improved off the face of the earth a quarter of a century ago; and now the only perambulating advertisement we have is the melancholy sandwich-man and the dispenser of handbills, gentlemen who sometimes “double their parts,” to use a theatrical expression. To a playhouse manager we owe the biggest thing in street and general advertising—that in connection with the “Dead Heart”—that has yet been recorded. Mr Smith, who had charge of this department of the Adelphi, has published a statement which gives the totals as follows:—10,000,000 adhesive labels (which, by the way, were an intolerable nuisance), 30,000 small cuts of the guillotine scene, 5000 reams of note-paper, 110,000 business envelopes, 60,000 stamped envelopes, 2000 six-sheet cuts of Bastile scene, 5,000,000 handbills, 1000 six-sheet posters, 500 slips, 1,000,000 cards heartshaped, 100 twenty-eight sheet posters, and 20,000 folio cards for shop windows. This was quite exclusive of newspaper wrappers and various other ingenious means of attracting attention to the play throughout the United Kingdom.
Among other forms of advertising, that on the copper coinage must not be forgotten. The extensive defacement of the pence and halfpence of the realm in the interests of a well-known weekly paper ultimately led to the interference of Parliament, and may fairly be regarded as the cause, or at all events as one of the principal causes, of the sum of £10,000 being voted in July 1855 for the replacement of the old, worn, battered, and mixed coppers by our present bronze coinage.
And now, having given a hurried and summarised glance at the growth and progress of advertising of all kinds and descriptions, from the earliest periods till the present time, we will begin at the beginning, and tell the story with all its ramifications, mainly according to those best possible authorities, the advertisements themselves.