OLD NEWSPAPER ARTICLES PROVIDE NOVEL READING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 87, 18 January 1950, Page 4

OLD NEWSPAPER ARTICLES PROVIDE NOVEL READING

That shipping would be despatched immediately for Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales direct. The ship “the fine, fast sailing, new coppered ship, Perseverance, of just 300 tons,” is an advt of interest to New Zealand contained in an historical pageant edition of the “Nottingham Journal” which reproduces paragraphs which appeared in the newspaper between 1759 and 1824. Between these years, in common with other newspapers, the “Journal” was published weekly and the price varied between 2£d and 7d, two-thirds of this sum going to swell the Government revenue.

Coaches at 12 M.P.H. Articles range from the dangerous effects of coach racing {both vehicles going at the rate of nearly 12 miles an hour), which includes a detailed description of the injuries suffered by the passengers when one coach overturned, to an account of the execution of Louis XVT. Boxing is evidently not what it was. In an account of a fight the “Journal” says one mart’s “emaciated frame would not bear him out, and after one hour and 18 minutes’ gallant struggle he reluctantly struck his colour at the end of the 47th round.

Notices of cock fights, an account of the hanging of a highwayman, the marriage of “a Vouth of 85 to a buxom lass of 84,” description of the death of Lord Nelson, and the battle of Waterloo aTe all included.

Cannibalism was not unheard of, also. In a paragraph the “Journal” says “some nefarious villains beset one of Norwich stages on itfe way to town on Friday and stole three ,outside passengers, whom, it is said, they roasted and ate.”