The Illustrated Police News: The Shocks, Scandals and Sensations of the Week, 1864-1938

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The Library's buildings remain fully open but some services are limited, including access to collection items. We're On the day Chapman’s body was discovered, the press later reported, “young roughs” began to threaten the local Jewish population. Cries of “down with the Jews” were heard, suggested a newspaper which headlined its report of the disturbances “A Riot Against the Jews.”

The other significant theory about the origin of the legend, proposed by Robert Chambers in 1864, is that a genuine child was born in the early 17th century with facial deformities resembling a pig's face and a speech impediment causing her to grunt. [1] The science of teratology (the study of birth defects and physiological abnormalities) was then in its infancy, and the theory of maternal impression (that the thoughts of a pregnant woman could influence the future appearance of her children) was widely accepted. It is possible that the birth of a genuinely deformed child led to the story of the beggar as a possible explanation for her appearance, with other elements of the story being later additions or distortions by publishers. [1] Chambers speculates that the original child may have had a similar appearance to Julia Pastrana, a woman with hypertrichosis and distorted (although not pig-like) facial features, [1] who was widely exhibited in Europe and North America until her death in 1860, and then, embalmed, until the 1970s. [7] However, while a 1952 stillbirth with a face resembling a pig is documented, there has never been a reliably documented case of a human with deformities of this kind surviving outside the womb, while all versions of the pig-faced woman legend describe her as a healthy adult. [8] Tannakin Skinker [ edit ] Tannakin Skinker, from A Monstrous Shape, or a Shapelesse Monster, 1640 Curtis, p.65; Ludmilla Jordanova, The look of the past: visual and material evidence in historical practice (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2012), p.169. The Illustrated Police News was a weekly illustrated newspaper which was one of the earliest British tabloids. It featured sensational and melodramatic reports and illustrations of murders and hangings and was a direct descendant of the execution broadsheets of the 18th century. Thomas Bell was then charged with assault, and ‘attempting to commit suicide,’ a crime at the time. It was a remarkable incident to take place in a first-class railway carriage, and again illuminated the importance of having a working passenger communication cord. 3. ‘Malicious Mischief In A Railway Carriage’– 1884Some time before Surbiton was reached Mr Pearson laid down his gold-rimmed spectacles and his newspaper, and went off to sleep. Surbiton was passed, and the silence was maintained. Suddenly there was a short, sharp, report, and Mrs King, who happened to be looking out of the window, immediately turned her face in the direction of her fellow-travellers, and caught sight of Parker pointing the revolver at her. Reading about the case in adulthood, he became increasingly aware of “the anti-Semitic overtones permeating key parts of the story.” Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend, women secretly armed’ Illustrated Police News, 1284, (London, 1888), p.1 < https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107586.html> [Accessed 03 March 2022]. Chambers, Robert (17 August 1850). " 'Modern Myths' – The Pig-Faced Lady". Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. Edinburgh: William Chambers (346). Personal advertisement of February 1815, rejected by the Times but published by the Morning Herald and Morning Chronicle

Súilleabháin, Seán (1971). "Díoltas i nDroch-Bhirt". Béaloideas (in Irish). Dublin: An Cumann Le Béaloideas Éireann/The Folklore of Ireland Society. 39: 251–265. doi: 10.2307/20521359. JSTOR 20521359.Long before Agatha Christie envisioned murder on the Orient Express, or before she wondered what might have taken place on the 4.50 from Paddington, murder, mystery and mayhem were already well established on the railways of Britain and beyond. On a more serious note, the Illustrated Police Newson 25 May 1895 ran the headline ‘Bomb In A Railway Carriage,’ which was a subject of one of the newspaper’s illustrations that week. The article detailed how an explosion had taken place at Walworth Railway Station at about half past eleven one Friday morning, when ‘officials heard a hissing noise, accompanied by flame and smoke, issuing from a second-class compartment.’