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Outdoor Advertising and Improvement in the Nineteenth Century

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Injurious Vistas: The Control of Outdoor Advertising, Governance and the Shaping of Urban Experience in Britain, 1817–1962

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

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Abstract

This chapter deals with the crystallisation of opposition to outdoor advertising in the first half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the common types of outdoor advertising—largely posters, vans and sandwich boards—caused serious nuisance on urban streets, attracting the ire of local government. Whilst it shows that cultural commentators of the period objected, the chief opposition came from government regimes of improvement that sought to eliminate nuisance and ‘civilise’ outdoor advertising in a city that was increasingly crowded and disordered. Examples of initial forays into advertising control were thus prosaic, positioning outdoor advertising as a material nuisance in bustling streetscapes, rather than as an aesthetic problem. The chapter also shows the response of the advertising trade, which was to organise and consolidate the industry, promoting the advertising station over less ordered forms of postering to bring them in line with governmental desires to alleviate the chaotic and disruptive nature of outdoor advertising.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, the History of Advertising Trust cites these as pivotal years in its chronology of advertising history https://www.hatads.org.uk/documents/Chronology.pdf accessed 15 March 2021.

  2. 2.

    This story seems to have originated in Cyril Sheldon, A History of Poster Advertising (London, 1937), pp. 3–4 and been picked up by subsequent historians using Sheldon as a source. Richard Nelson and Anthony Edward Sykes, Outdoor Advertising: Its Function in Modern Advertising and Marketing (London, 1953), p. 7 for example.

  3. 3.

    Clarence Moran, The Business of Advertising (Abingdon, 1905), p. 41.

  4. 4.

    There are many descriptions of this process Ernest Turner, The Shocking History of Advertising, p. 72.

  5. 5.

    Sheldon, A History of Poster Advertising, p. 2.

  6. 6.

    Punch or the London Charivari (hereafter ‘Punch’), 1 August 1846, p. 46.

  7. 7.

    Turner, The Shocking History of Advertising, pp. 98–99.

  8. 8.

    James Dawson Burn, The Language of the Walls: And a Voice from the Shop Windows, or, the Mirror of Commercial Roguery (London, 1855).

  9. 9.

    Betting Act, 1853 (16 and 17 Vict. c. 119), s. 7; 1874 (37 and 38 Vict. c. 15), s. 9; Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act, 1883 (46 and 47 Vict. c. 212), s. 9(2) and 18; Municipal Election (Corrupt and Illegal Practices) Act, 1884 (47 and 48 Vict. c. 70), s. 4, 6 and 14.

  10. 10.

    Charles Dickens, ‘Bill Stickers’, Household Worlds, 22 March 1851, reprinted in The Complete Works of Charles Dickens: Reprinted Pieces, Vol. III (New York, 2009), p. 112.

  11. 11.

    Max Schlesinger, Saunterings In and About London (London, 1853), pp. 40–41.

  12. 12.

    Thomas Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851–1914 (Stanford, 1990), pp. 45–48; see also: Richard Stein, In Victoria’s Year: English Literature and Culture, 1837 (Oxford 1996), pp. 45–46.

  13. 13.

    Saint James’s Chronicle, 5 May 1836, p. 4.

  14. 14.

    From the Chatham News and North Kent Spectator, reproduced in Hertford Mercury and Reformer, 15 December 1860, p. 4.

  15. 15.

    Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (London, 1843), p. 302.

  16. 16.

    Punch, 18 December 1847, p. 240.

  17. 17.

    Sibthorp is also referred to as Sibthorpe. Hansard, House of Commons (HC) 16 June 1851, vol. 117, Column (cc) 790.

  18. 18.

    Morning Post, 15 April 1851, p. 4.

  19. 19.

    Morning Advertiser, 21 April 1851, p. 2.

  20. 20.

    Hansard, HC, 12 June 1851, vol. 117, cc. 771.

  21. 21.

    Quoted in Richard D. Altick. Punch: The Lively Youth of a British Institution, 1841–1851 (Columbus, 1997), p. xix.

  22. 22.

    Punch, 10 May 1851, p. 189 and 28 June 1851, p. 6.

  23. 23.

    Hansard, House of Lords (HL), 9 June 1853, vol. 127, cc. 1296.

  24. 24.

    See, for example: Hansard, HC, 7 August 1862, vol. 168, cc. 1214.

  25. 25.

    London Hackney Carriage Act, 1853 (16 and 17 Vict. ch. 33), s. 16.

  26. 26.

    Public nuisance is a common law offense that covers any act that ‘endangers the life, health, morals or comfort of the public’ or obstructs them ‘in the exercise or enjoyment of rights common to all her Majesty’s subjects’ Archbold’s Criminal Pleading and Practice (London, 1985) quoted in J.R. Spencer, ‘Public NuisanceA Critical Examination’, Cambridge Law Journal 48:1 (1989), pp. 55–84 (p. 55).

  27. 27.

    Rachel Vorspan, ‘Freedom of Assembly and the Right to Passage in Modern English Legal History’, San Diego Law Review 921 (1997), pp. 927–1042.

  28. 28.

    London Streets Act, 1762 (2 Geo. 3. c. 21); 1763 (3 Geo. 3. c. 23); 1764 (4 Geo. 3, c. 39); 1765 (5 Geo. 3, c. 50); and (6 Geo. 3, c. 54) and Larwood, The History of Signboards, pp. 28–29.

  29. 29.

    Metropolitan Paving Act, 1817 (57 Geo. 3. c. 29), s. 75.

  30. 30.

    Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement, 1783–1867 (London, 2014), p. 39.

  31. 31.

    The Towns Improvement Clauses Act, 1847 (10 and 11 Vict. c. 34), s. 69.

  32. 32.

    Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London, 2003); Chris Otter, ‘Making Liberalism Durable: Vision and Civility in the Late Victorian City’, Social History 27:1 (2002), pp. 1–15; Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge, 1999).

  33. 33.

    Paul Slack, The Invention of Improvement: Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 2015), p. 1; Briggs, The Age of Improvement.

  34. 34.

    On Improvement Acts and Commissioners, see: Briggs, The Age of Improvement, p. 39.

  35. 35.

    David Churchill, Crime Control and Everyday Life in the Victorian City: The Police and the Public (Oxford, 2017); Christopher Hamlin, ‘Nuisances and Community in Mid-Victorian England: The Attractions of Inspection’, Social History 38:3 (2013), pp. 346–379.

  36. 36.

    Metropolitan Police Act, 1839 (2 and 3 Vict. c. 47), s. 54 (10); Metropolis Management Amendment Act, 1862 (25 and 26 Vict. c. 102), s. 93.

  37. 37.

    Act for the Good Government and Police Regulation of the Borough of Manchester, 1844 (7 and 8 Vict. c. 40), s. 60, 102 and 282.

  38. 38.

    The Towns Improvement Clauses Act, 1847 (10 and 11 Vict. c. 34), s. 69.

  39. 39.

    Lynda Nead, Victorian Babylon (London, 2000); Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England.

  40. 40.

    Sara Thornton, Advertising, Subjectivity and the Nineteenth-Century Novel Dickens, Balzac and the Language of the Walls (London, 2009), pp. 4–7.

  41. 41.

    The Northern Star, 29 May 1841, p. 12.

  42. 42.

    London Evening Standard, 25 November 1845, p. 4.

  43. 43.

    Bristol Times and Mirror, 17 August 1850, p. 6.

  44. 44.

    Leeds Mercury, 24 September 1857, p. 3.

  45. 45.

    Brighton Gazette, 29 November 1860, p. 6.

  46. 46.

    Wolverhampton Chronicle and Staffordshire Advertiser, 24 November 1858, p. 4.

  47. 47.

    Leicester Chronicle, 11 September 1852, p. 3.

  48. 48.

    Alloa Advertiser, 30 October 1852, p. 3.

  49. 49.

    The Globe, 15 January 1859, p. 3; Morning Chronicle, 17 January 1859, p. 7.

  50. 50.

    Terry Nevett, Advertising in Britain: A History (London, 1982), p. 122.

  51. 51.

    Morning Post, 13 June 1840, p. 7.

  52. 52.

    Ibid.

  53. 53.

    Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, 19 January 1845, p. 4. This is the earliest use this author could find of the specific terminology ‘advertising stations’ clarified here as meaning ‘The front or side walls of houses in commanding situations throughout the metropolis on which boards with painted frames are placed for the reception of placards’.

  54. 54.

    The Morning Advertiser, 1 August 1857, p. 7.

  55. 55.

    The Builder, 30 October 1858, vol. 16. p. 722.

  56. 56.

    London City Mission Magazine, 1 May 1866, vol. 31, p. 99.

  57. 57.

    The poster is reproduced in: Nelson and Sykes, Outdoor Advertising, p. 10.

  58. 58.

    Unknown Author, Tommy Toddless Comic Almenac (sic) (Leeds, 1865), p. 10; Leeds Mercury, various, but see, for example, 18 June 1866, p. 4.

  59. 59.

    Aberdeen Herald and General Advertiser, 31 January 1857, p. 4; Railway News and Joint Stock Journal, 25 February 1871, vol. 15, no. 374, p. 1.

  60. 60.

    See Chapter 5.

  61. 61.

    Yorkshire and Leeds Intelligencer, 20 January 1876, p. 1.

  62. 62.

    Sheldon, History of Poster Advertising, p. 20.

  63. 63.

    Sheldon, History of Poster Advertising, p. 7.

  64. 64.

    Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 5 February 1857, p. 2; Loughborough Monitor, 8 February 1866, p. 4; Bradford Daily Telegraph, 15 November 1866, p. 2 for three of many examples.

  65. 65.

    Sheldon, History of Poster Advertising, p. 11.

  66. 66.

    Richard, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England, passim, but here at p. 21, William Smith, Advertise, How? When? Where? (London, 1863), p. 14.

  67. 67.

    Morning Advertiser, 10 July 1851, p. 1.

  68. 68.

    Rochdale Observer, 13 August 1859, p. 2; Morning Advertiser, 27 October 1859.

  69. 69.

    Lambeth and Southwark Advertiser, 9 July 1859, p. 2.

  70. 70.

    The Era, 30 October 1859, p. 9 and Holborn Journal, 4 November 1859 ran the same column objecting to the proposals and referred to the idea as ‘vandalism’. Also, Lincolnshire Chronicle, 23 December 1859, p. 7 quoting The Times. On the improved offers Marylebone Mercury, 26 November 1859, p. 3 and 21 January 1860, p. 4.

  71. 71.

    Liverpool Mail, 14 April 1860, p. 6, see also Chapter 5.

  72. 72.

    Nead, Victorian Babylon, p. 70.

  73. 73.

    Hansard, HC, 1 August 1859, vol. 155, cc. 838.

  74. 74.

    Lambeth and Southwark Advertiser, 9 July 1859, p. 2.

  75. 75.

    Metropolis Local Management Act, 1855 (18 and 19 Vict. c. 120), s. 122 and 123. Acts outside of London are discussed in Chapter 3 in more detail.

  76. 76.

    Suffolk and Essex Free Press, 21 February 1861, p. 4.

  77. 77.

    H.J. Waymark ‘Advertising’, 1865, quoted by Terry Nevett, Advertising in Britain: A History (London, 1982), p. 119.

  78. 78.

    Wrexham Advertiser, 26 December 1863, p. 6.

  79. 79.

    Teesdale Mercury, 2 November 1864, p. 6.

  80. 80.

    Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England, p. 255.

  81. 81.

    Clerkenwell News, 20 January 1871, p. 1.

  82. 82.

    Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, 5 September 1872, p. 3.

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    James Greenhalgh

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Greenhalgh, J. (2021). Outdoor Advertising and Improvement in the Nineteenth Century. In: Injurious Vistas: The Control of Outdoor Advertising, Governance and the Shaping of Urban Experience in Britain, 1817–1962. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79018-9_2

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