The Bee-Hive. — 1876-01-01 (London, England)

THE COMMERCIAL VALUE OF MURDER.  _ Those who peruse our newspapers for the purpose of deriving pleasure from the horrors they contain, have been having what may be called a ieal treat during the last month of the year just expired. It is a long time since anything so good as the Wainwright trial and execution has been offered to the public, and it must be said that with their usual enterprise the managers of our leading papers have made the most of these exciting exhibitions. In fact, there has been during this period an unusual crop of interesting brutalities, and if they have not been greatly plished in all their details the Press of the country is not to be blamed. We are quite willing to allow that it would not be right if our newspapers suppressed such atrocities as the Wainwright murder and mutilation, or that they absolutely drew a veil over the trial and execution. What the life of the world is, that we think the newspapers ought to make known; but, we ask, is all the minuteness of detail we have had in this case necessary? If it was necessary the Times, the Daily News, the Telegraph, the Standard, as well as the small fry of our journals, should serve up in their columns every delectable morsel of nastiness, every disgusting incident, every appalling horror that could be rooted out or scraped up in connection with this humiliating and debasing atrocity, then they have done their duty well.  But who, we ask, can calculate the mischief that has been done in Great Britain, the moral damage sustained by the population in consequence of the copious deluge of revolting and sickening rascality let loose upon the people, young and old, of both sexes, by our " respectable " newspapers? And when we add to this the way in which the arch villian has been spoken of, his every ,look and action described, as if he had been an unfortunate hero rather than an atrocious murderer, are we to be astonished if certain ignorant ruffians should take sides with the defeated hero, and persecute and punish those who assisted in hunting him down?  Decent people cry out against the Dick Turpin and Jenny Diver class of publications, and declare that they are most injurious to youthful and ignorant readers who cannot see clearly the difference between right and wrong, and who are led to glory in violations of law and to sympathise with vice by reading such abominable publications as those referred to. We have no hesitation in saying, however, that the publication of the Wainwright mystery and all connected with it in the leading London papers did more injury to the morals of the nation in one day, than the ordinary issue of the vile trash alluded to would do in a quarter of a ceutury. Those who talk against the weekly penny issues of our Newgato literature, and who shut their eyes on the London daily papers, whilst straining at the gnat do in downright verity, swallow a most filthy camel.  Why had all the daily papers special reporters at the execution of this guilty wretch more than at that of any other inhuman brute? How can the public be legitimately interested in the appearance of the beam from which he was hanged, or the rope by which he was suspended? The press for good or evil is in reality a mighty power, but is it not truly an abuse of its power and influence, of a very gross kind, when its representatives press and squeeze, note-book and pencil in hand, into the Nowgate shambles, that the papers they represent may fill their columns with the revolting details of the hangman's work.  That this sort of thing pays we have no doubt. The perpetration of such a crime as that of Wainwright is, or ought to be, a humiliating and saddening fact to the general community, but it is a welcome and profitable affair to the newspapers, and probably the next best thing to keeping a special murderer, as special reporters are kept, a real Press villain, who could with his associates do about a murder a month, is to hunt the details well up when such an event falls in in the ordinary way, and present them as minutely and under as many forms as possible to