Victorian Sensation, by Michael Diamond.

Gutter press scandals of a bygone age: I greatly enjoyed this book and used some of its material in researching my own London work, In The City. This review appeared in Word Magazine, May 2003.

Everyone loved a good hanging in the old days. They were a public spectacle not to be missed. We may find that strange today, but even odder was the tone of some reporting. When the murderess Maria Manning went to her reward on 14 November, 1849, the Morning Chronicle reviewed it thus: “Even the distortion consequent upon the mode of death she suffered could not destroy the remarkably fine contour of her figure as it swayed to and fro by the action of the wind.”
    The great novelist Thomas Hardy was similarly struck by the execution of another female: “What a fine figure she showed against the sky as she hung in the misty rain, and how the tight black silk gown set off her shape as she wheeled half-round and back.”
    You might suppose this throws some light upon a dark nook of the male psyche, but the crowd at such events was often thronged with women. The same was observed of public galleries at notorious trials. And the seller of one Victorian scandal sheet remarked that “mostly all our customers is females.” The fact, as Michael Diamond’s excellent book demonstrates, is that the 19th century British were united by a love of “sensation”: men and women, young and old, rich and poor, they were insatiable in their appetite for the extraordinary.
     The explosion of printed periodicals was one source of the mania. Sex and death were quickly spotted as allies in the circulation wars, and the promise of a glorious scandal could set the populace in a frenzy. News of the Royals was likewise prized: whilst the Victorians seemed to sincerely love their Queen, they were ready to pounce upon the lesser family members, whose stock could rise or fall dramatically. Does that sound familiar? They also loved the “spectacles” of novel performers such as tiny Tom Thumb, dashing Buffalo Bill and the acrobatic Frenchman Jules Leotard (who “flew through the air with the greatest of ease” and developed the clingy garment that bears his name).
    Melodramatic stage plays were another obsession (“Dead, dead, and never called me mother!”) especially if there were astounding special effects. The taste for satire was rife as well and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the period’s most popular drama, spawned several parodies. Most of all there was the Music Hall, which fulfilled the role of our modern tabloids – by turns funny and scurrilous, thumpingly patriotic in wartime but otherwise scornful of pomposity. As for Charles Dickens, his live performances were a universal passion, delivered with such force that they hastened his death.
    Downfalls of the famous were of course savoured. Oscar Wilde in his time enjoyed celebrity on first name terms, such as Kylie does today. But the national fascination with flamboyant “Oscar” made him a target, too. The failure of his libel action against the Marquess of Queensberry led to his arrest on charges of sodomy and indecency. Though the case became a sensation, Reynold’s Newspaper was alone in relaying the more graphic details. Its readers learned, for example, that Wilde’s co-defendant Alfred Taylor owned seven pairs of trousers with the pockets cut out “so anyone could pass their hands straight through.” Having milked the public interest, Reynold’s performed a classic press manoeuvre in deploring that same curiosity, claiming it showed “a lack of moral stiffening” – as distinct, presumably, from Alfred Taylor’s trousers.
    Of course we can smile at such audacious humbug, and condemn the intolerance that brought it about. But the inescapable logic of Victorian Sensation is that we are no different, and that everything changes except human nature. The 20th century was accustomed to looking down on the Victorians: they were uptight, narrow and moralistic, whereas we were funky, open and liberated. But historians of the future might wonder at this view of the era that abolished slavery, held by the century that invented nuclear war. An old BBC hand, the author is entirely free of such condescension. “They were not only our ancestors,” he concludes, “but our brothers and sisters under the skin.”
    Is that good news for them or bad news for us? Read these corking stories of moustachioed seducers, suburban poisoners and flagrantly immoral actresses and decide for yourself.

Buy the book at Amazon.co.uk