The Victorian Middle Class

It is never easy to define, let alone identify the key traits, of a particular class.  In the case of the Victorian middle-class it is especially difficult.  For one thing, the long period of time from the ascent of Victoria to the throne to her death covered more than six decades.  During those long years, Great Britain went from being a rural, almost medieval, society to one which stood on the cusp of modernism.  As well, all of the changes during that time impacted not only on the classes themselves, but on the structure and relations between classes.

Writing not long after the end of that era, R. H. Gretton noted that there were “few subjects … in which definition is more difficult.”  Almost 100 years later, his words still ring true. As he goes on to note, the term, “middle-class”

has...an inherent vagueness; the very name “Middle Class” suggests a stratum of society which, though obviously in existence, and calling for a descriptive label, was so lacking in marked characteristics or qualities that it could only be described as lying between two other classes.

The problem, he continues, is that the term “middle” can be read as “transitional.”  This means that at one end the middle-class merges with a higher class and at the other, with a lower class.  In the former, it is, in all probability, intentional and desirable, an admission of successful upward striving.  At the other, it may well be “a confession of failure.”  Of course, over time not only does the middle-class itself shift its ground, the lines at which it merges with other classes are fluid and change as well.  Even within the middle-class there were distinctions which determined the behaviour of individuals.  One might, for example, be a professional man and that might mean that one was a "gentleman" since a lawyer would undoubtedly be privy to much information about the gentry.  Those of the middle-class who interacted either professionally or socially would have been considered as "gentlefolk."  On the other hand, there were those whose fortunes could not buy them entry into the gentry.  Nobody would have considered them as "gentlefolk," although they were certainly middle-class.  At the other extreme were those whom, today, we would describe as "white-collar" workers.  Clerks, managers and civil servants amongst others, earning between 100 and 200 pounds per annum might well be considered middle-class, but would certainly not have ranked as gentlemen.

A number of factors conspired during the nineteenth century to focus attention on the middle-class.  Not least among these were industrialization and education.  The former acted as a two-edged sword.  For many Britons it increased their wealth, expanding and consolidating new markets and confirming the new middle-class.  And with the growth of this class, so too grew consumerism.  One of the features of the emergent middle-class was what the Norwegian economist and sociologist, Thorstein Veblen, referred to as "conspicuous consumption." But for others the Industrial Revolution rather than offering hope, dragged them down.  Life was changed dramatically for the working class when a bare subsistence wage was considered adequate recompense for a working day that might extend from the early hours of the morning until well after dark six days a week.  The thousands of agricultural labourers who left the land rarely found their lives bettered in the cities under the factory system.

Consumerism by the middle-classes was contributed to by greater leisure and the development of department stores.  These stores were  bright and spacious, with gas-lights and plate-glass windows.  They offered an opportunity for the newly well-off middle-class, particularly the middle-class matrons, to spend their money on all the new and wonderful products that were constantly being made available to the market.  There were, of course, all sorts of other products including travel which was becoming increasingly popular in the Victorian years.  As Lawrence James, in his history of the middle-class comments, the "middle class expended as much time, energy and ingenuity on spending money as they did earning it."

Education, or rather lack of it, was a problem for the middle-class, particularly those who were just clawing their way up from the working classes.  Thomas Arnold, in the mid-1860s, was asking why it was that secondary education was reserved for an elite rather than being available to “the children of our middle and professional classes.” And while the newspapers advertised all sorts of wonderful educational opportunities aimed at the middle-class, it was, as Arnold comments, that  “no one who knows anything of the subject , will venture to affirm that … [they] give, or can give, that which they 'conscientiously offer.'”  It was not until the following decade and beyond, beginning with the 1870 Education Act, that a form of public education began to provide the weapon of widespread literacy for the working classes, thereby offering them a tool for upward mobility.

If there was one word to describe the Victorian middle-class, it would undoubtedly be “respectability.”  And if there was one outstanding virtue, it would have to be the work ethic.  Through hard work one could become, if one was not already, one of the middle-class.  There were self-help books in a-plenty, with perhaps the best known of these being Self Help by the aptly named Samuel Smiles.  While it is easy to make fun of this book, it is important as a marker of the best characteristics of the middle-class; a class which during Victoria's long reign changed the face of Great Britain.

Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette

That marvelous creation of Thackeray's, George Fitz-Boodle, Esquire, Member of the Omnium Club and the third-best whist-player in Europe tells us that he is

 . . . not, in the first place, what is called a ladies' man, having contracted an irrepressible habit of smoking after dinner, which has obliged me to give up a great deal of the dear creatures' society; nor can I go much to country-houses for the same reason. Say what they will,ladies do not like you to smoke in their bedrooms: their silly little noses scent out the odor upon the chintz, weeks after you have left them.

Certainly, amongst men, smoking was a serious social rite.  Special clothing was worn by men who engaged in the practice when ladies were not present or had retired.  Lady Constance Howard, in Etiquette: What to Do, and How to Do it, published in 1885 tells us that

In country houses in the evening gentlemen usually don a smoking suit, which suits are composed of velvet, satin, Indian silk, cloth braided,etc., according to the wearers' tastes and finances.  Slippers are worn instead of boots; but on no account what is called a 'smoking cap' -- that is an article of male attire happily consigned to oblivion.

Interestingly, although opposed to the practice of smoking, it appears that the dictates of fashion, when applied to the men who were so engaged, were still very much "observed" if not "dictated" by women.

Etiquette books generally seem to have agreed that smoking was not a desirable habit.  One work published in the mid '50s, described it as "at best, an ungentlemanly and dirty habit," while Cassell's Hand-book of Etiquette for 1860 warns gentlemen that

If you smoke or take snuff, you will find it difficult to observe that constant personal cleanliness so essential in a gentleman.  Before mixing with ladies take off your coat in which you have been smoking, and rinse your mouth, lest your breath should be tainted with the 'weed'.

By the 1890s, Lady Gertrude Elizaberth Campbell could write, in Etiquette of Good Society, that

A gentleman ... will never smoke in the presence of a lady without first obtaining her permission, and if, when smoking out of doors, he meets any lady, be she friend or foe, he will take his cigar out of his mouth while passing her.

Although there is a considerable body of information on smoking during the Victorian period, much of it is found in contemporary etiquette books or novels.  Thus, it generally relates to the upper classes and particularly "club" men.  There is also a reasonable amount of information on the middle classes, but as in all things, the information about smoking in the lower and labouring classes is limited.  Nonetheless, some information can be derived from observers of the lower classes and the "explorers" of "darkest" England. 

While smoking in England has a long history, dating back to the sixteenth century, tobacco was primarily smoked in pipes and by men.  To this, over the years, was added both snuff taking and cigar smoking with the latter taking hold after the Napoleonic wars.  But it was only after the Crimean war that cigarette smoking became popular.  By the middle of the 1860s, cigarette shops were appearing and with the industrialization of cigarette manufacture by W. D. and H. O. Wills the cigarette had come to Great Britain to stay.  The machinery employed by the company could produce 200 cigarettes a minute and undoubtedly contributed to the growing consumption of tobacco. By the '80s Wild Woodbine had become one of the most popular cigarettes in the country and the price of cigarettes had dropped to as low as a penny.  Through the last four decades of the nineteenth century, as a result of cheap and readily available cigarettes, the rate of tobacco consumption increased by 5 per cent per year!

Because cigarettes were sold in paper packets, it was common practice to insert a piece of cardboard in order to keep the cigarettes from being crushed.  This led to the practice of putting pictures on the cards and, of course, as any good entrepreneur would know, sets of cards (one card from the set to each packet) would encourage the smoker to buy the same brand each time he wanted more cigarettes. A set of these, from the last years of the nineteenth century, can be seen at the top of the page.

A Smoker
1844

Although it was not until the middle years of the 20th Century that scientific evidence was used to establish the dangers of smoking,  the debate over the risks it entailed was already being engaged in 100 years earlier. Dr George Sigmond writing in The Lancet as early as 1837, described at some length, the consequences of smoking. He did, however, suggest, as what not uncommon, that there were medicinal benefits to be found in tobacco, including the relief of asthma.  A sketch of a "typical" smoker in the mid 1840s, as seen in the Illustrated London News, can be seen on the left.

By the middle of the century, it was commonly accepted that smoking was likely to be injurious to one's health.  But the main concern of the medical profession continued to be excessive smoking.  As Dr J. C. Bucknill wrote to The Lancet in 1857,

There can be no doubt of the fact, that the excessive use of tobacco, in any of its forms, is highly pernicious.  the excessive use of snuff is liable to occasion unmanageable forms of indigestion; that of chewing and smoking weakens the energy of the nervous syste, impairs the digesting force of the stomach, and the secreting force of the liver; and, in extreme cases, produces an affection of the muscular system not unlike paralysis agitans.

The Illustrated London News, in its "Metropolitan News" for 11 April 1863, reported the death of a forty-eight year old Italian confectioner as a result of what his medical advisor claimed was "excessive smoking" which had "unquestionably produced disease or nervous paralysis of the heart."  The Duke of Wellington was strongly opposed to smoking and as a result of the growth of cigar smoking, particularly among military officers, he asked that

The Officers commanding Regiments ... prevent smoking in the Mess Roomns of their several Regiments ... and to discourage the practice among the Officers of Junior Rank in their Regiments.

Such discussions were, in the main, the province of the middle and upper classes.  The lower and labouring classes smoked and undoubtedly enjoyed it.  While women of the better classes generally eschewed tobacco, at least until the latter years of the century, poorer women enjoyed smoking.  They commonly smoked "cutties" or short pipes which were often referred to as "nose warmers."  G. L. Apperson, in his Social History of Smoking, notes

The old Irishwomen who were once a familiar feature of London street-life as sellers of apples and other small wares at street corners, were often hardened smokers; and so were, and doubtless still are, many of the gipsy women who tramp the country.

If a woman from the "better" classes smoked, in the middle-years of Victoria's reign, it was an indication that she was "fast." But as time moved on, so too did the attitudes toward smoking. Although, as late as 1891, a report appeared in Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper of a row which erupted in a café when a woman tried to light her cigarette and was told women were not allowed to smoke there. She was requested to desists, but refused. When her companion threw a bottle at the waiter's head and broke a panel behind his target, the police were called in. Obviously the court was somewhat sympathetic since the defendant was fined 1 shilling with 5 pounds costs for the broken panel.

Certainly such ceremonious smoking behaviour as that we have seen from the "better" classes was not to be met with in the lower and labouring classes; and while fights within these social groups were frequent, they were unlikely to be over smoking.  Richard Rowe in Life in the London Streets (1881) wrote of

two or three score of thick-necked, low-browed young men and hobbydehoys, in greasy cords or threadbare pea-jackets, and a sprinkling of ugly, shabbily-dressed women, sprawling their elbows on porter-slopped tables in rough wooden boxes, smoking rank tobacco, drinking adulterated beer, and listening, in moping, unsocial silence, to the wiry jangle of a worn-out little square piano in a corner...

Clearly smoking was a "hot" issue and the acceptance or rejection of it as a social rite appears to have had more to do with class than with other forms of behaviour.  What was acceptable for the poorer classes was distinctly unacceptable or barely acceptable for their betters although the modes of engaging in the activity differed from class to class.
 
A copy of the full report of the incident where a woman was asked to stop smoking appears below.

The Aristocracy

 The Duke and Duchess of York at

the Duchess of Devonshire's Ball

In any analysis of England it is important to have some idea of the structure of the society.  In the Victorian years, although there was an ever-increasing fluidity to society, it still retained a great deal of the pattern that had emerged over the previous centuries. The upper-most classes consisted largely of the aristocracy and what is sometimes referred to as the "squirearchy."  Although "Squire" was not an official title, it was commonly used to identify the wealthy landowners who were not part of the Aristocracy.  The Aristocracy was made up of the royal family and the lords temporal and ecclesiastical. At the very top of the "Beehive" was the Queen and her Consort. 

Following on from the excesses of her predecessors, Victoria made the Court and the Royal Family more respectable than it had ever been before.  Her entire style was such as to define her as a "middle-class" monarch. It was, however, not so much that she was middle-class; clearly she was not, but that she appealed to the constantly growing middle-classes; reflecting their values and morality. Despite the middle-class virtues reflected by the Royal Family, the aristocracy still held sway throughout the nineteenth century.  Few, if any, in the upper-class worked and  Income came from inherited land and investments.

As late as the 1880s, more than half the members of the House of Commons came from the upper classes and, of course, the entire House of Lords.  Many owned multiple establishments and while the Duke of Devonshire (the Harty-Tarty who had been involved with the lovely Skittles) was certainly at the top of the social tree with his wife, the double Duchess (Duchess of Manchester in her first marriage and Duchess of Devonshire in her second), they were not unusual.  For them, the year revolved around a number of locations. The extravagance of their lives is difficult to appreciate.

According to the younger sister of the present Duke,

Each year they spent time in at least five different houses.  From the middle of July until 12 August they stayed at their seaside home, Compton Place in Eastbourne.  Then they moved up to Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire for the grouse shooting, where they remained until the middle of September.  The winter months were spent at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, where they entertained for shooting parties and for Christmas.  The extravagance of these entertainments was, even for those days, great.  Turtles, destined for soup, were sent up from London three times a week at a cost of 24 pounds each, sometimes only to be thrown away unused.  A Derbyshire farmer on being told the price of these reptiles exclaimed, "I'm darned if that dead shell fish isn't worth as much as my dead cow!" Because there was always so much food left over, anyone who worked at Chatsworth by the day was allowed to take away enough food for his supper.  This practice eventually had to be stopped, as non-workers from far and wide came for a free meal, and one man was seen removing wheelbarrows full of food.

In the early spring the Devonshires went to Lismore Castle in County Waterford, where their time was spent salmon fishing on the Blackwater River.  By the middle of April it was time to pack up and move to Devonshire House in London for the season, which got under way at the beginning of May.

The social life of the upper classes revolved, very much, around itself and a rather predictable set of activities.  There was, first and foremost of course, "The Season."  While the upper class often had a full and active social life in the country, it was in the three months that they generally spent in London that the most splendid and expensive entertainment was available. "The Season" was a period of conspicuous consumption and something that only the wealthy or well-placed could afford.  For the men it might be a time of work or an opportunity to retreat to their city clubs, but for the women it was the highpoint of the social year.  And the highest point of "The Season," was a young woman's "coming out."  It was this presentation at Court that provided the passport to all of the activities of "The Season."

Preparation for presentation was hectic and strenuous.  All of the details as to what one could and could not wear, what one was to do and not do, learning the deep court curtsy and how to back gracefully out of the monarch's presence were all skills to be acquired before one's "coming out."

And then there were the balls.  Costume balls were a feature of "The Season," and there were none as elaborate as that given by the Duchess of Devonshire on 2 July 1897.  It was the Jubilee year; the sixtieth year of Victoria's reign.  In that Indian Summer, Victoria ruled over almost one-quarter of the world and its population.  One of those attending the great ball wrote to the Pall Mall Gazette  on 6 July in rather effusive terms to describe the event.

 Looking back on the glories of a short, thougfh exceptionally brilliant, season, the one ineffaceable memory where social functions are concertned will be magnificent fancy dress ball given by the Duchess of Devonshire.  Gracious Royalties, lovely women, handsome men were there and, best of all, an entente cordiale that caused the whole entertainment to be a complete and unparalled success.

Lady Violet Greville noted that in "a scene of unvarying gaiety and brilliance," everybody who was anybody, "jostled and moved."
 
 But the golden years were drawing to a close.  New powers were beginning to flex their muscles and there may have been a certain hectic excitement a hint, perhaps of hysteria, which heralded the years to come.

The Manly Art of Self Defence

 Heenan v. Sayers for the World Championship, April 1860.

Paralleling the efforts to remove executions from the public view were the attempts to make the staging of prize-fights more difficult.  During Victoria’s years on the throne, the ring undoubtedly claimed more lives than public executions, for it was not until the last decade or two of her reign that glove-fighting replaced bare-knuckles pugilism.

Unlike the main participant at a public hanging, for whom death was inevitable, for the pugilist it was only a possibility, an occupational hazard, and the supposed benefits which might be derived from success were often seen as outweighing the risks.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, fighting was a common sport.  Like most village sports, it was rough-and-tumble and could be practiced in a variety of forms.  Jem Mace, who was generally recognized as the World Heavyweight Champion in the early 1870s, in recalling his youth, pointed out that

 neither cricket nor football existed then, in the sense they do now, nor had the gentlefolks taken up with polo or golf.  Consequently all the interest that is now spread over these, and other sports, was concentrated on boxing.

As well, the thin line between amateur and professional was virtually non-existent.

Everybody learned to use his fists in those days. … Every little village possessed its ‘champion,’ and these used to meet one another, usually on Sunday, and fight to the finish with naked fists.

Frequently such village matches consisted of nothing more than two young pugilists hammering away at each other until one was knocked insensible or was either unable or unwilling to continue.
 
More formal fights took place in a ring erected for the occasion with the full contingent of seconds, referees, umpires and others on hand.  But even such formal arrangements in no way detracted from the brutality of the spectacle.  The very fact that the participants might be better trained and capable of standing up to greater punishment often made professional fights bloodier than those between amateurs.
 
The skin of professional fighters was toughened with vigorous rough towellings and rubdowns with horsehair gloves.  Their hands were soaked daily with brine or some other concoction to toughen them and the mixtures were often applied to the face, chest and ribs as well.  Jem Mace’s hands were soaked in a brine composed in part of the green vitriol, copperas, mixed with whisky, gunpowder and horseradish, “until by degrees they were made as hard as iron and nearly as black.” His face received the same treatment and when he entered the ring the contrast between his blackened face and hands and the rest of his body was clearly visible.

Despite this toughening process, blood (commonly referred to by the cognoscenti as “claret”) was usually drawn early in the fight and, not infrequently, the match would degenerate into a virtual bloodbath. In the championship fight between John Camel Heenan, the American challenger, and Tom Sayers, in April of 1860, the latter drew blood in the first round and went on to so batter the American’s face that by the time the fight ended, Heenan, unable to see his opponent, hit one of the seconds in the face, knocking him down. Sayers, in the early rounds, had also been injured by a blow to his right arm and although the fight lasted a full thirty-seven rounds before the ring was broken, and an additional five thereafter, he never regained its use during the match.

After the Sayers-Heenan bout, the championship was declared open and the first successful claimant was Sam Hurst, a six foot, two inch, fifteen stone, Lancashire wrestler described by The Times as being of “almost superhuman strength, but perhaps the most unskilful boxer that ever entered the prize ring.” In June of 1861, he met Jem Mace who stood only five foot, eight inches and weighed ten and a half stone but was, in his day, considered “the most scientific pugilist alive.” By the end of the first round, which lasted almost twelve minutes, Hurst was bleeding freely and by the end of the fight, which lasted eight rounds and 50 minutes, both men were covered in Hurst’s blood and Mace’s blows had a “splashing sound like striking raw meat.”

The brutality of the prize ring appealed to that same type of person who attended public hangings. The Cornhill Magazine, in 1864, rather facetiously noted that

Hangings now occur so rarely, and at such irregular intervals, that they can no longer be depended upon as a source of amusement, and perhaps we are to some extent bound to make up for the deficiency by an enlightened policy with regard to prize-fights.

Certainly, many of those who expressed objections to prize fighting did so because it was expected of them and though the number of fights declined as the century wore on and the middle and upper classes began to abandon the sport, certain “distinguished spectators,” according to All the Year Round, “ … gave the Ring the sanction of their presence, but not the sanction of their names.”  But by the last decades of the Queen's reign, pugilism was in a parlous state.
 
However, as glove boxing increased in popularity in the ‘80s and ‘90s, more spectators were again seen from the better social classes and, it was not uncommon at a match to see “rows upon rows of spectators, all arrayed ‘in faultless evening garb.’”

A Certain Grim Pleasure

One of the great events in the early years of Victoria's reign was a public hanging. While figures vary dramatically, there is no reason to doubt that the number of spectators might range anywhere from 20,000 up to 100,000, the number, according to The Times, attending Kirkdale Gaol in Liverpool for the mutiple hanging of four men on 11 September 1863.

In amongst the mob one found many of the labouring classes; mill-hands, factory girls and women, bricklayer’s labourers and dock workmen, either hoping for some entertainment on their way to work or enjoying St. Monday. Women and children were frequent spectators and at the last public execution in England, The Times commented on the “blue velvet hats and huge white feathers [which] lined the great beams which kept the mass from crushing each other in their eagerness to see a man put to death.” At any execution one might see ragged children darting to and fro to “play their usual pranks at the foot of the gallows.”

Charles Dickens, who, somewhat against his better judgment, had gone to the double hanging of Frederick George Manning and his wife, Maria, on a Tuesday morning, the 13th of November 1849 outside of Horsemonger Lane Gaol was horrified at midnight, before the execution, by "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.” It made, he wrote to The Times, “my blood run cold."

Most, but not all, of those in attendance at hangings were drawn from the lower and labouring classes. Certainly the better class of artisans and their families attended; sometimes making the trip to a public execution an excursion or the opportunity for a picnic. In September of 1853, a train with thirty carriages of sightseers travelled from Bradford to Liverpool for a multiple hanging at Kirkdale Gaol.  “The majority of the ‘excursionists,’” The Times reported, “were respectably dressed persons--decent looking mechanics, women in silk dresses with expanded crinolines, and youths from 12 to 20 years of age.” The huge crowd estimated at over 100,000 spectators was swelled by excursionists from Huddersfield and Blackburn as well.

On Monday, the 5th of January 1846, Nathaniel Bryceson, a 19 year-old wharf clerk in Pimlico recorded two public hangings.

 This morning at 8 o’clock the woman Martha Browning expiated her crime on the scaffold in the Old Bailey, for the murder of Elizabeth Mundell on the 1st of December last.  The culprit showed great presence of mind on the occasion and ascended the gallows with a firm and steady step, and without any assistance.  The body was cut down at 9 o’clock and Calcraft, the executioner, took his departure from Newgate to Horsemonger Lane County Gaol to offer his services for a similar occasion, namely to put in force the sentence of the law against Samuel Quennell for the murder of a shipmate, by shooting him in Kennington Lane.  The execution took place on the top of the Prison over the front gates precisely at 10 o’clock.  The culprit behaved himself becomingly on so solemn an occasion and ascended the scaffold without assistance. ‘Remarks: this is the first execution of a female that I ever recollect in my time, also the first at Horsemonger Lane, and likewise the first time that two executions took place in the one day, to my recollection.

William Calcraft began his career as a hangman in 1828. He had been employed at Newgate Gaol to flog juvenile offenders when, in an emergency, he was sent to Lincoln to execute two men. In 1829, on the death of John Foxton (or Foxen), the City of London executioner, Calcraft was appointed to fill the office. As official hangman he received a guinea per week from the city and another guinea for each execution performed. For acting as hangman for Horsemonger Lane Gaol in Southwark, Surrey, just across the Thames in what is now South London, Calcraft was paid a retaining fee of five guineas annually as well as the usual guinea per execution.

That Calcraft was paid in guineas is, in itself, an interesting point. The value of the guinea is one pound plus one shilling. Generally tradesmen were paid in pounds and gentlemen in guineas. For example, barristers were paid in guineas, but kept only the pound; the extra shillings going to their clerks. Perhaps Calcraft was paid in guineas because his work was considered an element of the legal profession.

Dickens accused Calcraft. At the Mannings' execution, of being guilty at times of “unseemly briskness, ... jokes, … oaths, and … brandy.” At the hanging of Franz Muller, outside Newgate Prison in 1864, when Calcraft went to cut the dead man down, he was greeted with “hisses and sneering inquiries of what he had had to drink that morning.” The choice of language in describing Calcraft also reflects the attitudes toward his role.  In April of 1851, fore example, one newspaper referred to him as “the public strangler.”  This may also have reflected on the fact that many of those who were hanged died in agony as the rope was too short for the fall to effectively snap the neck, leading to death by slow strangulation.

Virtually all accounts suggest that the bulk of those attending public executions formed a volatile mob. When Franz Muller was hanged in 1864, according to the Annual Register for that year,

the most conspicuous element in the mob was the lowest refuse of metropolitan life--the combined force of ruffianism and thieving.  The behaviour of the densely packed mob was in some places not indecent; but in the vicinity of the drop it was the reverse.  Fights and hustlings for the purpose of robbery were incessant as the hour of the execution drew nigh, and were actually in operation when the bell was tolling, and when the cry of “hats off” had commenced.

The fascination with executions extended well beyond those able or willing to attend the actual hanging. Sellers of street literature worked their way up and down the countryside selling papers and pamphlets, usually prepared well in advance, purporting the have been either the written or spoken words of the condemned man (albeit they were likely to be neither). One seller of such literature who had gone down from London to Norwich expressly to sell his wares at an execution described the process:

I worked my way down there with "a sorrowful lamentation" of his own composing which I'd got written by a blind man expressly for the occasion. On the morning of the execution we beat all the regular newspapers out the field; for we had the full, true, and particular account down, you see, by our own express, and that can beat anything that ever they can publish; for we get it printed several days afore it comes off, and goes and stands with it right under the drop.

After the hanging, of course, the pamphlet or broadsheet seller could do a brisk trade by going from county to county. When Francis Benjamin Courvoisier was hanged in 1840, over 1,666,000 broadsheets were sold detailing the execution. Nine years later, when the Mannings were hanged, 2,500,000 were sold.