THE HISTORY OF AN ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER.

Westport Times, Volume VII, Issue 1099, 19 August 1873, Page 3

THE HISTORY OF AN ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER.

[printer's register.] Most of our readers will remember the illustrated paper called the Day's Doings. It was an attempt to engraft on the pictorial journalism of this country some of the peculiar features of the press of America and France, wherein a considerable amount of license is tolerated, and delicate subjects represented, which, according to our English notions, are better kept hidden. The paper to which we allude was started by the proprietor of a well-known and widely-circulated New York illustrated paper, who took so much interest in his English speculation that he came over specially to England to start it, and looked after every preliminary detail with all the zeal and enterprise of the American character ; superintending the production of the first number, both as to its literature and its typography, and even " making ready with his own hands the blocks for the first pages. These, we may remark, en parenthese, were worthy of some attention from English printers, on account of the boldness and vigour of the effects were produced. The overlaying was done by cards, shaved off" at the lines where the half-tones begin, and in this way not only strong blacks were got, but the whole done in a

remarkably expeditious maimer. The process, however, is applicable chiefly to the American style of engraving. Well, the Day's Doings was launched, and it had a certain measure of success ; if success is regarded as a matter of circulation. Public opinion, however, instantly discountenanced the journal, and it was bought almost by stealth, and furtively read through. Messrs Smith, Son, and Co, of the Strand, refused to permit it to be sold on their bookstalls—a step which lost it thousands of readers. The Society for the suppression of Vice then took cognisance of it, and some of its pictures were brought before the magistrates, who first of all reprimanded the publisher, then on a subsequent application to them sentenced him to the alternative of desisting from the publication of a certain class of pictures, or being imprisoned ; nnd on a third application after the !a;>se of some months, fined him. Meanwhile the paper was increasing in sale in certain quarters, but its name was beginning to " stink in the nostrils" of well-con-ducted persons. The power of public opinion was now instinctively shown. The paper was universally tabooed, and only read "on the sly" respectable booksellers unanimously refusing to sell it. A change of policy was thrust upon the proprietary. The title was altered to Here and There. The subject of the illustrations was to some extent changed. The outre character was done away with, and the sensuous suggestiveness of them was toned down. Rut riow that section of the public which bought the Day's Doings would not buy Here and There. Without its peculiar pictures it was the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out, or a Poses I'lastiques exhibition with the figures enveloped in flowing bemouses. The circulation rapidly declined, and another change was necessitated.

In the first week of this year a newspaper " a high class family newspaper," was started, called Passing Events. But it proceeded from the same office, bore the name of the same publisher, had the same general appearance, and was isstted at the same price as Here and There, of which, in fact, it formed a continuation under another name. The parentage was instantly detected. Yet the paper was a creditable one, and was worthy of some support. Bnt people repeated the old cry, and wanted to know " whether any good could come out of Nazareth." Messrs Smith, Son, & Co., permitted the new venture to b« sold at the railway stations, nnd it thus obtained a certain amount of precarious circulation. It was, however, doomed from the beginning, and last month finally succumbed—succumbed, it should be remembered, to the sense of right and propriety, of temperance and chastity, which is interwoven into our English character. A.o, living, it had no friends, so dead, it has no mourners, and the most prominent attempt to Americanise our press, and to tinge it with those attributes of French journalism, which were the 'legitimate outcome of a corrupt court and a luxurious people, has come to nought. This little history is deeply sugges tive. We hope it will deter speculators for many a year from introducing any of these exotic growths into our pure English soil, and it undoubtedly proves that although unsound literature may for a time take root among us, it is only in the character of a weed which is soon detected, uprooted, and cast into the furnace.