Not long ago, I had the opp­or­tun­ity to look through a set of bound volumes con­tain­ing an incom­plete set of the Ill­ust­rated Police News from the 1870s and 1880s. This not­or­ious pub­lic­at­ion speci­al­ised in grisly murd­ers and mac­abre acc­i­dents, de­scribed with lurid and graphic ill­ust­rations. When the crime rate dipped, the Ill­ust­rated Police News had a scarc­ity of top­ical matter, which the editor remed­ied by repro­duc­ing tales from the old New­gate Cal­en­dar, art­icles on un­solved myst­er­ies of crime, and curi­ous news­paper stor­ies from all over the world.

Loosely in­serted in the issue for 7 Jan­u­ary 1882, I was sur­prised to en­count­er a fine col­oured print of an old fav­our­ite of mine: the Pig-faced Lady of Man­chester Square.