In the name of clearing out my "to post" backlog I thought I'd do a quick post about a talk we attended at Eastercon on the Illustrated Police News (its relevance to Eastercon is somewhat beyond me, but that is often the case with Eastercon talks, panels and activities). It was given by Linda Stratmann and based on her book Cruel Deeds and Dreadful Calamities: the Illustrated Police News 1864-1938 an illustrated history of the notorious newspaper, (British Library, March 2011). We are vaguely considering purchasing this as Christmas presents for misc relatives.

Linda gave an interesting overview of the nature of the publication, its interests and peculiarities and various recurring themes and motifs but the real stars were the illustrations themselves. I'm particularly fond of the captions! Anyway below the cut are some culled from Google's image search.













Sadly I couldn't find the truly splendid one of a female cuban revolutionary in the middle of a jailbreak, busting elegantly out of her corsets, legs braced apart, firing a gun with one hand and waving a flag with the other...