THE HISTORY OF THE CATNACH PRESS

THE
HISTORY OF THE CATNACH PRESS.

LARGE PAPER COPY.

Only Two Hundred and Fifty Printed. Each Copy
numbered and Signed

No. ________

Purchased by

_________________________________________

of

_________________________________________

on the ___________ day of ____________ 18____

THE
HISTORY
OF THE
CATNACH PRESS,
AT
BERWICK-UPON-TWEED,
ALNWICK AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE,
IN NORTHUMBERLAND,
AND
SEVEN DIALS, LONDON.

BY
CHARLES HINDLEY, Esq.,
Editor of “The Old Book Collector’s Miscellany; or, a Collection of Readable Reprints
of Literary Rarities,” “Works of John Taylor—the Water Poet,” “The
Roxburghe Ballads,” “The Catnach Press,” “The Curiosities of
Street Literature,” “The Book of Ready Made Speeches,”
“Life and Times of James Catnach, late of the
Seven Dials, Ballad Monger,” “Tavern
Anecdotes and Sayings,” “A History
of the Cries of London—Ancient
and Modern,” etc.

London:
CHARLES HINDLEY
[The Younger,]
BOOKSELLERS’ ROW, ST. CLEMENT DANES,
STRAND, W.C.
1886.

TO
MR. GEORGE SKELLY,
OF
THE MARKET PLACE,
AND
MR. GEORGE H. THOMPSON,
OF
BAILIFFGATE, ALNWICK,
In the County of
NORTHUMBERLAND,
THE
HISTORY OF THE CATNACH PRESS.

Is most Respectfully Dedicated by
THE AUTHOR

St. James’ Street, Brighton.
Lady Day, 1886.

THE CATNACH PRESS.

——There can be little doubt that Jemmy Catnach, the printer, justly earned the distinction of being one of the great pioneers in the cause of promoting cheap literature—he was for a long time the great Mæcenas and Elzevir of the Seven Dials district. We do not pretend to say that the productions which emanated from his establishment contained much that was likely to enlighten the intellect, or sharpen the taste of the ordinary reader; but, to a great extent, they served well in creating an impetus in the minds of many to soar after things of a higher and more ennobling character. Whilst for the little folk his store was like the conjuror’s bag—inexhaustible. He could cater to the taste and fancies of all, and it is marvellous, even in these days of a cheap press, to look back upon the time when this enterprising man was by a steady course of action, so paving the way for that bright day in the annals of Britain’s history, when every child in the land should be educated.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
OR
A PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

——Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.—Boswell, Life of Johnson.

hat history repeats itself is fairly and fully exemplified by the reproduction of “The Catnach Press,” the first edition of which was published in 1869, and “Guaranteed Only Two Hundred and Fifty Copies Printed.”—Namely: 175 on fine, and 75 on extra-thick paper. Each copy numbered. The outer and descriptive title set forth that the work contained:—

“A Collection of Books and Wood-cuts of James Catnach, late of Seven Dials, Printer, consisting of Twenty Books of the Cock Robin-Class, from, ‘This is the House that Jack Built,’ to ‘Old Mother Hubbard,’ (printed with great care) specialite at The Catnach Press, from the old plates and woodcuts, prior to their final destruction, to which is added a selection of Catnachian wood-cuts, many by Bewick, and many of the most anti-Bewickian character it is possible to conceive.”

The announcement of the publication of the work was first made known through the medium of the metropolitan press, some few days prior to the copies being delivered by the book-binders, and so great was the demand of the London and American trade, that every copy was disposed of on the day of issue.

The work is now eagerly sought after by book collectors who indulge in literary rarities.

While engaged in collecting information for “The Catnach Press,” and interviewing the producers of ballads, broadsides and chap-books, we met with a vast assemblage of street-papers and of a very varied character, which we proposed to publish in quarto form under the title of “The Curiosities of Street Literature,” and when in London in 1869, still seeking for information on the subject, met by mere chance in the Strand with the street ballad singer of our youth, one Samuel Milnes, who used between the years of 1835 and 1842 to visit Fetter Lane every Thursday with the newest and most popular ballad of the day. We so often met with him at other times and places in and about London in after years that a peculiar kind of a friendly feeling grew up towards him in preference to all other street ballad singers of the time, so much so that at our meetings—and friendly greetings, we invariably purchased the ballad he was singing, or, gave him a few halfpence as a fee for having detained him from his calling—or shall we say bawling, for to tell the truth, Samuel Milnes was but a very indifferent vocalist.

Time rolled on—“still on it creeps, each little moment at another’s heels”—and we continued to meet our old ballad singer either in London or Brighton. The meeting with him on this particular occasion was most opportune for we wanted him. First we obtained from him “Wait for the Turn of the Tide,” and “Call her back and kiss her,” then the following information:—

“Oh, yes, I remember you, remember you well; particularly when I see you down at Brighton: when you treated me to that hot rum and water; when I was so wet and cold, at a little snug public-house in one of the streets that leads off the main street. I don’t remember the name on it now, but I remembers the rum and water well enough; it was good. You said it would be, and so it was, and no mistake. How old am I now? Why, 59. How long have I been at it? Why, hard on fifty years. I was about nine or ten year old—no, perhaps I might have been 12 year old, when I come to think on it. Yes, about 12 year old; my mother was a widow with five children, and there was a boy in our street as used to go out singing ballads, and his mother said to my mother, ‘Why don’t you let your boy (that’s me) go out and sing ballads like my boy.’ And I said I didn’t mind, and I did go out, and I’ve been at it ever since, so you see ’aint far short of 50 year. How many do I sell in a day? Well, not so many as I used to do, by a long way. I’ve sold me four and five quires a-day, but I don’t sell above two and three dozen a-day now. That’s all the difference you see, sir—dozens against quires. How do I live then? Why, you see I am so well-known in different parts of London, that lots and lots of people comes up to me like you always do—and say’s—‘How do you do, old fellow? I remember you when I was a boy, if it’s a man, and when I was a girl, if it’s a woman.’ And says, ‘So you are still selling songs, eh?’ Then they give me a few coppers; some more and some less than others, and says they don’t want the songs. Some days—very often—I’ve had more money given me than I’ve took for the ballads. Yes, I have travelled all over England—all over it I think—but the North’s the best—Manchester, Liverpool, and them towns; but down Bath and Cheltenham way I was nearly starved. I was coming back from that way, I now remember, when I met you, sir, at Brighton that time. I buy my ballads at various places—but now mostly over the water, because I live there now and it’s handiest. Mr. Such, the printer, in Union-street in the Borough. Oh! yes, some at Catnach’s—leastways, it ain’t Catnach’s now, it’s Fortey’s. Yes, I remember ‘old Jemmy Catnach’ very well; he wa’n’t a bad sort, as you say; leastways, I’ve heard so, but I never had anything of him. I always paid for what I had, and did not say much to him, or he to me—Writing the life of him, are you indeed? No, I can’t give you no more information about him than that, because, as I said before, I bought my goods as I wanted them, and paid for them, then away on my own account and business. Well he was a man something like you—a little wider across the shoulders, perhaps, but about such a man as you are. I did know a man as could have told you a lot about “old Jemmy,” but he’s dead now; he was one of his authors, that is, he wrote some of the street-ballads for him, and very good ones they used to be, that is, for selling. Want some old ‘Dying Speeches’ and ‘Cocks,’ do you indeed; well, I a’nt got any—I don’t often ‘work’ them things, although I have done so sometimes, but I mostly keep to the old game—‘Ballads on a Subject.’ You see them other things are no use only just for the day, then they are no use at all, so we don’t keep them—I’ve often given them away. You’d give sixpence a piece for them, would you, indeed, sir; then I wish I had some of them. Now I come to think of it I know a man that did have a lot of them bye him, and I know he’d be glad to sell them, I don’t know where he lives, but I sometimes see him. Oh! yes, a letter would find me. My name is Samuel Milnes, and I live at No. 81, Mint-street, that’s in the Borough; you know, Guagar is the name at the house. Thank you, sir, I’m much obliged. Good day sir.”

Our next adventure—in pursuit of knowledge under difficulties—occured at Brighton in the month of August, 1869, and when we were winding our way through a maze of small streets lying between Richmond and Albion Hills, in the Northern part of the town, our ears voluntarily “pricked up,” on hearing the old familiar sounds of a ‘street, or running patterer’ with the stereotyped sentences of “Horrible.”—“Dreadful.”—“Remarkable letters found on his person.”—“Cut down by a labouring man.”—“Quite dead.”—“Well-known in the town.”—“Hanging.”—“Coroner’s Inquest.”—“Verdict.”—“Full particulars.”—“Most determined suicide.”—“Brutal conduct.”—&c., &c., Only a ha’penny!—Only a ha’penny! Presently we saw the man turn into a wide court-like place, which was designated by the high-sounded name of “Square,” and dedicated to Richmond; hither we followed him, and heard him repeat the same detached sentences, and became a purchaser for—‘only a ha’penny!’ when to our astonishment we discovered a somewhat new phrase in cock or catchpenny selling. Inasmuch as our purchase consisted of the current number (253) of the Brighton Daily News—a very respectable looking and well printed Halfpenny Local Newspaper, and of that day’s publication, and did in reality contain an account of a most determined suicide of an old and highly respected inhabitant of Brighton and set forth under the heading of:—

The Determined Suicide of an Aged Artist.
Remarkable Letters of Deceased.

Calling the man aside, we ventured upon a conversation with him in the following form:—

——“Well, governor, how does the cock fight?” “Oh, pretty well, sir; but it ain’t a cock; its a genuine thing—the days for cocks, sir, is gone bye—cheap newspapers ’as done ’em up.” “Yes; we see this is a Brighton Newspaper of to-day.” “Oh, yes, that’s right enough—but its all true.” “Yes; we are aware of that and knew the unfortunate man and his family; but you are vending them after the old manner.” “That’s all right enough, sir,—you see I can sell ’em better in that form than as a newspaper—its more natural like for me: I’ve sold between ten and twelve dozen of ’em to-day.” “Yes; but how about to-morrow?” “Oh, then it will be all bottled up—and I must look for a new game, I’m on my way to London, but a hearing of this suicide job, I thought I’d work ’em just to keep my hand in and make a bob or two.” To our question of “Have you got any real old ‘cocks’ by you?” He replied, “No, not a bit of a one; I’ve worked ’em for a good many years, but it ’aint much of a go now. Oh, yes, I know’d ‘old Jemmy Catnach’ fast enough—bought many hundreds, if not thousands of quires of him. Not old enough? Oh, ’aint I though; why I’m turned fifty, and I’ve been a ‘street-paper’ seller all my life. I knows Muster Fortey very well; him as is got the business now in the Dials—he knows his way about, let him alone for that; and he’s a rare good business man let me tell you, and always been good and fair to me; that I will say of him.”

Having rewarded the man with a few half-pence to make him some recompense for having detained him during his business progress, we parted company.

While still prosecuting our enquiries for information on the literature of the streets, we often read of, and heard mention made of, a Mr. John Morgan, as one of the “Seven Bards of the Seven Dials” and his being best able to assist us in the matter we had in hand. The first glimpse we obtained of the Poet! in print was in an article entitled “The Bards of the Seven Dials and their Effusion” and published in “The Town,” of 1839, a weekly journal, conducted by the late Mr. Renton Nicholson, better known as “Baron Nicholson,” of Judge and Jury notoriety:—

REVIEW.

The Life and Death of John William Marchant, who suffered the extreme penalty of the law, in front of the Debtor’s door, Newgate, on Monday, July 8th, 1839, for the murder of Elizabeth Paynton, his fellow servant, on the seventeenth of May last, in Cadogan Place, Chelsea. By John Morgan. London: J. Catnach, 2 and 3, Monmouth Court, 7 Dials.

The work is a quarto page, surrounded with a handsome black border. “Take no thought for to-morrow, what thou shalt eat, or what thou shalt put on,” says a certain writer, whose wisdom we all reverence, and then he adds “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”—a remark particularly applicable to the bards of Seven Dials, whose pens are kept in constant employment by the fires, rapes, robberies, and murders, which, from one year’s end to the other, present them with a daily allowance of evil sufficient for their subsistence. But, at present, it is only one of these poets, “John Morgan,” as he modestly signs himself, whom we are about to notice; and as some of our readers may be curious to see a specimen of the poetry of Seven Dials, we shall lay certain portions of John Morgan’s last effusion before them, pointing out the beauties and peculiarities of the compositions as we go along. After almost lawyer-like particularity as to dates and places, the poem begins with an invocation from the murderer in propria personæ.

“Oh! give attention awhile to me,
All you good people of each degree;
In Newgate’s dismal and dreary cell,
I bid all people on earth farewell.”

Heaven forbid, say we, that all the people on earth should ever get in Newgate, to receive the farewell of such a blood-thirsty miscreant.

“John William Marchant is my name,
I do confess I have been to blame.”

And here we must observe that the poet makes his hero speak of his offence rather too lightly, as if, indeed, it had been nothing more than a common misdemeanour.

“I little thought, my dear parents kind,
I should leave this earth with a troubled mind.”

Now this is modest; he is actually surprised that his parents are at all grieved at the idea of getting rid of such a scoundrel, and well he might be.

“I lived as servant in Cadogan Place,
And never thought this would be my case,
To end my days on the fatal tree:
Good people, pray drop a tear for me.”

There is a playfulness about the word “drop,” introducing just here after “the fatal tree,” which, in our mind, somewhat diminishes the plaintiveness of the entreaty; but we must not be hypocritical.

********

********

Then comes his trial and condemnation, the account of which is most remarkable precise and pithy.

“At the Old Bailey I was tried and cast,
And the dreadful sentence on me was past
On a Monday morning, alas! to die,
And on the eight of this month of July.”

A marvellous particularity as to dates, intended, doubtless, to show the convicts anxiety that, although he died young, his name should live long in the minds of posterity. Then follows his farewell to father and mother, and an impudent expression of confidence that his crime will be forgiven in heaven, an idea, by-the-by, which is reported to have been confirmed by the Ordinary of Newgate, who told him that the angels would receive him with great affection; and this it was, perhaps, which induced our bard of Seven Dials to represent his hero as coolly writing poetry up to the very last moment of his existence; taking his farewell of the public in these words:—

“Adieu, good people of each degree,
And take a warning, I pray, by me;
The bell is tolling, and I must go,
And leave this world of misery and woe.”

But we cannot exactly see what business the fellow—“a pampered menial,” had to speak ill of the world, when he was very comfortably off in it, and might have lived long and happily if it had not been for his own wickedness; a hint which we throw out for the benefit of Mr. John Morgan, in his future effusions, trusting he will not make his heroes die grumby, when poetic justices does not require it.

But we must now take our leave, with a hearty wish to the whole fraternity of Seven Dials’ bards, that they may never go without a dinner for want of the means of earning it, or that, in other words, though they seem somewhat contradictory, “Sufficient unto the day may be the evil thereof.”

Again, 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 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 the 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 his verses and name, and hope he will excuse us, having regard to the subject in which we are 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.’”

At every enquiry we made for information in regard to street-literature, we still continued to be referred to Mr. John Morgan as the most likely person living to supply what we needed on the subject.

But the grave question arose in our own minds of the How, When, and Where: could we find out and interview this said Mr. John Morgan, Poet! First we made enquiry at the office of Mr. Taylor, Printer of Ballads, &c., 92 and 93, Brick Lane, Spitalfields, but, they “had not the least idea where we could find him. In fact they had only heard of him as a ballad-writer, and knew nothing about where he lived, never having employed him: had perhaps printed some of his ballads. Thought Mr. Such, of the Borough, might give some information, but, sure to find out all about him in the Seven Dials district.”

Mr. H. Such, Machine Printer and Publisher, 177, Union Street, Borough, S.E., on being applied to could give us no positive information as to the whereabout of Mr. John Morgan—he knew him, but where he lived he could not tell. Mr. Fortey or Mr. Disley, in the Dials-way, would be most likely to know.

Mr. William S. Fortey, (late A. Ryle, successor to the late J. Catnach), Printer, Publisher, and Wholesale Stationer, 2 and 3, Monmouth Court, Seven Dials, London, W., on being applied to could not exactly tell where Mr. John Morgan did live, it was somewhere Westminster-way: it was very uncertain when he should next see him, because he did not sometimes call in for weeks together, yet he might by chance see him to-morrow, or the next day. Anyway, we felt that we had no right to press the question any further, more particularly so because Mr. Fortey had been very civil and obliging to us on other occasions—in fact we have been under great and lasting obligations to him, so changed the conversation.

Mr. Henry Disley, Printer, 57, High Street, St. Giles’, London, who we found to be a very genial sort of a man, and that he had formerly been in the service of James Catnach; he was working in his front shop at a small hand-press on some cards relative to a forthcoming Friendly Lead,[1] to be held at a public-house in the immediate neighbourhood, while Mrs. Disley was hard at work colouring some Christmas Carols, and which she did with a rapidity that was somewhat astonishing. In answer to our inquiry whether he knew of one John Morgan—who was—as we described him, “something of a song writer.” Well! both Mr. and Mrs. Disley together—“did know him—should think they did.” But when we came to enquire about his private address they knew nothing about that. He (Mr. Morgan) wrote ballads for them at times: often called on them—whenever he did it was always to sell a good ballad he had on hand, or to tell them what bad times it was with him: but as to where he lived, beyond that it was somewhere Westminster-way, they did not know—in fact, had not the least idea. But, most likely, Mr. Fortey, him in Monmouth Court, did. Yes! come to think of it, he would be sure to know.

The very unsatisfactory and evasive answers received in reference to the address of Mr. John Morgan gave a zest to our zeal in the matter—so much so, that we then determined “to work the oracle” out in our way.

At this time we had a near relative occupying chambers in Barnard’s Inn, which we held to be a good central and lawyer-like address—one that had the “true ring,” of business and substantiality about it. Yes! Barnard’s Inn, Holborn, London, E.C., looked to our mind to be likely to serve our stratigical purpose to the point we desired. Having made all the preparatory arrangements, we then procured from a neighbouring stationer’s shop a sheet of mourning note-paper and an envelope of large proportions, each having the very blackest and broadest of black borders we could find in stock. Then we wrote in a law-like hand:—

No. 6, Barnard’s Inn,
Holborn, London, E.C.,
February 26, 1870.

THIS IS TO GIVE NOTICE:—If Mr. John Morgan, ballad-writer, &c., will call at the above address on or after Wednesday next. He will hear something greatly to his advantage.

(Signed)

Mr. John Morgan,
care of............
..............London.

The above document having been duly intrusted to Her Majesty’s Post Master General for delivery, we had to abide our time for the result. We had not to wait long, for although we had appointed the next following Wednesday to communicate “something greatly to the advantage of Mr. John Morgan,” he turned up a little sooner than we expected, or desired, by reason of his putting in an appearance at Barnard’s Inn on Tuesday evening, where he arrived “happy and glorious,” and made earnest enquiries for “the gentleman who had sent him a letter to say he had got a something to his advantage—perhaps a fortune! For sometimes he thought somebody would die and leave him one. Where was the gentleman who wrote him the letter? He says that I am to call here. He sent it in a black-bordered envelope for him. Where is the gentleman? See here is the letter, and all in black—black as your hat—look for yourself, sir.”

All the above was spoken to a friend of ours who lived on the ground-floor at the particular house in Barnard’s Inn, where Mr. John Morgan had been requested to call on Wednesday. It was then only Tuesday, and that fact had to be explained; also, that the gentleman in question was not at present in his chambers on the third-floor, but would be in the morning up to 10 o’clock. Our friend on the first-floor—who had received instructions from us in the event of Mr. John Morgan turning-up while we were not at home—informed us of all that had taken place when we arrived a little later on in the evening.

On the next morning preparations were made for the reception of our expectant friend—a good fire, a good breakfast, and a half-pint of “Old Tom” from Carr’s well-known Establishment, St. Clement Danes, Strand.

Very soon after the old clock of the ancient hall of Barnard’s Inn, and all the public clocks in the surrounding neighbourhood had proclaimed aloud that the hour of 10 a.m. of that Wednesday morning had arrived, there was heard a knock at the outer door of our chamber-rooms, and on the same being opened, Mr. John Morgan announced himself as the party to whom the gentleman had sent a black-bordered letter and envelope for him to say there was a something to his advantage to be had. Then Mr. John Morgan, full of bows and scrapes, was ushered into our presence.—He was the party who had received the letter. Oh! yes, Mr. Morgan we added: take a seat sir. Yes, sir, and thank you to, he replied, at the same time sitting down and then very carefully despositing his somewhat delapidated hat under—far under—the chair. We then enquired whether he would have anything to eat, or have a cup of coffee. No! it was a little too early in the morning for eating, and coffee did not always agree with him. Or, a drop of good “Old Tom,” we somewhat significantly suggested. Mr. John Morgan would very much like to have a little drop of gin, for it was a nasty raw cold morning: In answer to our enquiry whether he would prefer hot or cold water, elected to have it neat if it made no difference to us.

Mr. John Morgan at our suggestion having “wet the other eye,” i.e., taken the second glass, the real business part of the question we had met upon commenced thus:—“We have been informed that you were acquainted with, and used to write for the late James Catnach, who formerly lived in the Seven Dials, and that you can give us much of the information that we require towards perfecting a work we have in hand treating on Street Literature. If you are willing to do so, we are prepared to treat with you in a liberal manner, and that, please to at once to understand is the ‘Something greatly to your advantage that is mentioned in the note we addressed to you.’” Here Mr. John Morgan hinted that he thought it was—or he had hoped it was, a little fortune some one had been kind enough to leave him, he always expected that old Jemmy Catnach would—after what he had done for him, have left him a bit, however small, but no such luck.

Mr. Morgan expressed his willingness to give all the information he could on the subject and leave it to our generosity to pay him what we pleased, and adding that he had no doubt that we should not fall out on that score. And so we proceeded, we talked and took notes. Mr. Morgan talked and took gin. Mr. Morgan got warm—warmer and warmer—and very entertaining, his conversational powers increased wonderfully, he became very witty and laughed ha! hah!! he joked and made merry at some old reminiscences in connection with old Jemmy Catnach—and admitted, that after all old Jemmy wasn’t a particular bad sort—that is, when you knew him, and could handle him properly—then old Jemmy was as right as my leg! Still we continued to talk and take notes, still Mr. Morgan talked and took gin, until he emulated the little old woman who sold “Hot Codlings,” for of her it is related that—“the glass she filled and the bottle she shrunk and that this little old woman in the end got——.”

At length it became very manifest that we should not be able to get any more information out of Mr. John Morgan on that day, so proposed for him to call again on the morrow morning and at the same time and place to pursue the thread of our narrative. Then having presented him with a portrait of Her most gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, set in gold, we volunteered to see him down stairs which we observed were very crooked—Mr. Morgan thought they were very old and funny ones: up and down like—in fact what old Charley Dibdin would have called regular “whopping old stairs!” Being safely landed from the last stone step on to the stone-paved way, we thought it advisable, for appearance sake, to conduct our friend out of Barnard’s Inn by a sideway leading into Fetter-lane. After that it occurred to us that it would perhaps be better to see him to the Fleet-street end of the lane and then to put him into a Westminster omnibus, but we had reached Somerset House before one going that way came in sight. Then it was Mr. John Morgan suddenly recollected that he could not pass his old friend Short—who was Short? why surely you know Short—old Short, him as sells the wine so good and so cheap, there over the way—that’s Short’s—“Wines from the Wood,” that’s out of the cask you know, you remind me to-morrow, sir, and I’ll tell you a good tale about old Short before he made such a lot of money as he has got now.—Capital chap old Short, he knows me—it’s all about a song I wrote—but I’ll tell you all about it to-morrow. Besides I must have change ye know for there’s no one got any at my home—my landlord—There’s no change about him, Oh! dear no—He’s never got any change but he’s always got an old account, do you see? an old account—but no matter let’s go in!

Respectfully, but firmly declining the kind and very pressing invitation to have “only just one drop with old Short.” We left Mr. John Morgan to take care of himself for the day and to be sure to meet us on the next morning in Barnard’s Inn at 10 o’clock—sharp.

At length the wishful morrow came, also ten of the clock, but not so Mr. John Morgan, nor did he call at any hour during the day. But soon after 11 o’clock the next day he made his appearance, but being so stupidly drunk we gave him some money and told him to call again to-morrow. And he did, but still so muddled that we could make nothing out of him, so we somewhat curtly dismissed him and returned to Brighton.

The next day the letter—of which we give a verbatim et literatim copy—was received and then forwarded on to us.

90 Great Peter Street
Westminister, S.W.

Saturday the 5th of March 1870.

My Dear and Kind Sir:—I return you my most sincere and heartfelt thanks for the Kindness I received from you and deeply I regret if I caused you any displeasure the fact is I have been greatly put about And you having been so kind as to give me refreshments it overpowered me I fell and hurt myself. And I am now destitute without a penny in the world or a friend to help me. I feel as though I offended you I hope not I think by the Little conversation we had I may be able to please you I have been considering in my doleful moments matters of importance if my kind and good friend you can favour me with a Line this Saturday Evening I will be most grateful I shall not go out waiting to hear from you I am placed in a most Sad position accept my thanks write Me a Line in answer to this Befriend me if it is possible And I will make all right and with gratitude,

Anxiously waiting your kind and I trust favourable reply.

Charles Hindley, Esq
6 Barnard’s Inn
Holborn
W.C.

Having no desire to incur the expense of another journey to London in the matter, and believing that we had obtained sufficient information on the subject, we published, in the year 1871, a limited number of copies of our work under the title of:—

CURIOSITIES
OF
STREET LITERATURE:
COMPRISING
“COCKS,” OR “CATCHPENNIES,”
A Large and Curious Assortment of
STREET DROLLERIES, SQUIBS, HISTORIES, COMIC STORIES
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.”—Experiences of a Running Patterer.

LONDON:
REEVES AND TURNER
196, STRAND,
1871.

CURIOSITIES OF STREET LITERATURE.

Guaranteed only Four Hundred and Fifty Six Copies Printed,

☞ EACH COPY OF EACH EDITION NUMBERED.

Our work on the Curiosities of Street Literature soon ran out of print. But we continued to gather from time to time fresh information on the subject of the “Two Catnachs—John and James,” and in the early part of 1876 we determined on publishing a work, to be entitled “The Life and Times of James Catnach—late of Seven Dials—Ballad Monger.” And for the purpose of obtaining the verification, amendment, or denial to the several scraps of information we had obtained, we wrote to our old friend, Mr. John Morgan, on the subject, and from him we received the letters that follow:—

No. 1, Model Cottages, Little St. Anne’s Lane,
Great Peter Street, Westminster,
London, S.W.

16th February, 1876.

Sir,

I received your Letter this Morning: I have removed to above address two years and seven months, I have been in Bed seven weeks suffering from Bronchitis; but am now recovering and shall get up to-day, but the Doctor will not permit me to go out.

Whatever you may require I am ready and willing to do to the utmost of my abilities, and be happy to serve you, and much regret I have not the strength to venture to —— Street. If anything can be done by Letter or otherwise, I will willingly attend to your request, your reply will greatly oblige,

P.S.—Please excuse the illegible scribble as I write this in Bed.

Charles Hindley, Esq.,
76, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton.

No. 1, Model Cottages, Little St. Ann’s Lane,
Great Peter Street, Westminster, London, S.W.

17th February, 1876.

Sir,

I have just received yours, 7 p.m., and in reply I beg to say that when I came to London in 1818 Catnach’s Father was not living.

Catnach, his Mother, and Sister Julia the youngest, resided at 2, Monmouth Court, the old woman and Julia worked at a small hand press—I joined him about 1818—his father died before.—I understood Julia went astray—the Mother Died about 1826. Anne Ryle was the widow of an Officer: a Waterloo man—with one child—had a pension.

Catnach had but little type, and no stock to speak of: he had a Sister at Portsea the wife of a mate of a ship in harbour, and kept a song-shop. His Mother lived with him 7 or 8 years.—I understand about the “Horses-heads.” Cox and Kean, I forget except the title and chorus:—

COX versus KEAN;
OR
Little Breeches.

“With his ginger tail he did assail, and did the prize obtain,
This Merry Little Wanton Bantam Cock of Drury Lane—
Little Breeches.”

Ann Stanton was tried for cutting the Cock’s Head off there was no verses.

As regards the Sausages, Catnach printed a few lines on a quarter-sheet, that caused a great uproar, he was taken to Bow Street. Catnach had six months. There was no verses, it was quickly done. He printed the life of Mother Cummins, of Dyot Street—now, George Street, and that was knocked into “pye” in quick sticks. There was a change after he went to Alnwick in Northumberland, where he carried a small press and printed the state of the poll every day, while there he took up his freedom.[2] He came home and printed “Cubitt’s Treadmill”:—

“And we’re all treading, tread, tread, treading,
And we’re all treading at fam’d Brixton Mill.”

and kept going forward—retired and went to Barnet, left the business to James Paul and Ann Ryle. That is many years ago. I seldom go near the Seven Dials, perhaps once in 3, 4, 5, or six months. I remember many occurrances but 56 years is a long time, I have just entered my 77th year. Anything you require as far as I can I will send and remain,

Charles Hindley, Esq.,
76, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton.

1 Model Cottages, Little Ann’s Lane,
Great Peter Street, Westminster, London, S.W.

29th February, 1876.

Dear Sir:—

If I was to go back and think of passing events it would fill a volume. First in 1820—Catnach then being very poor—at the death of George the third, and the Duke of Kent he printed an Elegy:

“Mourn, Britons mourn! Your sons deplore,
Our royal Sovereign is now no more.”

Then comes the election for Westminster: Burdett, Hobhouse, and Lamb. He had a song:—

“Oh, Cammy Hobby is the man,
And so is daddy Sir Franky, O;
The Hon. W. Lamb is going mad
And kicking like a donkey, O.”
“Oh, the naughty Lamb—
The miserable sinner, O
We’ll have him roast and boil’d
And cut him up for dinner, O.”

During the whole time of the election party spirit ran very high. A real lamb’s head with a real rat in its mouth, was stuck upon the top of a pole. From the rat’s tail hung a cock’s comb. On the lamb’s head was placed a lawyer’s wig, surmounted with a fool’s cap. On a board immediately below the head, was inscribed in front—“Behold the ratting lamb, with a cock’s comb at his tail.” On the other side, the inscription was—

“If silly lambs will go ratting,
’Tis fit they get this sort of batting.”[3]

Then came The Dog’s Meat Man-Founded on fact:—

In Gray’s Inn Lane, not long ago.
An old maid lived a life of woe;
She was fifty-three, with a face like tan,
When she fell in love with a dogs’-meat man.
Much she loved this dogs’-meat man,
He was a good-looking dogs’-meat man;
Her roses and lilies were turn’d to tan,
When she fell in love wi’ the dogs’-meat man.
Every morning when he went by,
Whether the weather was wet or dry,
And right opposite her door he’d stand,
And cry “dogs’-meat,” did this dogs’-meat man.
Then her cat would run out to the dogs’-meat man,
And rub against the barrow of the dogs’-meat man,
As right opposite to her door he’d stand,
And cry “Dogs’ Meat,” did this dogs’-meat man.

He said his customers, good lord!
Owed him a matter of two pound odd;
And she replied, it was quite scan-
Dalous to cheat such a dogs’-meat man.
“If I had but the money,” says the dogs’-meat man,
“I’d open a tripe-shop,” says the dogs’-meat man,
“And I’d marry you to-morrow.”—She admired the plan,
And she lent a five-pound note to the dogs’-meat man.
He pocketed the money and went away,
She waited for him all next day,
But he never com’d; and then she began
To think she was diddled by the dogs’-meat man;
She went to seek this dogs’-meat man,
But she couldn’t find the dogs’-meat man;
Some friend gave her to understan’
He’d got a wife and seven children—this dogs’-meat man.

Mother Cummins lived and kept Brothels in Dyot Street, Bloomsbury Square, after, and still called George Street, named after the Prince Regent George 4th, at that time “Beggar’s Opera” where the Prince and nobles resorted was at the Rose and Crown, Church Lane, St. Giles. Catnach printed her life. In the Beggar’s Opera, were assembled matchmakers, beggars, prigs and all the lowest of the low. There was old black Billy Waters, with his wooden leg, dancing and playing his fiddle, and singing:—

Polly will you marry me—Polly don’t you cry,
Polly come to bed with me; and get a little boy.

some were dipping matches, some boiling potatoes and salt herrings, some swearing, some dancing—all manners of fun, &c.

Then comes Queen Caroline’s trial; Catnach gets out a song:—

As I walked down the Greenwich-road one evening in June,
I never saw so fine a sight as on that afternoon.
I never saw so fine a sight, or, one half so good,
As for to see Queen Caroline supported by a Wood.
That Wood shall never be cut down, but stand for ever more;
And he’ll protect our innocent Queen Sweet Caroline on our shore.

which was followed by a skit on George IVth called:—

“The Great Babe in a Mess.”

then another on Queen Caroline’s crin con case with Bergami who couldn’t remember nothing at all.

“Bergami, the Non mi recordo.”

Who are you? “Non mi recordo.”

What countryman are you—a foreigner or an Englishman? “Non mi recordo.”

There was something fresh everyday until the end of the Trial. Catnach then prints some “papers” belonging to J. Pitts, Printer, Gt. Saint Andrew-street, which causes a flare-up and a bother.

Then comes the sheet of “Horses Heads” which heads were like Eldon, Peel, Canning, &c. Just before they were out Mr. Rockcliff, a Printer in Old Gravel Lane, Radcliff-Highway sends for me—there was bottles of whisky. Rockcliff had engaged with a man called Oliver Cromwell to get him one of the first sheets printed off Catnach’s press of the “Horses Heads” and he would give him half-a-crown. Rockcliff then requested me to bring him the first sheet of “Horses Heads” and get the half-a-crown. I went and got the sheet and meets Oliver Cromwell going into Catnach’s as I came out, so I got the half-a-crown. Rockcliff copies the sheet, then engaged with Lowe the Printer in Compton-street to supply all the West-end. So it went on and made plenty of bother between them.

Catnach got on like a house on fire printing Religious Sheets, then came the murder of William Weare Esq. by John Thurtell, Hunt and Probert. I remember all that affair well,—Then the execution of Thurtell. A twelve-month after Probert was hanged for horsestealing. Then came the trial of Henry Fauntleroy a banker in Berner’s Street Oxford Street executed for forgery. Then came Corder and Maria Marten and the Red Barn, so that is the way Catnach got on from a poor man to be a gentleman. There is many little things I may think of but close for the present and remain:—

1, Model Cottages, Little St. Ann’s Lane,
Great Peter Street, Westminster,
London. 17th March, 1876.

Sir,

I received yours. My recollection is not so good as I would wish.

I think to the best of my recollection in 1819 there were some old men who had been forty-years in the streets at that time, their names were old Jack Smith, Tom Caton, old Jack Rush, Tom Anderson and a few others. When they wanted anything they made up fresh reports, and things were done without the least hesitation. As respects Mr. Pizzy the Pork Butcher, it was some of these men that went to Blackman Street, Clare Market, and created an uproar about the sausages, crowds assembled, and windows were broken, they were charged with rioting and taken to Bow Street, before—as they told me, Sir Richard Burnie, and I think Mr. Minshull. Catnach was sent to Clerkenwell for trial, and was afterwards sentenced to six months, and he served the full time. Then there was the trial of the four poor Irishmen for coining, in the first year of the mayorality of the late Sir Matthew Wood, and a lot of other things which I think would answer the purpose.

About twenty-six years ago Henry Mayhew sent for me, and he began a work something like yours, but by some means it stopped. There is matters that would help to fill up a Book without going to much expense.

Charles Hindley, Esq.,
76, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton.

At this date we were through the instrumentality of Mrs. Paul, widow of Mr. James Paul—formerly in the service of Catnach, introduced to Mrs. Elizabeth Benton, the last surviving daughter of John and Mary Catnach. Mr. Benton was assistant treasurer, and box-book keeper to Mr. Alfred Bunn, of Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres, Mrs. Benton, at the time being wardrobe-mistress and costumier. At one period Mr. and Mrs. Benton lived with Mr. Bunn in St James’ Place, St. James’ Street, Mrs. Benton acting in the capacity of housekeeper. During several seasons Mr. Benton was also treasurer for the proprietors of Vauxhall Gardens, afterwards he filled the same office for E. T. Smith—Dazzle Smith! at Cremorne Gardens. He died abroad in 1856. The interview we had with Mrs. Benton led up to receiving the two letters that follow:—

5, Sonderburg Road,
Seven Sisters’ Road, Holloway.
London. November, 13th, 1876.

Dear Sir,

In reply to your letter, in which you ask if I know where my Father and mother were married, I regret to say I do not know for certain if it was in Edinburgh or Berwick-on-Tweed, but I am certain it was not in Alnwick.

********

********

I shall feel obliged for the [Alnwick] Journal, and also for the Register of Baptisms.

I always understood that my father was a descendant of Catnach, King of the Picts.

P.S.—The paper has not arrived—shall be glad to hear from you by return of Post.

Charles Hindley, Esq.,
76, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton.

5, Sonderburg Road,
Seven Sisters’ Road, Holloway,
London. November 18, 1876.

Dear Sir,

I am sorry I have not answered your letter before, but I have been very ill.

I am sorry I can give you no more information than I have already given you, but about Mrs. Ryle and Mr. —— I cannot exactly say, and as my niece Mrs. Harding was but a girl when her uncle died I should not like to apply to her as it would be painful.

My father was dead when the Battle of Waterloo was fought, but was in Alnwick at the Battle of Trafalgar, and for some time after. My Father had 3 residences in London. 1. (only a shop) in Wardour Street, Soho Square, and ditto also Gerrard Street, and also in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square (apartments).

My Father had a severe illness, also a fever of which he died. I should feel very much obliged if you could find me a copy of the Hermit of Warkworth, and I will willingly pay for it, and also Blair’s Grave.

I am very much obliged for the Registers, and if I can supply you with further information I will do so with pleasure. I have not heard from Mr. [Mark] Smith.

P.S.—I received the Paper [Alnwick Journal] with thanks.

C. Hindley, Esq.,
76, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton.

It was at this particular date of our history—1876—that we had the good fortune to get acquainted with Mr. George Skelly, of Alnwick—who, like ourselves, is possessed of the cacoethes scribendi, and was at the time supplying, con amore, an article to the Alnwick Journal, entitled “John and James Catnach,” which we found to contain certain information relative to the elder Catnach, and also of the earlier portion of the life of James, of which we had no previous knowledge. At our solicitation to be allowed to make a selection from the same, we received a most courteous and gentlemanly letter, which, in addition to containing several pieces of information and answers to many queries we had put to Mr. Skelly, he wound up by saying:—“You have full liberty to make use of anything that I have written, and it will afford me much pleasure if I can further your intentions in any way.”

From that date, Mr. George Skelly continued to correspond with us on the subject of the “Two Catnachs,” nearly up to the last moment of our going to press with our own “Life and Times of James Catnach,” and to him we are greatly indebted for much of the information therein contained. And it was at his suggestion that we wrote the following letter to the Alnwick Journal—Mr. Skelly at the same time furnishing the local paragraph.

Letter to the Editor.

To the Editor of the Alnwick Journal.

76, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton,
June 16th, 1876.

Sir,—Your townsman, Mr. George Skelly, in the concluding chapter of his excellent article of “John and James Catnach,” makes mention of my name as being engaged in preparing for publication “The Life and Times of James Catnach, formerly of Seven Dials, printer of ballads, &c.” Such being the fact, I shall therefore be glad if you would allow me sufficient space in the Alnwick Journal, to ask your readers and correspondents who possess any additional facts, sayings, doings, or letters of the two Catnachs—John and James—to supply me with the same, when I shall have much pleasure in assigning to any such contributions a proper chronological place in my work, and of acknowledging the source of the same, while all documents or books will be faithfully returned by yours, &c., &c.,

Charles Hindley.

John and James Catnach.—It will be seen by a correspondence in another page that Mr. Charles Hindley, of Brighton, is preparing for publication the “Life and Times of James Catnach,” and he respectfully solicits from our readers any facts and scraps they may be possessed of, also the loan of any letters or books suitable for the extention of the life of the celebrated and withal eccentric printer, who, although a native of Alnwick, settled in London, and occupied a peculiar position for upwards of a quarter of a century in the Seven Dials district. We trust that our correspondent may be enabled to add to his all ready large stock of material in hand a few more items, by the publication of his letter in our columns. Mr. Hindley’s work, will, it is expected, be published by Messrs. Reeves and Turner, of the Strand, London, during the coming autumn.

The above letter to the Alnwick Journal was the means of obtaining another valuable correspondent—Mr. George H. Thompson, also of Alnwick, who volunteered his services to aid and assist, to the best of his time and ability, in supplying all the information he possessed or could glean from his friends and acquaintances in the good old borough of Alnwick, or the county at large. And inter alia copied out verbatim from the Parish Register of Baptisms in St. Michael’s Church all the entries in connection with the family of John and Mary Catnach and which will be found in extenso at pages 2-3 of this work.

Mr. George Skelly and Mr. G. H. Thompson are fortunate by their residence in Alnwick in having had the acquaintance and friendship of the late Mr. Mark Smith—James Catnach’s fellow apprentice, Mr. Thomas Robertson, Mr. Tate, the local historian, and several other Alnwick-folk. And they have made the best possible use of the circumstance to supply us with information on the subject of our enquiry.

Recently Mr. Geo. Skelly has forwarded to us an original trade invoice of John Catnach of which we here append a fac-simile copy:—

We have now brought up the history of our pursuit of knowledge to the eve of the publication of the Life and Times of James Catnach—late of Seven Dials, Ballad-monger—which was first announced in 1878 in the manner following.

Ye Life of Jemmy Catnach.

Now, my friends, you have here just printed and pub—lish—ed, the Full, True, and Particular account of the Life, Trial, Character, Confession, Condemnation, and Behaviour, together with an authentic copy of the last Will and Testament: or Dying Speech, of that eccentric individual “Old Jemmy Catnach,” late of the Seven Dials, printer, publisher, toy-book manufacturer, dying-speech merchant, and ballad-monger. Here, you may read how he was bred and born the son of a printer, in the ancient Borough of Alnwick, which is in Northumberlandshire. How he came to London to seek his fortune. How he obtained it by printing and publishing children’s books, the chronicling of doubtful scandals, fabulous duels between ladies of fashion, “cooked” assassinations, and sudden deaths of eminent individuals, apocryphal elopements, real or catch-penny accounts of murders, impossible robberies, delusive suicides, dark deeds and public executions, to which was usually attached the all-important and necessary “Sorrowful Lamentations,” or, “Copy of Affectionate Verses,” which, according to the established custom, the criminal composed, in the condemned cell, the night before his execution.

Yes, my customers, in this book you’ll read how Jemmy Catnach made his fortune in Monmouth Court, which is to this day in the Seven Dials, which is in London. Not only will you read how he did make his fortune, but also what he did and what he didn’t do with it after he had made it. You will also read how “Old Jemmy” set himself up as a fine gentleman:—James Catnach Es—quire.

And how he didn’t like it when he had done it. And how he went back again to dear old Monmouth Court, which is in the Seven Dials aforesaid. And how he languished, and languishing, did die—leaving all his old mouldy coppers behind him—and how being dead, he was buried in Highgate Cemetery.

Furthermore, my ready-money customers, you are informed that there are only 750 copies of the work print-ed and pub-lish-ed, viz., namely that is to say;—500 copies on crown 8vo, at 12/6 each.

250 copies on demy 8vo., at 25/- each.

LONDON:
REEVES AND TURNER,
196, STRAND, W.C.
1878.

The Seven Dials!—Jemmy Catnach and Street Literature are, as it were, so inseparably bound together that we now propose to give a short history of the former to enable us to connect our own history with the later:—

The Seven Dials were built for wealthy tenants, and Evelyn, in his Diary, 1694, notes: “I went to see the building near St. Giles’s, where Seven Dials make a star from a Doric pillar placed in the middle of a circular area, in imitation of Venice.” The attempt was not altogether in vain. This part of the parish has ever since “worn its dirt with a difference.” There is an air of shabby gentility about it. The air of the footman or waiting-maid can be recognised through the tatters, which are worn with more assumption than those of their unsophisticated neighbours.

“You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will;
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.”

The Seven Dials are thus described in Gay’s Trivia:—

“Where famed St. Giles’s ancient limits spread,
An in-railed column rears its lofty head;
Here to seven streets, seven dials count their day,
And from each other catch the circling ray;
Here oft the peasant, with inquiring face,
Bewildered, trudges on from place to place;
He dwells on every sign with stupid gaze—
Enters the narrow alley’s doubtful maze—
Tries every winding court and street in vain,
And doubles o’er his weary steps again.”

This column was removed in July, 1773, on the supposition that a considerable sum of money was lodged at the base; but the search was ineffectual.

Charles Knight, in his “London,” writes thus of Seven Dials:—

“It is here that the literature of St. Giles’s has fixed its abode; and a literature the parish has of its own, and that, as times go, of a very respectable standing in point of antiquity. In a letter from Letitia Pilkington, to the demure author of ‘Sir Charles Grandison,’ and published by the no less exemplary and irreproachable Mrs. Barbauld, the lady informs her correspondent that she has taken apartments in Great White Lion Street, and stuck up a bill intimating that all who have not found ‘reading and writing come by nature,’ and who had had no teacher to make up the defect by art, might have ‘letters written here.’ With the progress of education, printing presses have found their way into St. Giles’s, and what with literature and a taste for flowers and birds, there is much of the ‘sweet south’ about the Seven Dials harmonising with the out-of-door habits of its occupants. It was here—in Monmouth Court, a thoroughfare connecting Monmouth Street with Little Earl Street—that the late eminent Mr. Catnach developed the resources of his genius and trade. It was he who first availed himself of greater mechanical skill and a larger capital than had previously been employed in the department of THE TRADE, to substitute—for the excrable tea-paper, blotched with lamp-black and oil, which characterised the old broadside and ballad printing—tolerably white paper and real printer’s ink. But more than that, it was he who first conceived and carried into effect, the idea of publishing collections of songs by the yard, and giving to purchasers, for the small sum of one penny (in former days the cost of a single ballad), strings of poetry, resembling in shape and length the list of Don Juan’s mistresses, which Leporello unrolls on the stage before Donna Anna. He was no ordinary man, Catnach; he patronised original talents in many a bard of St Giles’s and is understood to have accumulated the largest store of broadsides, last dying speeches, ballads and other stock-in-trade of the flying stationer’s upon record.”

Douglas Jerrold in his article on the Ballad Singer, published in “Heads of the People; or Portraits of the English”—1841, writes thus of Seven Dials and its surroundings:—

“The public ear has become dainty, fastidious, hypercritical; hence the Ballad-Singer languishes and dies. Only now and then, his pipings are to be heard * * * With the fall of Napoleon, declined the English Ballad-Singer. During the war, it was his peculiar province to vend halfpenny historical abridgments to his country’s glory; recommending the short poetic chronicle by some familiar household air, that fixed it in the memory of the purchaser, who thus easily got hatred of the French by heart, with a new assurance of his own invulnerability. No battle was fought, no vessel taken or sunken, that the triumph was not published, proclaimed in the national gazette of our Ballad-Singer. If he were not the clear silver trump of Fame, he was at least her tin horn. It was he who bellowed music into news, which, made to jingle, was thus, even to the weakest understanding, rendered portable. It was his narrow strips of history that adorned the garrets of the poor; it was he who made them yearn towards their country, albiet to them so rough and niggard a mother.

Napoleon lost Waterloo, and the English Ballad-Singer not only lost his greatest prerogative, but was almost immediately assailed by foreign rivals, who had well-nigh played him dumb. Little thought the Ballad-Singer, when he crowed forth the crowning triumphs of the war, and in his sweetest possible modulations breathed the promised blessings of a golden peace, that he was then, swan-like, singing his own knell; that he did but herald the advent of his own provençal destroyers.

Oh muse! descend and say, did no omen tell the coming of the fall? Did no friendly god give warning to the native son of song? Burned the stars clearly, tranquilly in heaven,—or shot they madly across Primrose-hill, the Middlesex Parnassus?

********

Evening had gathered o’er Saint Giles’s, and Seven Dials. So tranquil was the season, even publishers were touched. Catnach and Pitts sat silent in their shops; placing their hands in breeches-poke, with that serenity which pockets best convey, they looked around their walls—walls more richly decked than if hung with triumphs of Sidonian looms, arrayed with Bayeux stitchings; walls, where ten thousand thousand ballads—strips harmonious, yet silent as Apollo’s unbraced strings,—hung pendulous, or crisply curling, like John Braham’s hair. Catnach and Pitts, the tuneful masters of the gutter-choir, serenely looked, yet with such comprehensive glance, that look did take their stock. Suddenly, more suddenly than e’er the leaves in Hornsey wood were stirred by instant blast, the thousand thousand ballads swung and rustled on the walls; yet wind there was not, not the lightest breath. Still like pendants fluttering in a northern breeze, the ballads streamed towards Catnach, and towards Pitts! Amazing truth—yet more; each ballad found a voice! ‘Old Towler’ faintly growled; ‘Nancy Dawson’ sobbed and sighed; and, ‘Bright Chanticleer’ crowed weakly, dolorously, as yet in chickenhood, and smitten with the pip. At the same instant, the fiddle, the antique viol of Roger Scratch, fell from its garret-peg, and lay shivered, even as glass.

A cloud fell upon Seven Dials; dread and terror chilled her many minstrels: and why—and wherefore?

At that dread moment, a ministrel from the sunny south, with barrel-organ, leapt on Dover beach! Seven Dials felt the shock: her troubadours, poor native birds, were to be out-carrolled and out-quavered, by Italian opera retailed by penn’orths to them, from the barrel-organs: and prompt to follow their masters, they let the English ballad singer sing unheard.

The Ballad-Singer has lost his occupation; yet should he not pass away unthanked, unrecompensed. We have seen him a useful minister in rude society; we have heard him a loud-mouthed advocate of party zeal, and we have seen him almost ground into silence by the southern troubadour. Yet was he the first music-seller in the land. Ye well-stocked, flourishing vendors of fashionable scores, deign to cast a look through plate glass at your poor, yet great original, bare-footed and in rags, singing, unabashed, amidst London wagon-wheels: behold the true decendant of the primative music-seller.”

Charles Dickens, as Boz, long since “sketched” the Seven Dials, and at the same time and place given us his—“Meditations in Monmouth Street”:—

“Seven Dials! the region of song and poetry—first effusions, and last dying speechees: hallowed by the names of Catnach and Pitts—names that will entwine themselves with costermongers, and barrel-organs, when penny magazines shall have superseded penny yards of song, and capital punishment be unknown.”

Several years ago Mr. Albert Smith, who lived at Chertsey, discovered in his neighbourhood part of the Seven Dials—the column doing duty as a monument to a Royal Duchess—when he described the circumstance in a pleasant paper, entitled “Some News of a famous Old Fellow,” in his “Town and Country Magazine.” The communication is as follows:—

“Let us now quit the noisome mazes of St. Giles’s and go out and away into the pure leafy country. Seventeen or eighteen miles from town, in the county of Surrey, is the little village of Weybridge.

One of the lions to be seen at Weybridge is Oatlands, with its large artificial grotto and bath-room, which is said—but we cannot comprehend the statement—to have cost the Duke of Newcastle, who had it built, £40,000. The late Duchess of York died at Oatlands, and lies in a small vault under Weybridge Church, wherein there is a monument, by Chantrey, to her memory. She was an excellent lady, well-loved by all the country people about her, and when she died they were anxious to put up some sort of a tribute to her memory. But the village was not able to offer a large some of money for this purpose. The good folks did their best, but the amount was still very humble, so they were obligated to dispense with the service of any eminent architect, and build up only such a monument as their means could compass. Someone told them that there was a column to be sold cheap in a stonemason’s yard, which might answer their purpose. It was accordingly purchased; a coronet was placed upon its summit; and the memorial was set up on Weybridge Green, in front of the Ship Inn, at the junction of the roads leading to Oatlands, to Shepperton Lock, and to Chertsey. This column turned out to be the original one from Seven Dials.

The stone on which the dials were engraved or fixed, was sold with it. The poet Gay, however, was wrong when he spoke of its seven faces. It is hexagonal in its shape; this is accounted for by the fact that two of the streets opened into one angle. It was not wanted to assist in forming the monument, but was turned into a stepping stone, near the adjoining inn, to assist the infirm in mounting their horses, and there it now lies, having sunk by degrees into the earth; but its original form can still be easily surmised. It may be about three feet in diameter.

The column itself is about thirty feet high and two feet in diameter, displaying no great architectural taste. It is surmounted by a coronet, and the base is enclosed by a light iron railing. An appropriate inscription on one side of the base indicates its erection in the year 1822, on the others are some lines to the memory of the Duchess.

Relics undergo strange transpositions. The obelisk from the mystic solitudes of the Nile to the centre of the Place de la Concorde, in bustling Paris—the monuments of Nineveh to the regions of Great Russell Street—the frescoes from the long, dark, and silent Pompeii to the bright and noisy Naples—all these are odd changes. But in proportion to their importance, not much behind them is that old column from the crowded dismal regions of St. Giles to the sunny tranquil Green of Weybridge.”

We are now approaching—“The beginning of the end”—of our history. We were not taken by surprise as we know that “coming events cast their shadows before,” and that:—

Often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in to-day already walks to-morrow.

Therefore we were well prepared to read in the newspapers of October, 1883, the following paragraph:—

The old-established printing and publishing house formerly occupied by James Catnach, 2, Monmouth-court, Seven Dials, will soon be amongst the lost landmarks of London. The Metropolitan Board of Works have purchased the house, and it is to be pulled down to make the new street from Leicester-square to New Oxford-street. The business of the literature of the street was founded by James Catnach in 1813, who retired in 1840. The ballads and broadsides he printed, many of them illustrated with cuts by Bewick, helped to furnish the people with news and political and social ballads for generations.

All that is fortold in the above has since taken place, Monmouth-court and the house and shop wherein old Jemmy Catnach established the “Catnach Press” in the year 1813 has disappeared to make way for the “New Thoroughfare” from Leicester-square to New Oxford street, and:—

The Catnach Press

removed by Mr. W. S. Fortey—Catnach’s successor—to Great St. Andrew-street, Bloomsbury, W.C.

O tempora! O mores!

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Thomas Bewick,

Thomas Bewick died at his house on the Windmill-Hills, Gateshead, November the 8th, 1828, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, and on the 13th he was buried in the family burial-place at Ovingham, where his parents, wife, and brother were interred.

THE CATNACH PRESS.

In addition to the full title of our work—“The History of the Catnach Press”—the two Catnachs—John and James—father and son, we deem it necessary to incidentally introduce into our pages some notice of Alnwick, an ancient borough, market-town and parish of Northumberland, also a few passing remarks on the life and doings of Mr. William Davison, who, in conjunction with the elder Catnach as a business partner and subsequent successor, employed Thomas Bewick—an English artist, who imparted the first impulse to the art of wood-engraving—for many of their publications.

Of the early life of John Catnach, (Kat-nak), the father, we have little information. He was born in 1769, at Burntisland, a royal burgh and parish of Fifeshire, Scotland, where his father was possessed of some powder-mills. The family afterwards removed to Edinburgh, when their son John was bound apprentice to his uncle, Sandy Robinson, the printer. After having duly served out his indentures, he worked for some short time in Edinburgh, as a journeyman, then started in a small business of his own in Berwick-upon-Tweed, where he married Mary Hutchinson, who was a native of Dundee, a seaport-town in Scotland. While at Berwick a son and heir, John, was born. In 1790 they removed their business to Alnwick, and during their residence there seven children were born to them and from the Register of Baptisms in St. Michael’s Church we glean that four of them were baptised at one time, viz., September 24, 1797, and there described as “of John Catnach, printer, and Mary his wife: Dissenter.”[?] John Catnach had been brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, and his wife as a Presbyterian. The following is taken verbatim from the Parish Register:—

Sep^t. 24, 1797.

Margaret, Daug^r. of John Catnach, printer, and Mary his Wife. Born Dec^r. 26^th, 1790. Dissenter.

James, son of John Catnach, printer, and Mary his Wife. Born August 18^th, 1792. Dissenter.

Mary, Daug^r. of John Catnach, printer, and Mary his Wife. Born February 26^th, 1794. Dissenter.

Nancy, Daug^r. of John Catnach, printer, and Mary his Wife. Born Sep^r. 2^nd, 1795. Dissenter.

May 23, 1798.

Elizabeth Catnach. Born March 21, 1797, 4^th Daughter of John Catnach, printer, native of Burnt Island, Shire of Fife, by his wife Mary Hutchinson, Native of Dundee, Angus Shire, Scotland.

Dec^r. 14, 1798.

Isabella Catnach. Born Nov^r. 2, 1798. 5th Daughter of Jn^o. Catnach, Stationer, Nat. of Scotland, by his wife, Mary Hutchinson, Nat. of Dundee, Angus Shire, Scotland.

March 28, 1800.

Jane Catnach, 6^th Daughter of John Catnach, printer, Native of Edinburgh (sic) by his wife Mary Hutchinson, Native of Dundee, Scotland.

To the above we have to add that there were two sons—John, born to John and Mary Catnach. John I. who was born at Berwick-upon-Tweed, died August 27, 1794, aged 5 years and 7 months, and we find him duly recorded in the Register of Deaths. John II., whose name appears at the end of the inscription on a tombstone in Alnwick churchyard, and of which further mention will be made in another portion of our work, died, presumably unbaptized, March 5, 1803, aged 4 months.

John Catnach was not long a resident in the borough of Alnwick before he became acquainted with many of the principal tradesmen in the place. Naturally he was of a free-and-easy disposition, and, like many of his kinsman on the Borders, was particularly fond of the social glass. The latter practice he allowed to grow upon him in such a way that it ultimately interfered very much with his business prospects, and finally hastened his death.

The shop that he commenced business in, was situated in Narrowgate-street, and adjoining the old Half-Moon hostelry. In gaining access to the place one had to ascend a flight of steps. Whilst in this shop he secured a fair amount of patronage, and the specimens of printing that emanated from his press are of such a character as to testify to his qualifications and abilities in the trade which he adopted as his calling. He possessed a fond regard for the traditions and customs which for centuries had been so closely associated with the Border country.

When the printing press was first introduced into Alnwick is not exactly known; but that it was considerably before the time of Catnach is certain. John Vint, the bookseller and author of the “Burradon Ghost,” for several years used a press for printing purposes in the town, and Thomas Lindsay carried on a similar business at a still earlier period.

John Catnach had a great relish for printing such works as would admit of expensive embellishments, which, at the time he commenced business, were exceedingly rare. The taste he displayed in the execution of his work will be best exemplified in examining some of the printed editions of the standard works which emanated from his press; and in no instance is this more characteristically set forth than in those finely printed books which are so beautifully illustrated by the masterly hand of Thomas Bewick and his accomplished and talented pupil, Luke Clennell. Notably among which are:—

1.—“The Beauties of Natural History. Selected from Buffon’s History of Quadrupeds, &c. Alnwick: J. Catnach, [n. d.] Circa 1790, 12mo., pp. 92. With 67 cuts by Bewick.”—Another edition. Published and Sold by the Booksellers. By Wilson and Spence, York, and J. Catnach, printer, Alnwick. (Price 1s. 6d. sewed, or 2s. half-bound.) [n. d.] Circa 1795.

The embellishments of “The Beauties of Natural History” form an unique and valuable collection. They are very small and were done at an exceedingly low price, yet every bird and animal is exquisitely brought out in the minutest detail; whilst many of the illustrations which served as “tail pieces” are gems of art.

2.—“Poems by Percival Stockdale. With cuts by Thomas Bewick. Alnwick: printed by J. Catnach. 1800.”

3.—“The Hermit of Warkworth. A Northumberland Ballad. In three Fits. By Dr. Thos. Percy, Bishop of Dromore. With Designs by Mr. Craig; and Engraved on Wood by Mr. Bewick. Alnwick: Printed and Sold by J. Catnach. Sold by Lackington, Allen, and Co., London; Constable and Co., Edinburgh; and Hodgson, Newcastle. 1806.” The Arms of the Duke of Northumberland precedes the Dedication, thus:—

TO HER GRACE
FRANCES JULIA,
Duchess of Northumberland,
This Edition of
The Hermit of Warkworth,
Is respectfully Inscribed
By Her Grace’s Obliged and Humble Servant,
J. Catnach
Alnwick, October, 1805.

4.—A Second Edition; of which a few copies were printed on extra thick paper, royal 8vo., to match with some of his other works, illustrated by Bewick, pp. xiv., 182, with 13 cuts. At the end of the Poem are a Postcript, a Description of the Hermitage of Warkworth, Warkworth Castle, Alnwick Castle, Alnwick Abbey, and A Descriptive Ride in Hulne Park, Alnwick: Printed and Sold by J. Catnach. Sold by Wilson and Spence, York. 1807.

THE HERMIT OF WARKWORTH.

“And now, attended by their host,
The hermitage they view’d.”

With hospitable haste he rose,
And wak’d his sleeping fire:
And snatching up a lighted brand,
Forth hied the reverend sire.
****

He fought till more assistance came;
The Scots were overthrown;
Thus freed me, captive, from their bands,
To make me more his own.

The illustrations of “The Hermit of Warkworth” are, upon the whole, very creditable, and are well calculated to enhance the value of the book, but as works of art some few of them fall far short of many of Craig or Bewick’s other productions.

John Catnach also printed and published a series of Juvenile Works, as “The Royal Play Book: or, Children’s Friend. A Present for Little Masters and Misses.” “The Death and Burial of Cock Robin, &c. Adorned with Cuts.—Which in many cases were the early productions of Thomas Bewick.—Alnwick: Sold Wholesale and Retail by J. Catnach, at his Toy-Book Manufactory.”

In the year 1807, John Catnach took an apprentice—a lad named Mark Smith, of whom more anon; a few months afterwards he entered into partnership with a Mr. William Davison, who was a native of Ponteland, in the county of Northumberland, but he duly served his apprenticeship as a chemist and druggist to Mr. Hind, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and for whom he ever cherished a fond regard. The union was not of long duration—certainly under two years—but it is very remarkable that two such men should have been brought together, for experience has shown that they were both morally and socially, the very opposite of each other.

During the partnership: Mr. Davison held his business of chemist, &c., in Bondgate-street; while the printing and publishing continued at Narrowgate-street, and among the works published by the firm of Catnach and Davison we may record:—