That evening, Dickens sat down and wrote a letter to The Times describing what he'd seen:
“When I came upon the scene at midnight, the shrillness of the cries and howls that were raised from time to time, denoting that they came from a concourse of boys and girls already assembled in the best places, made my blood run cold. As the night went on, screeching and laughing and yelling in strong chorus of parodies on negro melodies, with substitutes of 'Mrs Manning' for 'Susannah' and the like, were added to these.
“When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians and vagabonds of every kind flocked on to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour. Fightings, faintings, whistlings, imitations of Punch, brutal jokes, tumultuous demonstrations of indecent delight when swooning women were dragged out of the crowd by the police with their dresses disordered, gave a new zest to the general entertainment.
“When the sun rose brightly - as it did - it gilded thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth or callousness, that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore, and to shrink from himself as fashioned in the image of the Devil. When the two miserable creatures who attracted this ghastly sight about them were turned quivering into the air, there was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgement, no more restraint in any of the previous obscenities, than if the name of Christ had never been heard in this world.” (12)
You'd never guess at an atmosphere like that from the ballad-printers' stock accounts. These give the impression that public executions were a dignified and solemn affair, with church bells tolling over a silent crowd, the condemned man mounting the platform with a firm step and great decorum all round. Given how willing they are to use sensational copy everywhere else, it seems a shame the broadsides were so sedate in this one area, but speed of production was evidently so important that this one section of bland copy was thought a price worth paying.
Sharp cheerfully illustrates both Browning and Quennell's ballads with a woodcut of Newgate, easily identifiable by the fact that St Sepulchre's church is visible. But this too was standard practice. Ballad-printers selected their illustrations with what John Ashton's Modern Street Ballads calls “a charming impartiality”. I'm sure they did their best to find an appropriate illustration from whatever blocks they had available, but the results are sometimes comic. (13)
The collection of street ballads I've seen at the British Library include a portrait of a despairing man in the condemned cell which JV Quick uses to represent both Henry Williams in 1836 and John Pegsworth a year later. There's also a courtroom scene from Paul's store which serves to illustrate the trials of both Mary Arnold in about 1840 and Michael Steyton in 1843, with the same mutton-chopped witness giving evidence both times. Sharp's woodcut of the gallows at Newgate seemed to serve every printer in the Dials, requiring only the number of hanging men to be amended before it could be dragged out again. Horsemonger Lane Gaol had its own stock portrait too.
Mayhew noticed something particularly odd about the woodcut used The Trial of Mr and Mrs Manning for the Murder of Mr Patrick O'Connor. “A portrait of Mr Patrick O'Connor heads the middle column,” he notes. “From the presence of a fur collar to the coat or cloak, and of what is evidently an order with its insignia round the neck, I have little doubt that the portrait of Mr O'Connor was originally that of King William IV.”
Of all the cheek exhibited by ballad-printers of the Victorian era, I think this example may be the best. Using the portrait of an English king just 12 years dead to represent a common murder victim while his famously stern niece was still on the throne must have been a very risky business - particularly when the document carrying that portrait had your name and address at the bottom. Mayhew doesn't tell us which printer took a chance on that particular venture, but it's a miracle the offender didn't end up writing a gallows ballad for himself.
Sources
(1) The Annals of London, edited by John Richardson (Cassell & Co, 2000).
(2) Sketches by Boz, by Charles Dickens (Penguin Classics, 2006).
(3) Dickens' Dictionary of London 1888, by Charles Dickens Jr (Old House Books, 1993).
(4) Bloody Versicles: The Rhymes of Crime, by Jonathan Goodman (Kent State University Press, 1993).
(5) London Labour and the London Poor, by Henry Mayhew (Wordsworth Classics, 2008).
(6) The History of the Catnach Press, by Charles Hindley (Charles Hindley, 1886).
(7) Mary Arnold, The Female Monster, by John Morgan.
(8) The Ode Less Travelled, by Stephen Fry (Arrow Books, 2007).
(9) Title unknown. Quoted in Mayhew.
(10) Title unknown. Quoted in Hindley.
(11) Weekly Dispatch, January 3, 1819.
(12) Letter to The Times, November 13, 1849.
(13) Modern Street Ballads, by John Ashton (publisher unknown, 1888).
(14) Capital Punishment in the 18th & 19th Centuries, compiled by Richard Clark (http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/index18.html).