CURIOSITIES
OF
STREET LITERATURE:

COMPRISING

“COCKS,” OR “CATCHPENNIES,”

A LARGE AND CURIOUS ASSORTMENT OF
STREET-DROLLERIES, SQUIBS, HISTORIES, COMIC TALES IN PROSE AND VERSE,

Broadsides on the Royal Family,

POLITICAL LITANIES, DIALOGUES, CATECHISMS, ACTS OF PARLIAMENT,
STREET POLITICAL PAPERS,

A VARIETY OF “BALLADS ON A SUBJECT,”

DYING SPEECHES AND CONFESSIONS.

TO WHICH IS ATTACHED THE ALL-IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY

AFFECTIONATE COPY OF VERSES,

AS

“What hast here? ballads? I love a ballad in print, or a life; for then we are sure they are true.”—Shakespeare.

“There’s nothing beats a stunning good murder, after all.”—Experience of a Running Patterer.

LONDON:
REEVES AND TURNER,
196, STRAND.
1871.

NOTICE.

The “Execution Paper” of John Gregson, for the Murder of his Wife, at Liverpool—page 235 of Contents—is CANCELLED, and Eight Pages, “The Heroes of the Guillotine,” supplied instead.

196, Strand, December 30th, 1870.

CURIOSITIES
OF
STREET LITERATURE.

Purchased by ______________________________________
Of ____________________________________________
On the __________ day of ______________ 187

GUARANTEED ONLY FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX COPIES PRINTED,

Namely,—

EACH COPY OF EACH EDITION NUMBERED.

INTRODUCTION.

In selecting and arranging this collection of “Street Papers” for publication, every care has been taken to print them verbatim et literatim. They all bear the printer’s name and address were such is used, and, in many cases, the wood-cuts have either been borrowed or purchased for the purpose of presenting them in their original style. The real object being to show, in the most genuine state, the character and quality of the productions written expressly for the amusement of the lower orders by street-authors. The general instruction given to our printer has been to “set up word for word from copy, with the exception of sɹǝʇʇǝʃ pǝuɹnʇ (sic) and those of a WROng FoNT (?)”—it being thought quite unnecessary to repeat these convenient and at that time compulsory “Errors of the Press” and which were very common in former days with the printers and publishers of street and public-house literature; arising alike from a want of skill in the art, a deficiency of capital, and the hurried manner in which they were prepared and worked off to meet the momentary demand.

Old “Jemmy” Catnach—whose name is ever associated with the literature of our streets—was a man who hated “innowations,” as he used to call improvements, and had a great horror of buying type, because, as he used to observe, he kept no standing formes, and when certain sorts run short, he was not particular, and would tell the boys to use anything which would make a good shift. For instance, he never considered a compositor could be aground for a lowercase l while he had a figure of 1 or a cap. I to fall back upon; by the same rule, the cap. O and figure 0 were synonymous with “Jemmy;” the lower-case p, b, d, and q, would all do duty for each other in turn, and if they could not always find roman letters to finish a word with, why the compositor knew very well that the “reader” would not mark out italic.

At the time Catnach commenced business. “Johnny” Pitts,[1] of the Toy and Marble Warehouse, No. 6, Great St. Andrew Street, was the acknowledged and established Printer of Street-Literature for the “Dials” district; therefore, as may be easily imagined, a powerful rivalry and vindictive jealousy soon arose between these “two of a trade”—most especially on the part of “Old Mother” Pitts, who is described as being a coarse and vulgar-minded personage, and as having originally followed the trade of a bumboat woman at Portsmouth: she “vowed vengeance against the young fellow in the court for daring to set up in their business, and also spoke of him as young “Catsnatch,” “Catblock,” “Cut-throat,” and many other opprobrious terms being freely given to the new comer. Pitts’ staff of “bards” were duly cautioned of the consequences which would inevitably follow should they dare to write a line for Catnach—the new cove in the court. The injunction was for a time obeyed, but the “Seven Bards of the Dials” soon found it not only convenient, but also more profitable to sell copies of their effusions to both sides at the same time, and by keeping their own council they avoided detection, as each printer accused the other of buying an early sold copy, and then reprinting it off with the utmost speed, and which was in reality often the case, as “Both Houses” had an emissary on the constant look-out for any new production suitable for street-sale. Now, although this style of “Double dealing” and competition tended much to lessen the cost price to the “middle-man,” or vendor, the public in this case did not get any of the reduction, as a penny broadside was still a penny, and a quarter sheet still a halfpenny to them, the “street-patterer” obtaining the whole of the reduction as extra profit.

The feud existing between these rival publishers, who have been somewhat aptly designated as the Colburn and Bentley of the “paper” trade, never abated, but, on the contrary, increased in acrimony of temper until at last not being content to vilify each other by words alone, they resorted to printing off virulent lampoons, in which Catnach never failed to let the world know that “Old Mother Pitts” had been formerly a bumboat woman, while the Pitts announced that—

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:—

“This ballad—‘Little Lord John out of Service’—is one of the few which bear a signature. It is signed ‘John Morgan’ in the copy which we possess. For a long time we believed this name to be a mere nom-de-plume; but the other day, when making a small purchase in Monmouth Court, we were informed, in answer to a casual question, that this is the real name of the author of some of the best comic ballads. Our informant added, that he is an elderly, we may say old, gentleman, living somewhere in Westminster; but the exact whereabouts we could not discover. Mr. Morgan followed no particular visible calling so far as our informant knew, except writing ballads, by which he could not earn much of a livelihood, as the price of an original ballad, in these buying-cheap days, has been screwed down by publishers to somewhere about a shilling sterling. Something more like bread-and-butter might be made perhaps by poets who were in the habit of singing their own ballads, as some of them do, but not Mr. Morgan. Should this ever meet the eye of that gentleman (a not very probable event, we fear), we beg to apologise for the liberty we have taken in using the verses and name, and hope he will excuse us, having regard to the subject in which we are his humble fellow-labourers. We could scarcely avoid naming him, the fact being that he is the only living author of street ballads whose name we know. That self-denying mind, indifferent to worldly fame, which characterised the architects of our cathedrals and abbeys, would seem to have descended on our ballad-writers; and we must be thankful, therefore, to be able to embalm and hand down to posterity a name here and there, such as William of Wykeham, and John Morgan. In answer to our inquiries in this matter, generally we have been told, ‘Oh, anybody writes them’ and with that answer we have had to rest satisfied. But in presence of that answer, we walk about the streets with a new sense of wonder, peering into the faces of those of our fellow-lieges who do not carry about with them the external evidence of overflowing exchequers, and saying to ourselves, ‘That man may be a writer of ballads.’

With regard to illustrations, a ballad-printer is in the habit of buying up old wood-cuts which have been engraved for any other works, and of applying them to his own purposes; disregarding alike their age, rudeness, and condition. Most of those adopted are repeatedly employed over and over again. The printers of “broadsides” seldom care whether an ornament of the kind used is, or not, appropriate to the subject of the ballad, so long as it is likely to attract attention. Many examples will be found in this collection, and we are indebted to Mr. H. Disley and others for the use of the same.

“The authors and poets who give this peculiar literature, alike in prose or rhyme to the streets, are all in some capacity or another connected with street-patter or song; and the way in which a narrative or a ‘copy of werses’ is prepared for the press is usually this:—The leading members of the ‘schools’—some of whom refer regularly to the evening papers—when they hear of any out-of-the-way occurrence, resort to the printer and desire its publication in a style proper for the streets. This is usually done very speedily, the school—or a majority of them—and the printer agreeing with the author. Sometimes an author will voluntarily prepare a piece of street-literature and submit it to a publisher, who, as in case of other publishers, accepts or declines, as he believes the production will or will not prove remunerative. Sometimes the school carry the manuscript with them to the printer, and undertake to buy a certain quantity to insure publication. The payment to the author is the same in all