DR. NEWMAN AND HIS PILLS.
The quaintest things are advertised in these old journals. A coachman in Long-Acre has devised a bullet-proof postchaise, or chariot, in which "any Gentleman may travel with Safety and not less Expedition than heretofore." It is claimed to be proof against any weapons carried by highwaymen.
Mr. Lott, of Maidstone, who, in several of his advertisements, "Begs leave to acquaint all Gentlemen and others (others!) that he has taken a large House in Beer-Cart Lane," advertises sporting and other guns, and has a very choice assortment of pistols "for Gentlemen travelling," perhaps also—who knows?—purchased by highwaymen on the look-out for those travelling gentlemen. His advertisement is embellished most remarkably with a somebody, whether gentleman or highwayman, it would be difficult to say—but it looks not altogether unlike a conventional representation of the devil. On due reconsideration, however, it would appear to be a sportsman, for he is accompanied by what may be taken for a dog. What kind of sport he expects to get with the gun he holds in his left hand, with the remarkable kink in the barrel, it would be impossible to say; but the pistol he flourishes in his right looks lethal enough to do the business of any highwayman that ever patrolled the roads and spoke with the coaches.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ADVERTISEMENT.
Even in those times, there were people who strove to abolish capital punishment; and the advertisement columns of these old journals bear witness to the fact, in the announcement of a pamphlet, priced at only sixpence, displaying arguments in favour of discontinuing the death-penalty. On one occasion it is printed next to a paragraph which records briefly how a highwayman, disappointed at not getting sufficient plunder, shot a poor traveller on the road near Staines. "We hear," says the journal, "that the man has since dy'd of his Wounds." This curious juxtaposition looks uncommonly like a sly example of editorial sarcasm at the expense of the excellent advertiser: a hint after the style of the sardonic French philosopher's comment upon the similar proposal to remit the death penalty upon murderers: "que messieurs les assassins commencent."
The newspapers and the magazines alike contain the most startling commentaries upon life as lived in London during the eighteenth century. Thus we read, in an obscure paragraph, how the French mail was robbed in Piccadilly, by the valise containing the bags being cut off the postchaise. The occasion was not so exceptional that it would demand more than a few lines. But in those days newspapers had not discovered the way of exploiting news for all it was worth, and more, by the twin arts of the artful headline and the redundant adjective.
Again, it was late in September 1750, Horace Walpole tells us, and he was sitting in his dining-room in Arlington Street, close upon eleven o'clock one Sunday night, when he heard a loud cry of "Stop thief!" A highwayman had attacked a postchaise in Piccadilly, at the corner of Arlington Street, and, being pursued, rode over a watchman and almost killed him. He escaped, of course.