Victorian Sensation

Michael Diamond

Description

A captivating look at the scandalous and sensational media stories that gripped Victorian society.

From political sleaze and scandal to West End hits and the 'feel-good' factor, Michael Diamond explores the media stories that gripped Victorian society, in an age when newspapers became cheap, nationally distributed and easily accessible to all classes. Fully illustrated, and drawing on a wealth of original material, 'Victorian Sensation' sheds light on the Victorians' fascination with celebrity culture and their obsession with gruesome and explicit reportage of murders and sex scandals. With a vivid cast of characters, ranging from the serial poisoner William Palmer, to Charles Dickens, Jumbo the Elephant, distinguished politicians and even the Queen herself, this passionate analysis of the period reveals how the reporting methods of our own popular media have their origins in the Victorian press, and shows that sensation was as integral a part of society in the nineteenth century as it is today.

Introduction; Chapter 1: Royalty; Chapter 2: Political Movements; Chapter 3: Religion and Morality; Chapter 4: Sex Scandal; Chapter 5: Murder; Chapter 6: The 'Sensation Novel'; Chapter 7: The 'Sensation Drama'; Chapter 8: Stars of Entertainment; Afterword; Chronology of the Main Events Mentioned; Notes; Index

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 04 octobre 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780857287380
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

V I C T O R I A N S EN S AT I O N

V I C T O R I A N S EN S AT I O N Or, the Spectacular, the Shocking and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Michael Diamond

Anthem Press

This edition first published by Anthem Press 2003

Anthem Press is an imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company 75–76 Blackfriars Road London SE1 8HA

Copyright © Michael Diamond 2003

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Wimbledon Publishing Company, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available

Library of Congress in Publication Data A catalog record has been applied for

Typeset by M Rules

ISBN 1 84331 076 7 (hbk)

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Bell with my love.

C H R O N O L O G Y O F T H E M A I N E V E N T S M E N T I O N E D 289 N O T E S 299 I N D E X 323

7

Murder

Religion and Morality

154

Stars of Entertainment

Political Movements

1

I N T R O D U C T I O N

A F T E R W O R D

C H A P T E R 8

Royalty

C H A P T E R 3

C H A P T E R 2

C H A P T E R 4

C H A P T E R 1

C O N T E N T S

The ‘Sensation Novel ’

218

189

248

The ‘Sensation Drama’

120

41

Sex Scandal

C H A P T E R 7

C H A P T E R 6

83

C H A P T E R 5

286

Introduction

Up and down the blessed town I run for information; Trying to discover if there’s any new sensation. Politics and accidents and scandalizing too, Sir, 1 Either’s all the same to me, as long as it is new, Sir.

As so often happened, a music hall song perfectly expressed popular feel- ing, in this case, the Victorian public’s delight in ‘sensation’, which dictionaries define as ‘a condition of excited feeling produced in a com- 2 munity by some occurrence’, as well as the occurrence itself. However, by the early 1860s, when this song was being sung, sensation-seekers did not have to run around town: they had only to pick up a newspaper. The Victorians enjoyed sensations as much as we do. It is true that restraint and decorum were highly valued, that many sensational subjects were taboo, and that the misdemeanours of the high and mighty were covered up where possible to maintain the social hierarchy. However, the effort exerted in keeping the lid on a scandal, or an unpleasant subject under wraps often meant that in the end the explosion was all the greater. The Victorians had more opportunity than any of their predecessors to enjoy sensations, due principally to the unprecedented development of the press. National sensations were comparatively few until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the removal of ‘taxes on knowledge’ made newspapers affordable for the first time to the less privileged – who were particularly sensation-hungry. In 1853 the tax on newspaper advertising was abolished; 1855 saw the repeal of stamp duty on newspapers, which had hindered their distribution, and in 1861 paper duty was dropped. At about the same time the development of railway transport meant that

2

Victorian Sensation

national newspapers could reach an infinitely wider public. When a male heir was born to Queen Victoria in 1841, theManchester Guardian, which appeared only on Wednesdays and Saturdays, declared, ‘This intelligence was brought by an express train to Birmingham yesterday, and forwarded by the last train from thence to this town. Although it has reached us 3 indirectly we have no doubt as to its truth.’ Even twenty years later this would have seemed quaint. With the most important papers concentrated in London, it was easier to create a sensation there than elsewhere.The Annual Register for 1849 reported that a murder in Norfolk had generated huge excitement, but another in Bermondsey even more, largely because ‘the latter deed was perpetrated in the metropolis, the daily press of which was thus enabled 4 to record [developments] with all the skill of practised journalists’. Victorians were well aware of the importance of the press. As early as 1850, at an anti-Catholic meeting in Liverpool, a riot was in progress when the Reverend Hugh M’Neile rose to speak. When he found he could not be heard, ‘he drew up a chair, and sitting down, leisurely began 5 to make a speech to the reporters’. In later years Gladstone did the same. Of the newspapers most often quoted in this book,The Timeswas the leading journal of record, and reflected establishment attitudes; theEra offered the fullest coverage of the world of entertainment; and the radical and republicanReynolds’s Newspaperexpanded the limits of what could be reported to a large Victorian readership. It also showed how a newspaper can sensationalize news with the use of intemperate and abusive language. In contrast, thePall Mall Gazettewas conventionally decorous until W T Stead took over as editor in the 1880s. Then it became a pioneer of the New Journalism. This involved, on the one hand, discussion of formerly taboo subjects, interviews with important people and noisy journalistic campaigns; on the other, making the paper more reader-friendly, with smaller pages and clearer, larger print, broken up by cross-headings. Until then, Victorian newspapers, however sensational their content, offered a mass of small type which the modern reader would find exceptionally off-putting. Stead was influenced by the press in the United States, where sensa- tional journalism is thought to have originated. The American showman Phineas T Barnum had taught the British how to create a sensation as early as 1844, and in 1851 the country was plunged into a craze for Bloomers: Mrs Bloomer was an American, whose revolutionary champi- oning of a short skirt and long loose trousers fascinated British women, to