FEATURE: London's "Death Hunters" and the Invention of 'Clickbait' in the Age of Steam

London 1851 | AGENCY: Fleet Street Signals

Do you believe that fake news, the clickbait and the algorithms of virality are an invention of the gurus of Silicon Valley? Grave error. Switch off your screens, set your clocks back to the middle of the nineteenth century and come with me into the foggy, cobbled streets of London. Here, at the very heart of the British Empire, a logistical network of street vendors has perfected the art of monetising morbid curiosity with an efficiency that would make any modern social network turn pale.

We are speaking of the Patterers, the self-proclaimed "aristocracy of the streets". Unlike the costermongers (those sellers of apples and fish whom they deeply despise for depending on physical toil), the patterers live exclusively off their wits, their gift of the gab and the printing hardware of the alleys of Seven Dials. Their merchandise does not feed the stomach but the insatiable human curiosity: they sell broadside literature, chronicles of murders, gallows speeches and the scandals of high society.

The Algorithm of Morbid Curiosity: Murders Made to Order

The business model of the Running Patterer (the seller of news on the run) is a masterpiece of mass psychology. They operate in "schools" or "mobs" (crews) of three or four men. They burst into a quiet street as night falls and begin to bellow at the top of their lungs a set of meticulously chosen keywords: "Murder! Horrible! Barbarous! Mysterious! Seduction!". The passer-by or the neighbour leaning out of the window catches only these auditory tags, the Victorian equivalent of a headline in capital letters. Intrigued, they hand over their penny.

If the truth is profitable, the patterer sells the truth. Celebrated murders, such as that of Rush or that of the Manning couple, are their high season. The logistics are impeccable: the authors on the payroll of the street presses (such as the famous house of the late Jemmy Catnach, who amassed a fortune of 10,000 pounds in this trade) compose the criminal's "Sorrowful Lamentation and Last Farewell". The distribution network is so swift that, on the morning of the execution, the patterers are already beneath the scaffold selling the full confession and the "last moments" of the condemned, long before the hangman pulls the lever. "For early and correct information, we can beat the Times itself," a veteran of the guild assures me with a cynical smile.

But what happens when there is a drought of real crimes? This is where the patterer proves his genius. If there is no news, news is manufactured. These literary forgeries they call Cocks.

The "Cocks": The Start-Up of the Lie

A Cock is a report of a fabulous event, printed on a quarter-sheet and adorned with a woodcut that rarely has anything to do with the story. I have documented some fascinating cases. One patterer confessed to having "killed" the Duke of Wellington twice (once by a fall from his horse and once by mysterious murder) and Louis Philippe of France just as often, simply because the day's takings were thin.

Among the most profitable Cocks are duels between ladies of high society, the illicit romances of clergymen and intercepted love letters. The classic "The Husband Caught in a Trap" is a stock text that serves any occasion; the seller need only change the name of the street in his spoken patter to convince the neighbours that the scandal has happened right next door. It is a system of updating content in real time, with no need to alter the printed hardware.

"Strawing": The Paywall of the Victorian Age

The commercial innovation of these merchants of the word knows no limits. During periods of high political tension, the British government attempted to censor the sale of radical pamphlets or those of dubious morality. The answer from the street was Strawing.

The seller would plant himself in the street and announce: "I am not permitted to sell this document by order of the authorities. Therefore, I am going to sell this excellent straw for a penny, and whoever buys the straw from me shall be given the document for free." An absolutely brilliant circumvention of the press laws and of the legal paywall. The legendary "Jack Straw", the natural son of a blacking manufacturer, made fortunes at Hyde Park Corner selling straws and giving away seditious pamphlets, proving that commercial sharpness flourishes even in the mire.

The Administrative Contrast: The Orphanhood of the System

In analysing the structure of this underground economy, it is impossible not to apply our Hispanidad Protocol and observe the abysmal contrast between imperial models. While in the Hispanic viceroyalties the central administration planned social integration through a logistical network of hospitals, missions and universities, the British Empire, at the very summit of its Industrial Revolution, abandons its citizens to the wildest of free markets.

Here there is no safety net. Orphaned children, mechanics displaced by the machines and clergymen fallen on hard times (I have interviewed a former tutor to the nobility who now sells shorthand cards in the street) are cast out onto the pavement. The State does not administer them; it merely shuts them away in workhouses under conditions so draconian that they prefer vagrancy. This lack of human infrastructure is what breeds the ecosystem of the patterers: a society that cannibalises its own misery and where the only way to survive is to deceive your neighbour before your neighbour deceives you.

The Death Hunters and the Patterers are not an anomaly of the British system; they are its most direct consequence. They are the reflection of a "respectable" press that also profits from blood, but which shields itself behind elegant typography. At the end of the day, in the streets of London, information is just another commodity, and the truth a luxury that few can afford when hunger bites.

THE MOST EXPENSIVE STRAW IN LONDON (SECRET INCLUDED)

We cannot sell you this report by order of the Crown. That is why we sell you this straw of excellent quality and give you for free the manual for mastering Victorian clickbait.

BUY THE STRAW (AND THE GIFT) *