It was in consequence of the continued friendship existing between Mr. Mark Smith and Jemmy Catnach that the latter had often expressed a desire to serve his fellow-apprentice, should circumstances occur to render it necessary. The Alnwick election of 1826 promised to be a good one as regarded printing, and Mr. Smith anticipating a difficulty in getting through his work, applied to Catnach to know if he could render him any assistance. The result was that Jemmy at once proffered to go to Alnwick and take with him a small hand-press. After his arrival he seldom went out of the house, as all hands worked early and late, for, besides addresses, squibs, &c., they had to get out the state of the poll every afternoon, shortly after four o’clock. The number of addresses and squibs, in prose and verse, during this memorable election was enormous. The whole, when collected together, forms four good-sized volumes. The principal printers in Alnwick at this time, and who were engaged by the candidates, were Smith, Davison, and Graham. But there was a great deal of printing done at Newcastle, Gateshead, North Shields, Morpeth, and other towns.
There can be but little doubt that all who were professionally engaged at this election made a good thing out of it. The money spent upon printing alone must have been very great. And nearly all the public-houses in Alnwick were made “open houses,” as well as most of those in the principal towns throughout the county. Old people talk to this day, with a degree of pride of “those good old times” that existed at the Parliamentary elections previous to the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. As far as Catnach was concerned, he merely went to help to pay off a deep debt of gratitude owing by him to the Smith family for many past favours to his own family when they were in dire distress in auld lang syne. Besides, Jemmy was now getting towards that state known as being “comfortably well-to-do,” and the trip was a change of air—a bit of a holiday, and a visit to the town of his birth. And as he had buried his mother in London during the early part of the year, he took the opportunity to erect in the parish churchyard, that which at once stands as a cenotaph and a tombstone, bearing the following inscription:—
“John, Son of John Catnach,
Printer, died August 27th,
1794, Aged 5 years & 7 months.
JOHN CATNACH died in
London, 1813, Aged 44.
Mary, his wife died Jany.
24th, 1826, Aged 60 years,
Also John, Margaret, and
Jane Catnach, lie here.”[9]
During Catnach’s absence from London on the Alnwick election, his old rivals—the Pitts family—were, as usual, concocting false reports, and exhibiting lampoons, after the following manner:—
“Poor Jemmy with the son of Old Nick,
Down to Northumberland he’s gone;
To take up his freedom at Alnwick,
The why or the wherefore’s known to none.
“Before he went, he washed in soap and sud,
The Alnwick folks they found the fiddle;
Then they dragged poor Jemmy through the mud,
Two foot above his middle.
The above was in allusion to the old ceremony of being dragged through the dirty pool to be made a Freeman of the town of Alnwick. But, as far as Catnach was concerned, there is no truth whatever in the matter, it was simply “a weak invention of the enemy.” It was in the latter part of June and the beginning of July in the same year, that Catnach was at Alnwick, and the ceremony of making freemen always took place on St. Mark’s Day, April 25th, or at least two months earlier.
Thus the statement of the Pitts’ party was—
“As false
As air, as water, as wind, as sandy earth,
As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer’s calf,
Pard to the hind, or step-dame to her son.”
Catnach, as the high priest of the literature of the streets, surrounded by trade rivals, “stood like a man at a mark with a whole army shooting at him,” but he was as firm as a rock and with the strength of a giant, and, as Hyperion to a Satyr, defied them all.
The destruction of the Royal Brunswick Theatre, Well-street, Wellclose-square, East London, on the 29th of February, 1828, by the falling in of the walls, in consequence of too much weight being attached to the heavy cast-iron roof, made a rare nine-day’s wonder for the workers of street-papers. Fortunately the catastrophe happened in the day-time, during the rehearsal of “Guy Mannering,” and only fifteen persons perished, viz:—