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.”