NEWSPAPER CURIOSITIES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 510, 26 January 1872, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWSPAPER CURIOSITIES.

— o — newspapers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were remarkable chiefly fur tin ir falsehoods and quaiutnesses, and yellow faced folly. The contents of the Times at the beginning of the nineteenth century are wonderfully whimsical, as may be imagined from the e ; -“The fashionable Mrs. Trapes has cut her little linger : ”of a certain dinner* ** the nwccaro.d was burnt, but the incendiary was not discovered ;” of a certain ball, “ it was the greatest squeeze of the winter; of a change of residence, “ Mr. Lee, to Mo. 4, Uxford-street, one pair of stairs;” of somebodies forgotten, “ Lord Slaver and the Hon. tittle Mr. Snively are to be putin breeches on Thursday next. We pledge our credit for this piece of intelligence” ;of the girls of fashion, “Miss liiggs and Miss F, Hicks are at school in Queen’s square.” This was printed by the Times of 1801. What would be thought if anything like this appeared in the papers of the present day 1 At that time, too, the Morning Chronicle, in a sumptuary tit, applied itself to censuring the extravagance of female dress, and the Morning Post of all papers, to ridiculing the airs of fashionable society ; While the Morning Herald devoted an essay to “ The Arc of Political Weeping.” In fact, the “• newspapers,’ were, for the most part, without “news,” or the means of obtaining it, and resorted to squibs for the entertainment of their readers. Law, police, public' meeting", parliamentary debates, and incideutsof common importance, might be alluded to, but were never reported, and most meagerly discussed.