Dr James’s Fever Powders, which he advertised through the newspapers and also in the books he published: Goody-Two Shoes - which may very well have been written by Oliver Goldsmith - began, ‘CARE and Discontent shortened the Days of Little Margery’s Father. - He was forced from his Family, and seized with a violent Fever in a Place where Dr James’s Powder was not to be had, and where he died miserably.’33 At the end of the volume, the child-reader was reminded that the following could be purchased:

  By the King’s royal Patent, And Sold by J. NEWBERY, at the Bible and Sun in St Paul’s Church-Yard.

  Dr James’s Powders for Fevers, the Small-Pox, Measles, Colds, &c., 2s. 6d.

  Dr Hoope’s Female Pills, 1s.

  Mr Greenough’s Tincture for Teeth, 1s.

  Ditto for the Tooth-Ach [sic], 1s.

  Stomachic Lozenges for the Heart-burn, Cholic, Indigestion, &c, 1s. 6d.

  The Balsam of Health or (as it is by some called) the Balsam of Life, 1s. 6d.

  The Original Daffy’s Elixir, 1s. 3d.

  Dr Anderson’s Scots Pills, 1s.

  The Original British Oil, 1s.

  The Alternative Pills, which are a safe, and certain Cure for the King’s Evil, and all Scrophulous Complaints, 5s. the Box, containing 40 Doses. - See a Dissertation on these Disorders sold at the Place above-mentioned. Price 6d.34

  Those newspaper proprietors who did not own a medicine could still help to sell one: ‘Dr Benjamin Godfrey’s Cordiall’ was advertised in the Leeds Mercury in 1751, and ‘for the convenience of those who live in the country, it will be brought by the men who deliver the News to any place within the reach of this paper’.35 Even for those without a newspaper, or its distribution services, the new Post Office could provide similar business facilities: ‘The True Spirit of Scurvy-Grass’ was advertised for sale

  By the new ingenious Way of the Penny-Post, any Person may send for it, from any part of the City or Suburbs, writing plain directions where to send it to them: if for half a dozen Glasses, they will be brought as safe, as if fetch’t by themselves, and as cheap as one. But who sends this way, must put a Penny in the Letter (besides Six Pence for each Glass) to pay the carriage back; for no body can think the profit great: therefore a Penny must be sent for every Parcel. None need fear their Money, in sending by the Penny-Post, for things of considerable value, are daily sent with safety by it, security being given for the Messengers. There are Houses appointed in all parts of the Town, to take in the Penny-Post Letters.*37

  It was these advertisements that led, over the next century, to the formation of some of the great drug companies, for there was not much of a line to be drawn between patent medicines and ‘real’ medicines, between quacks and doctors. In the eighteenth century the University of Edinburgh’s Pharmacopoeia listed ‘spider’s webs, Spanish fly, pigeon’s blood, hoofs of elks, eggs of ants, spawn of frogs, dung of horse, pig and peacock, human skulls and mummies’ as valid ingredients for medical remedies.38 Dr Robert James patented an antimonial powder which one historian of medicine thinks probably hastened the death of both Oliver Goldsmith and Laurence Sterne ‘among others’, while many more promoted things like ‘medicinal chocolate’, or teething necklaces, or indigestion powders.39 A Rowlandson cartoon of 1789 shows the draper Isaac Swainson, who owned the rights to Velno’s Vegetable Syrup, being attacked by apothecaries and surgeons - not because Velno’s harmed people, or because it didn’t work, but because Swainson was taking business that they thought was rightfully theirs. (He claimed sales of 20,000 bottles a year, bringing him an income of £5,000.)40

  It was hard to see the difference between these men and John Hunter, the famous surgeon and anatomist, who in 1984 wrote to Edward Jenner, the pioneer of smallpox inoculation: ‘Dear Jenner, - I ampuffing off your tartar as the tartar of all tartars, and have given it to several physicians to make trial, but have had no account yet of the success. Had you not better let a bookseller have it to sell, as Glass of Oxford did his magnesia? Let it be called Jenner’s Tartar Emetic, or anybody’s else that you please. If that mode will do, I will speak to some, viz., Newberry, &c. [to distribute it].’41

  But while Hunter and Jenner are today considered to have been pioneers of medical science, Dr James Graham was a quack in any period, and he used newspapers and their advertising potential to its full. Born in 1745 in Edinburgh, he was a qualified doctor; by 1775 he had set up in Pall Mall and was advertising that, as a specialist in eye and ear problems, he had ‘cured or relieved 281; refused as incurable on their first Application, 317; after a short Trial (by desire) found incurable 47; dismissed for Neglect, &c. 57; country, foreign, and other Patients, events unknown, 381’. Perhaps the honesty of admitting he cured only a quarter of those who applied to him was a legacy of his training. But by 1779 he had opened the Temple of Health, and between 1778 and 1781 he was a regular advertiser in the Morning Herald, promoting himself and, more particularly, the ‘Temple’ with its ‘Celestial Bed’:

  To their Excellencies the Foreign Ambassadors, to the Nobility, Gentry, and to Persons of Learning and of Taste.

  THE CELESTIAL BRILLIANCY of the Medico-Electrical Apparatus in all the apartments of the Temple, will be exhibited By Dr GRAHAM himself Who will have the honour of explaining the true Nature and Effects of Electricity, Air, Music, and Magnetism when applied to the Human Body…Previous to the display of the Electrical Fire, the Doctor will delicately touch upon the CELESTIAL BEDS which are soon to be opened in the Temple of Hymen, in Pall Mall, for the propagation of Beings, rational and far stronger and more beautiful in mental as well as in bodily Endowments, than the present puny, feeble and nonsensical race of Christians…

  Admittance to the Temple was 5s., while pamphlets outlining the cures that had already taken place could be bought for a mere 3d. At his lectures, ‘Vestina, the Rosy Goddess of Health’, stood by in attendance, helping ‘at the display of the Celestial Meteors, and of that sacred Vital Fire over which she watches, and whose application in the cure of diseases, she daily has the honour of directing’. (One of Graham’s unwitting claims on posterity was that ‘Vestina’ was none other than the soon-to-be Emma Hamilton, wife to Sir William Hamilton and mistress to Lord Nelson.) Infertile couples hoping to conceive were recommended Graham’s Treatise on Health (for 10s. 6d.), which gave advice on hygiene, on singing (which ‘softens the mind of a happy couple, makes them all love, all harmony’), and on ‘drinking of the divine balm, which for the benefit of the human race, I have concocted with my own hand, and which, however, costs only a guinea a bottle’.

  If cleanliness, song and the divine balm all failed, then it was on to the Celestial Bed, which was available for rent at £100 (or sometimes £50) a night:

  the first, the only one in the world, or that ever existed…In a neighbouring closet is placed a cylinder by which I communicate the celestial fire to the bed-chamber, that fluid which animates and vivifies all, and those cherishing vapours and Oriental perfumes, which I convey thither by means of tubes of glass. The celestial bed rests on six massy and transparent columns; coverings of purple, and curtains of celestial blue surround it, and the bed-clothes are perfumed with the most costly essences of Arabia: it is exactly similar to those that adorn the palaces in Persia, and to that of the favourite sultana in the seraglio of the Grand Turk.42

  In addition, the advertisements promised, ‘In the celestial bed no feather is employed…springy hair mattresses are used…[having] procured at vast expense, the tails of English stallions, which when twisted, baked and then untwisted and properly prepared, is [sic] elastic to the highest degree.43 And if a celestial bed and the tails of English stallions between them couldn’t cure the problem, then clearly nothing would.

  It was on the basis of this kind of relentless advertising that newspapers achieved the financial stability that, in the nineteenth century, enabled expansion into ever-growing markets. Very quickl
y with the new century, circulations skyrocketed beyond anything that had been achieved before. In exactly the same pattern we have seen already, the increase in the number of newspapers and the increase in the number of people who read them were brought about by developments in technology, in this case in printing and papermaking; by developments in transport, for the papers’ dissemination; and by the recognition among newspaper proprietors that attention to the vast working-class market could reap equivalently vast rewards.