An order to protect a woman’s money and property, 1879

Protection order, Police Court form number 184, dated 1879

Printer unknown, letterpress, 333 x 208mm (Rickards Collection, University of Reading, Desertion)

In 1876 Matilda Wade of Bermondsey was deserted by her husband John. This form – a protection order dated 1879 – ruled that he could not make any legal claim upon her money or property.

The document reflects the invisible legal status of married women in the nineteenth century. In the words of a frequently rehearsed later observation: in law husband and wife were one person, and that person was the husband. This protection order offered some security for the abandoned woman: Matilda Wade was now to be treated ‘as if she were a Feme Sole’ – having the status of an adult unmarried woman, so her money and property now belonged to her, and she could make contracts in her own name.

The form’s language is typical of legal documents of the period. The text is made up of one main paragraph with two sentences, set out plainly over 25 lines with around 16 words per line. The first sentence, starting with ‘Whereas’ (which we read as ‘It being the case that’) recites the matter at hand. The second sentence, beginning ‘Now I,’ states the directions of the court, gives its order. Each sentence contains seven completion tasks, to identify persons, places, and dates.

All this is followed by a brief statement of authentication and signature – here completed by a magistrate, Wyndham Slade, but the document’s blanks are otherwise filled by another hand, possibly one of the clerks of the court. Space left over after filling has been ruled to prevent alterations or additions.

The document projects its authority relatively simply: the royal coat of arms at head, the crown seal and stamps at tail. Questions of functional ‘use’ seem hardly appropriate to this, the symbolic record of a legal act which changed the status of a person.

A reading primer, 1866

Reading without tears Or, a pleasant mode of learning to read, by the author of ‘Peep of day’ [Favell Lee Mortimer]. Part the first. London, 1866: Hatchard & Co and Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. Printed letterpress, 16 cm x 12.5 cm (collection Sue Walker).

One famous reader of this primer kept no fond memories of it. In his memoir My early life, Winston Churchill recalled that his nurse "produced a book called Reading without tears. It certainly did not justify its title in my case." Its author identifies English orthography, the unpredictable relationship between sounds and signs, speech and writing, as the cause of learners’ tears:
"The great difficulty in learning to read our own language arises from the anomalies in its spelling. Why is the e in bread short and in bean long? Why are the words dear and bear so different in their pronunciation? These irregularities occasion the child continual perplexity, and render it dependent upon memory."

Reading without tears pioneered phonics in the teaching of reading. It enjoins that "the consonants be called by their sounds, B' D' — not Be De". The book cultivates visual memory for letter signs: "G is like a monkey eating a cake", and "P is like a man with a pack on his back." It displays vowel-consonant and consonant-vowel combinations (ab, eb, ib, ob, and ba, be, bi, bo), and word rhyme patterns (ham, jam, ram). It stresses syllabic divisions within words by hyphenation (dai-ly, gai-ly, dai-sy). Minimal sound-sign contrasts are illustrated by elemental – and scary – sentence sequences such as ‘A pig bit a kid. Bill hit a pig. Bill hid a kid. Bill will kill a pig.’

The book was designed with enough care in the relationship between words and pictures, and in matching semantic boundaries to pages and double-page spreads, to justify its claim that "Great pains have been taken to render this book pleasing to children. To allure them to tread the path of knowledge, steps have been cut in the steep rock, and flowers have been planted by the wayside. Pictures are those flowers — careful arrangement and exact classification are those steps."

Favell Lee Mortimer (1802–1878, née Bevan) was an evangelical and prolific educational writer, born into a rich banking family. In her time best known for her first book – The peep of day, or, A series of the earliest religious instruction the infant mind is capable of receiving (1836) – she is remembered now for her uncharitable accounts of foreigners. Though not in the least a traveller, she nonetheless wrote Near home, or, the countries of Europe described (1849) in which her least offensive observations include those on Italy: ‘It is full of fine houses and palaces – empty and going to decay – but that is not the worst part – the people are ignorant and wicked. Their religion is the Roman Catholic. Their chief amusement is gambling’.

First published in 1857 and followed by several subsequent editions (our pictures are from 1866), Reading without tears was still in print in 1924. There was also a cheap version: "An abridgement of this work has been published for the use of the poor. It is entitled, ‘Teaching Myself’, and costs only Fourpence. By means of that little book, poor cottagers may teach themselves to read with hardly any assistance."

Watchpapers depicting the Thames Tunnel, c.1840s

Hand-coloured copper engravings, 58mm diameter. (Rickards Collection, Watchpaper 8)

The Thames Tunnel, from Wapping to Rotherhithe, was the World’s first sub-aqueous tunnel, begun in 1825 by the engineer Marc Brunel, but not completed until 1843, under the supervision of his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel. With a lavish opening ceremony in March 1843, the Thames Tunnel became an important sight for any visitor to London, with Queen Victoria making a visit in July 1843. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s it was host to traders during the day and also the site of several spectacular fairs, beginning in 1852. On a day-to-day basis, traders would have lined the tunnel and mainly sold souvenirs to the passing tourists. The Tunnel gradually lost its sense of glamour and was eventually sold to the East London Railway in 1865, and, to this day, London Transport uses the tunnel as part of its underground network of trains.

Tunnel souvenirs, like these commemorative watchpapers, introduced a new iconography of underground space to London’s populace, reproduced on a wide variety of other goods such as cups, plates, snuffboxes, posters and guidebooks. Typical representations of the Tunnel were of the construction process, shown in the lower watchpaper. Here a split-level view depicts a scene on the river rendered in perspective, while below it, an outsized cross-sectional view of the twin shafts shows the tunnel being built by the miners, rendered in blue and red. The top watchpaper includes a perspective view of the inside of the tunnel, its arches seemingly receding infinitely, their scale emphasised by the diminutive visitors. In the borders of both watchpapers are Tunnel statistics: in the upper one, explanatory text as to the location of the image; in the lower one, information on the cost of the project and the materials employed in its construction. These combination views of underground space – on the one hand, technological, on the other picturesque – would become commonplace as London developed its subterranean infrastructure of sewers, railways and subways from the 1860s onwards.

Watchpapers were small printed round paper inserts placed in pocket watches to protect their inner workings from rust. They were also employed by watchmakers as product labels, that is, as a way of advertising their wares. The use of this medium for advertising the Thames Tunnel demonstrates how the popular appeal of a particular sight might displace conventional forms of advertising. Although not an organised advertising campaign as we understand it today, the marketing of the Thames Tunnel nevertheless represents an early example of ‘total’ advertising, one that organizes itself around a particular spectacle in the city rather than an individual commodity.

Exhibition extended; catalogue now available

Our exhibition at the St Bride Library, London EC4, is extended: now open until Tuesday 16 February.

It will then be at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading, until late March.

A catalogue, Designing information before designers, is available. This 48-page A5 booklet provides details of all of the documents displayed in the exhibition, with colour illustrations and extended descriptions of a selection of them.

£3 to visitors, or £4 including postage & packing within the UK. (Overseas, contact us by email: p.a.dobraszczyk@reading.ac.uk)

Please make cheques payable to ‘University of Reading’, and tell us the postal address for delivery.

Send to:
Paul Dobraszczyk and Mike Esbester
Department of Typography & Graphic Communication
University of Reading
Reading
RG6 6AU

Project exhibition: January 2010

Our exhibition displays some of the documents which have already appeared on this website, and many more as yet unseen. Together they show the products of designing information in the 19th century: ephemeral but rich and varied documents for the transactions and encounters of everyday life – calendars, catalogues, forms, timetables, maps, and diagrams.

Most of these documents were discarded after use. The exhibition, at the St Bride Library in London EC4 (11–29 January 2010), shows some survivors, all intended in one way of another to answer people’s questions or support them in making decisions. Most of them are from the University of Reading’s Special Collections, its Museum of English Rural Life, or its Centre for Ephemera Studies.

At the Library on Thursday 14 January, at 7.00 pm, we will give an illustrated talk on themes arising from the exhibition.

More information at: http://stbride.org/events

Promotional letter for a tile machine, 1846

Improved drain tile machine. [Etheredge’s Patent.]

Printer unknown, letterpress on single sheet of paper, folded to make four pages; single page 235 x 375mm (Museum of English Rural Life, Reading, TR RAN P2/A11)

The introduction of the penny post and expansion of the rail network meant that it became easier to send catalogues and products over greater distances than ever before. In 1846 this item was sent by post to Messers French, Ironmongers, of Aylesbury. A manuscript note on page 3 is signed ‘Job manufacturers, Ransome and May, Ipswich’, suggesting that this firm – known for its agricultural machinery – was producing the tile-making machine under license from the patentee, C. Etheredge. At £42 the machine was a substantial investment (about £3,000 at 2008 prices); for those unable to afford such outlay, it was also possible to buy the tiles, ready-made.

This item of publicity follows the pattern seen in other trade literature of the time, providing an explanation of the machine’s operation and an accompanying wood-engraved illustration (p.1, above, click to enlarge), with details of the seller (p.2, below). In this case the Resident Manager for C. Etheredge and Company, John Cheese, was the nominated contact, usually based in London.

The manuscript comments on pages 2 and 3 raise questions about selling and buying practices in the mid-nineteenth century. Who made these additions to the printed text? To whom were they addressed? And what purpose did they serve? This was targeted, specific advertising, but it is unclear whether the manuscript was added by the machinery manufacturer (Ransomes) or the patent holder (Etheredge). The comment on p.2 states that the Resident Manager would be ‘for a few weeks at Mr Dawney’s, [illegible] Square, Aylesbury’. Possibly this was part of a larger tour by the Resident Manager, giving him the chance to meet in person potential local agents for the tile machine.

The note on p.3 (below) states: ‘This machine may be seen at work daily in its own yard with clay fresh dug at [illegible] 4 miles from Aylesbury + a personal inspection of the machine and the tiles made from by it which are of a superior quality is respectfully requested’. What does this say about how people interpreted trade literature? It suggests that it was not enough to buy from a sheet of paper, people preferring instead to see the product ‘in the flesh.’

And what of the product being sold? This was a timely piece of promotion. From the early 1840s the development of clayworking technology experienced a boom period, as the Royal Agricultural Society of England encouraged farmers to improve their land by draining it. Clay drain tiles and pipes were the solution: placed underground, they carried excess water away from the fields. As a result, tiles were in heavy demand, and many different machines were developed to meet the need. Patentees and machinery manufacturers had to advertise to promote their shared interests and secure a share of a potentially lucrative market – hence this promotional letter.

It should be remembered that every machine needs its operator. Over 60 years before F.W. Taylor performed his time-and-motion studies, one cannot help but feel sorry for the boys who were responsible for tending to this machine’s output: without moving from their post, with one hand they were supposed to cut the tiles to length as they emerged from the machine, and with the other move the tiles on to the barrows. Economy of motion and continuous production were pre-requisites.

A picture and 312 words

Work for all. Salvation Arm social campaign. Lithographically-printed illustration, on sheet (428 x 277 mm) folded and tipped-in, facing title page of: General [William] Booth, In darkest England and the way out (1890, London: International Headquarters of the Salvation Army). Illustration printed by The Salvation Army, Litho, 98 & 100 Clerkenwell Road

The Reverend William Booth founded the East London Christian Mission in 1865, changing its name to the Salvation Army in 1878 to reflect both its evangelism and its semi-military organization. In darkest England and the way out, his best-selling book (200,000 sold in its first year) on ‘the Social Question’ – how to deal with the poor, destitute, and unemployed – was ghost-written by William Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. It came out in 1890, following the publication earlier that year of Henry Morton Stanley’s In darkest Africa. Booth-Stead wrote: ‘As there is a darkest Africa is there not also a darkest England? Civilisation, which can breed its own barbarians, does it not also breed its own pygmies? May we not find a parallel at our own doors, and discover within a stone’s throw of our cathedrals and palaces similar horrors to those which Stanley has found existing in the great Equatorial forest?’

We show the illustration (‘chart’) which opens the book in order to enlarge the notion of ‘information’: not here ‘facts’ or ‘data’ but rhetorical support to readers. The book’s argument is here summarized, if not at a glance – too complex for that – then on one page. Nineteenth-century book publishers could be pretty good at giving readers advance notice of what they would be getting, by means of such things as expanded contents lists with chapter summaries, digests, synoptic overviews – a battery of editorial devices which offered signals and guides to readers, what today might be called navigational and access aids. Here, the story is given in one picture and its accompanying iconographic guide.

The 312-word caption (‘Key to the chart’) explains that the chart is ‘intended to give a birdseye-view of the Scheme described in this book, and the results expected from its realization.’ Together they offer a prospectus of the book’s argument: ‘A population sodden with drink, steeped in vice, eaten up by every social and physical malady, these are the denizens of Darkest England amidst whom my life has been spent, and to whose rescue I would now summon all that is best in the manhood and womanhood of our land.’ The general cited the work of his namesake Charles Booth – the ‘one book there is, and so far at present, only one, which even attempts to enumerate the destitute’ – whose Descriptive map of East End poverty had appeared the year before in the first volume of Life and labour of the people. Volume 1: East London (London: Macmillan, 1889). Relying on Charles Booth’s statistics – selections from which are displayed on the piers of the arch – General Booth reckoned that at least three million people, one tenth of Britain’s population, lived in destitution. His solution was a scheme to extract the pauperized and unemployed from their squalor, and to place them in urban workshop ‘colonies’ from which they would later graduate to farm colonies, before finally being exported to colonies overseas. In the early 20th century the Salvation Army attempted to realize Booth’s scheme through a programme of assisted emigration from Britain to all corners of its empire.

This document recalls a tradition of apocalyptic vision in painting, from Hieronymus Bosch to John Martin’s ‘judgement paintings’ of 1851–4. In the general’s chart, presumably made under his guidance by an anonymous commercial artist, its lower depths of poverty, vice and despair contain just one named person: Jack the Ripper, to the right and below the lighthouse of salvation.