EXTRACTS: Illustrators Crime Comics Special © 2020 Book Palace Books (144 pages in full edition)

6 the ‘Jack the Ripper Murders’, the ghastly succession of bloodied and eviscerated corpses kept the writers and artists of The Illustrated Police News busy as they worked pedal-to-the-metal to keep pace with the unfolding events. As the twentieth century unfolded, and with rising rates of literacy, the opportunity to provide a more literary form of entertainment, aimed at RIGHT & FACING PAGE: In 1886 The Illustrated Police News was awarded the title ‘England’s Worst Newspaper’ by the genteel readers of The Pall Mall Gazette. The publisher, George Purkess was relatively sanguine about the dubious merits of this accolade. He could afford to be, with sales achieving an average of between 150,000 to 200.000 a week and, in the case of particularly sensational crimes, up to 600,000. His emphasis on illustrated covers as a means of attracting reader’s attention was exceptional amongst newspapers. Columns of stultifying text were jettisoned in favour of lurid imagery . Staff artists would be dispatched to the crime scene before the blood had dried, and teams of engravers would translate the illustrator’s pencil drawings into doom-laden tableaux in which criminals, victims, onlookers and the agents of law and order would strike attitudes of theatrical horror, eyes rolling and arms akimbo. The newspaper achieved an impressive run finally ceasing publication in 1938.