Imagine a World Where The Daily Mail was Honest About Its Motives...

[steepholm]

Why imagine, when we have this account of a robbery and execution from 1783? The thing that strikes me is this frank admission by the writer:

This robbery was so peculiarly inhuman and aggravated, that the circumstances attending it are too interesting to the public not to be given in detail.

Nothing about our "right to know", or "the public interest". Just honest, old-fashioned prurience. It does your heart good.

Comments

[sovay]

This the credulous prosecutor assented to, and Bowman took him to another public-house, where they joined Austin, and from thence they all went out, as Spicer thought, towards the lodging; but when he found himself in the middle of a field, out of the high road, by the side of a ditch, no house near, nor anything to be seen but the lights of some distant lamps, he observed that it was a very comical place to look after a lodging; upon which Austin retired a little, and Patrick Bowman drew a cutlass, with which he kept chopping at the hands, wrists, arms, body, and head of the prosecutor, and mangled him in a most shocking manner.

I love that eighteenth-century sensationalism is still two hundred words to a sentence.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes - they're always giving value!