The pictorial press : its origin and progress / by Mason Jackson.

  • Mason Jackson
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pictorial press : its origin and progress / by Mason Jackson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/384 page 3
    journey; and then, at second hand, ttey amuse the le^sure moments of the railway porter, or, better still, they are collected together, and perhaps serve to solace the sick poor during many lingering hours in hospitals and refuges. Day by day the demand is made, and the supply is ready. The printing-machine never sleeps and is never tired. Its voice is one of the voices of the night—most unmusical, yet with a mysterious meaning. The daily newspaper, so potent in diffusing the light of knowledge, is itself the offspring of darkness. The busy brains and active fingers which create it turn night into day in the execution of their quickly recui-ring tasks, and with unflagging energy they labour on, that the slumbering world may be properly amused and instructed when it wakes. The intelligent foreigner who happens to reach our southern coast on a Monday morning in summer or autumn, and travels to London by one of the early trains, is as- tonished, when the train stops, to see most of the gentlemen rush from the carriages and surround a small boy, whom they appear to hustle and threaten with violent gesticulations. The boy appears to buy ofE the hostility of his assailants by dealing out to each a paper, which he takes from a large bundle under his arm, and with which the appeased passenger returns to his carriage. Cries of ' Times ! Daily Neivs ! Telegraph! Staticlarcl!—Here, give us one—anything !' reach the ears of the wondering stranger, who beholds the boy at length take refuge in an empty railway carriage on the opposite side of the platform, and from that place of vantage he continues to deal out the mysterious papers. After a time the intelligent foreigner learns that these are the London papers of that morning, which are sent out to meet the trains, and are eagerly bought by the gentlemen who have been spending from Saturday to Monday at the seaside, and, having fasted from all newspapers during that time, they are now of course famishing for news. Such is their eagerness that politics are thrown to the winds. The Con- servative will put up with a Liberal newspaper rather than
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