Punch: Punch (33.1857)

August 22, 1857.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 73

ADDING INSULT TO INJURY,

nobbs, having come with his family to the seaside for a little change of scene, complains that they have been
Terribes Bitten by—(But no, we will not mention the Horrid Creatures)—and is Addressed thus by the Lodging-
House Keeper: "Then hall I can say, Sir, his—That, if you've been hill-conwenienced by 'em, you must a' brought

'em down with you in your Portmantel!"

THE CHIEF CASE FOE LOED CAMPBELL'S ACT.

If Lord Campbell's Bill for the abatement of the Holywell Street
nuisance passes, perhaps it will effect the abatement of a similar, but
worse, because more public, nuisance. The nuisance of quack doctors'
advertisements equals, if it does not exceed, the Holywell Street
nuisance in turpitude, and far suipasses it in magnitude. Instead of
being confined to an obscure lane, it is spread over a vast proportion of
the newspaper-press, and thus extended upon parlour and drawing-
room tables. Immediately under the eyes of the female portion of
innumerable respectable families throughout the kingdom, are lying
about advertisements unfit for the perusal of the vilest blackguard.
The evil is most conspicuous and glaring in the country journals.
Most of those London papers that admit these execrable puffs
thrust them into a corner—the Holywell Street department of the
paper—but our provincial contemporaries, in many instances, parade
them in large type, in the most conspicuous part of their columns;
perhaps in juxtaposition with the announcement of a missionary
meeting.

In many a newspaper, metropolitan as well as local, you find a
religious leading article on one page, and a series of these revolting
advertisements on another. We have only described one-half of the
evil of these nuisances. Not only do they rival, if not beat, the
Holywell Street nuisances in demoralising tendency; they are also
infamous as contrivances for purposes of fraud and extortion. They
are put forth by scoundrels, who pretend to be surgeons, with the
object of swindling weak and ignorant people. The dupes, for whose
deception they are intended, are nervous patients, who, conscious of
having committed some immoralities in the course of their lives, are
easily persuaded that their ailments are owing to those errors,
induced to confide their cases to the advertising quack, they are dosed
with sham-specifics for imaginary complaints, and charged exorbitant
fee«, amounting in many instances to hundreds of pounds, which if

they refuse to pay, the quack threatens a public action, and consequent
disclosure of their confessions. The Lancet has done good service by
directing attention to a case in point. Surely those newspapers that
lend their columns to the lying professions of these rascals will be
comprised in the class of publications threatened by Lord Campbell's
Bill. Even as it is, are they not open to indictment by the Society for
the Suppression of Vice ? That Society, however, confines its efforts
to the Suppression of Yice in the slums, and makes no attempt to
exclude it from family circles. Virtue lives in a pig-stye, and complains
of a remote cow-house.

Whilst the advertising quacks remain at large, it may be as well to
mention some of the peculiarities by which they may be personally
recognised. Many of them drive about Town in remarkable equipages.
They wear extraordinary and conspicuous beards and moustaches.
Their names are mostly assumed; almost every one of them has an
alias. We grieve to state also—because the circumstance we are
about to mention is one that tends to maintain an unworthy prejudice
against a particular class of our fellow subjects—that very many of
them are distinguished by the same peculiar features as those which
denote Sheriffs' Officers and Old Clothesmen.

When Lord Campbell's measure shall have passed, we shall make a
tour of prisons, in the hope of having the pleasure of seeing at least one
of these fellows actively employed for the first time in his life, perhaps,
unless he has been similarly employed already for buying stolen goods,
either in grinding vigorously at the crank, or tripping it nimbly on the
treadmill.

The Common Objects of the Sea-Shore."

" Why publish a book under such a title ? " writes a bilious Bams-
gate correspondent, "as if everybody didn't know the commonest
objects of the sea-shore to be clumsy feet, in buff slippers, and pretty
faces in round hats."

Vol. 33.

3—2