The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1901-02-19
OLD NEWS CARRIERS.

OLD NEWS CARRIERS.
HOW SIXTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND
GOT ITS INFORMATION.
Before Steam, Electricity and News
papers PeddIers and Carriers Were
the Chief Purveyors and Dissent
majors of News.
1t is not easy for people who get their
newspapers delivered with the regularity
of clockwork, who can buy their evening
journals in almost as many editions as a
popular novel and who are continually
repeating the parrot phrase that there is
"nothing in the papers," or who, if they
live far from London, can get either
choice of local papers or receive their ia
vorite London journals not many hours
later than jewellers in town-it is not easy
for such folks Of today to realize how
slow, how casual and haphazard were
the transmission and circulation of news
In the days before steam and electricity
revolutionized the world. In the sixteenth
century, when newspapers were not and
when pamphlets dealt more with mat
tiers of controversy than with current
events. the news of what was happening
In London and that which had gradually
reached the capital from foreign coun-
tries, circulated through the rural dis
tricts of England in very casual, SLOW
fashion.
The chief purveyors and disseminators
of news were the peddlers and carriers.
It is mistake to suppose that 300 years
ago there was little or irregular commu-
nication between the capital and country
towns and villages. The country was
covered with a network Of carriers
routes. Their carts and wagons-great
numbering raachines-traveled with what
would be to us an appalling degree OF
slowness, but they went to and fro with
great regularity. The service might be
merely weekly one in many places or
even monthly on not few routes, but
the carrier went his rounds with very
fair regularity and acted as the universal
newsmonger as we'll as the occasional
letter carrier and the conveyer of goods
! of every possible kind. An act of par
lament of 1884 speaks of ''the poore car
iers repairying weekly and monthely to
your citee of London"
An enterprising man, one John Taylor,
COMPLIED with much difficulty and labor
a kind of carriers directory which was
printed in 1887. A copy lies before the
present writer. 1t Is entitled ''The Car
riers' Cosmography," and the very long
| title page goes on to promise list OF
| inns, etc., where the carriers, Wagon
ers, foot posts and higglers" from al
/ Al -. ynraf fn M
up, with the days of their coming and go
| ing, and much other information. There
were curious differences in the amount Of
! communication by carrier. Thus those
| from Nantwich in Cheshire, Mr.. Taylor
records, were to be found at the Axe II
/ Aldermanbury on Wednesdays, Thurs
days and Fridays, those from Nuneaton
| in Warwickshire, came on Friday, bu
'the carrier for Nottingham doth lodge a
the cross Keys in St. Johns street. HI
/ cometh every second Saturday" Similar
differences existed in the service of othel
provincial towns. But whether he wen
once or twice or thrice week or bu
once or twice month the carrier was tn
chief newsmonger Of the day.
The "higglers" were men in smaller
way of business than the regular carriers
Taylor styles them "demicarriers." TIT
name is seldom heard now, but the hig
gler of days gone by was a man wht
owned a horse and cart and sometimes
carried goods in small way from place
to place, but whose chief occupation wa
the buying of poultry and dairy produce
from farmers and cottagers for carriag'
to town and the selling to his customer
Of small wares brought from the shops
town. The carrier was purveyor of new
to the towns and villages, while the big
gler was newsmonger in ordinary to tn
jewellers off the main roads, to farm
houses and cottages. De Foe In his "Ac
count of the Plague" of "higglers an'
such people as went to and from London
with provisions" says they were also call
ed ''hagglers" and often had no cart. bu
went on horseback, method of traVelini
which was probably resorted to for otne
reasons than poverty. At time whel
the main roads were often in most de
plorable condition the byroads and coun
try lanes were always worse, and ma
going from farm to farm and from ham
let to hamlet could get about much NOR
conveniently and rapidly on horseback
than when hampered with cart.
These higglers on horseback carrie'
their goods in panniers. Fuller, in hi
'sWorthies of England" written abou
the time of the Commonwealth. says
''Dorsers are peds or panniers carrie'
on the backs of the horses, on whic
haglers used to ride and carry their com
modities." An earlier name for thes
most useful itinerant dealers and news
mongers, which was current four and
half centuries ago. was ''cadger.' In
present day offensive meaning of tn
term is an example of the degradatio
which so many once reputable words an
phrases have undergone in the course @
time.
Lower in the scale of newsmonger
than the cadgers or higglers were tn
wandering statesmen who Travelled afoo
Mr.. Hardy, in ''Tess of the d'Urbel
!, yilles," calls them foot higglers. but the
are better known by the familiar term q
peddlers. '"They padded" or "plodde
the hoof," in the old seventeenth centur
phrase, from house to house and cottag
to cottage all over the rural parts of tn
kingdom. Their business was to sell, nc
to buy They sold all sorts of haberdasf
cry, small wares and household goods, RI
sorting to the towns as often as was me-
essary to replenish their stock and ca
ried with their pack the latest news {
what was stirring, not only in the neigi
boring parts of their district, but th
news of the greater world without. whicl
after slowly filtering down from Londo
to small country towns and village
eventually reached the most isolate
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. Globe.