ARTISTICAL DEFICIENCIES IN NEWSPAPER REPORTS OF MURDERS.
LARGE sheets are as unfavourable to newspaper literature as large theatres have proved to dramatic art. In both cases ex- cessive space has necessarily led to coarseness of execution.
To the excessive size of our newspapers may in no slight de- gree be attributed the want of artistical handling in their reports of murders. It is useless to complain of the prominence given to such topics. The public will have them. The monotony of. or- derly business-life begets an irresistible craving for such strong stimulants. Even those who cry out against such pandering to a vitiated taste cannot resist reading. But the same cause which has driven our newspapers to reprint Parliamentary re-. ports and Foreign Office protocols entire instead of presenting their readers with a manageable analysis—the necessity offal:11g tip—obliges them to enter into all the revolting minutite of every act of butchery. For some weeks back, Hocker and Tawell have duly occupied their couple of columns or more in the morning prints. Some other culprits preceded them in this unenviable notoriety ; and the-anonymous miscreant in St. Giles's promises to succeed them. It is consolatory to reflect that gross crimes must be compare- tively few in number, when so much is made of those that do occur ; but this scarcely compensates for the nausea occasioned by being crammed day after day by wire-drawn narratives of re-' yoking transactions, stuffed out with maudlin and mawkish com- , men tary. Not the least mischievous consequence of this spinning-put system is its tendency to introduce a knowledge of the practices of low habitual depravity, where otherwise such knowledge never could have intruded. There is nothing contaminating in the contemplation of strong passion—the death-struggles of sudden passion or undying vindictiveness. But when—as in the cases of . Hocker and the murderer of the unhappy woman in St. Giles's- minute details of the crime and criminal lay bare the habitual demoralization of the very outcasts of society, the mind is familiarized with images which can scarcely be entertained with- out affecting its purity. The female mind in Great Britain owes much to the care with which it is kept even from the knowledge of some classes of vice and vicious characters ; and them ale mind of Great Britain is kept comparatively pure by being con- stantly reminded of the necessity of respecting this ignorance. This is the characteristic of British domestic life to which the superior purity of the domestic morals of Britain is mainly owing. Its permanence will be seriously endangered, if the loathsome details of brute and squalid sensuality are to be smug- gled into the family circle under the mask of a tale of murder.
Previous page
