Printed at J. Pitts, Wholesale Toy and Marble Warehouse, 6, Great St. Andrew Street, Seven Dials.
There can be little doubt that Catnach, the great publisher of the Seven Dials, next to children's books, had his mind mostly centred upon the chronicling of doubtful scandals, fabulous duels between ladies of fashion, "cooked" assassinations, and sudden deaths of eminent individuals, apochryphal 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, after this manner:--
"All you that have got feeling hearts, I pray you now attend To these few lines so sad and true, a solemn silence lend; It is of a cruel murder, to you I will unfold---- The bare recital of the tale must make your blood run cold."
Or take another and stereotyped example, which from time to time has served equally well for the verses _written by_ the culprit--Brown, Jones, Robinson, or Smith:
"Those deeds I mournfully repent, But now it is too late, The day is past, the die is cast, And fixed is my fate.
Occasionally the Last Sorrowful Lamentations contained a "Love Letter"--the criminal being unable, in some instances, to read or write, being no obstacle to the composition--written according to the street patterer's statement: "from the depths of the condemned cell, with the condemned pen, ink, and paper." This mode of procedure in "gallows" literature, and this style of composition having prevailed for from sixty to seventy years.
Then they would say: "Here you have also an exact likeness of the murderer, taken at the bar of the Old Bailey by an eminent artist!" when all the time it was an old woodcut that had been used for every criminal for many years.
"There's nothing beats a stunning good murder after all," said a "running patterer" to Mr. Henry Mayhew, the author of "London Labour and London Poor." It is only fair to assume that Mr. James Catnach shared in the sentiment, for it is said that he made over £500 by the publication of:--