ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604150124
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: CONNIE CASS ASSOCIATED PRESS
note: below
300 YEARS AGO, what made it into print was just as horrific as what makes headlines today, a new exhibit proves.
Weary of the dreary drumbeat of modern horrors that fills the news? Hark back to a typical headline from a nobler age, three centuries ago: ``Hellish Murder Committed by a French Midwife on the Body of Her Husband.''
Or how about, ``Robbery and Murder Committed by Five Notorious High-waymen,'' an account from 1674. Or a description of three arsonists and their ``Devilish Attempt to Fire the Town of Barnet.''
When they scoured their rare books and papers for news from 17th-century London, the folk at the Folger Shakespeare Library found much of what makes news today made news then, too.
The Folger, located one block from the U.S. Capitol, will display the ancestors of modern papers and TV newscasts in its oak-paneled Great Hall through Aug. 31.
To really experience ``Yesterday's News,'' one has to read the fine print, odd spellings and all.
Accounts of fires, floods and earthquakes are set down in florid style. There are detailed descriptions of highway bandits and horse thieves, the carjackers of their day. Condemned criminals were done in by hanging instead of lethal injection, but their final words are recorded just the same.
Even the reactions of neighbors, stunned to learn of a murderer within their midst, sound eerily familiar.
``Neighbors are quoted as saying the perpetrator was a godly man who kept to himself,'' said LuEllen DeHaven, a curator.
There were no Menendez brothers, but Londoners read about Enoch Evans, ``who cut off his owne naturall Mother's Head, and his Brothers.''
They didn't have Lorena Bobbitt, but they did have the notorious French midwife, Mary Hobry. She strangled her husband in his sleep, chopped him into pieces, and scattered body parts across their neighborhood.
The story is illustrated with a woodcut of Hobry, poised to saw off her husband's remaining leg. Nearby, a child holds up the poor man's decapitated head by the hair.
The exhibit includes the era's popular newsbooks, small pamphlets of four to 40 pages, each devoted to one story. Broadsides - large single sheets of news - were posted in public places. Some stories were written as ballads or poems.
Much of it would be tabloid fare today: ghosts, strange maladies, Siamese twins, a baby born talking, a dead woman revived. Instead of UFOs, Londoners were prone to see floating ships or fighting armies in the skies.
Not surprisingly, credibility was an issue. A reporter who wrote about an old woman with horns growing out of her head gave the horned woman's name and address, so readers could verify it for themselves.
In the 1600s, at least, journalists had an excuse for playing up the lurid and sensational at the expense of dry civic news: They were licensed and prohibited, on penalty of death, from printing government news other than official proclamations.
About the only things left were crime and calamity, and news from abroad: royal births and weddings, naval battles and volcanic eruptions as far away as the Persian Gulf, the East Indies and Constantinople.
Censorship began to crumble during the English civil wars, beginning in 1642, amid the chaos of power struggles between the monarchy and Parliament.
That cleared the way for a flood of publications to satisfy the public's appetite for war news and political events, often printed overnight.
Newspapers much like those of today, complete with advertising, emerged by the second half of the century.
LENGTH: Medium: 72 linesby CNB