Reading newspapers from the nineteenth century is often enlightening, both in the nature of ‘news’ that is reported and in revealing just how much (or perhaps how little) society has changed since the 1800s.

In March 1894 the sitting magistrate at Marylebone Police court listened to a case brought against three men and a woman for ‘wilfully obstructing’ the highway. Obstruction was a fairly common offence to come before this level of court and generally resulted in a fine or a warning. Fines might rise with repeat offending. Prosecutions were usually brought by policemen who patrolled the capital’s streets, and so encountered such obstacles, or by shop keepers and other businessmen whose premises were affected.

Obstructions came in a variety of forms – costermongers trading in the streets, Salvation Army bands ‘performing’ a selection of their cacophonous repertoire, sandwich board men, and street entertainers. In this instance it was the latter that caused a police constable to summon William Cooper, Elizabeth Mills, George Pickles, and Edward Baker for blocking the pavement outside two empty shops on the Edgware Road.

In fact the shops weren’t empty at all, they just weren’t trading as retail outlets. Instead they housed a pop up waxwork exhibition, which Mrs Mills insisted was as respectable as Madame Tussauds. The courts heard that visitors – enticed inside by Edward Baker’s cries of “walk up, walk up!” – paying customers were treated to such exciting ‘novelties’ as a ‘fat woman’ and ‘a midget’.

We would use more careful language of course, and such an ‘entertainment’ would not be considered appropriate on a London street in 2024. But this was Victorian England and ‘freak shows’ and waxworks (including those depicting Jack the Ripper’s victims in 1888) were commonplace.

The nature of the ‘show’, while maybe not to the taste of Mr Plowden the sitting magistrate, was not the problem: the problem was the obstruction and related disruption.

One witness, a local bank clerk, complained about the noise from the organ that played constantly in the exhibition. The courts was told that as many as 120 people could be gathered inside and outside the shops, and that the quartet had been warned on more than one occasion for blocking the safe passage of the street.

Mr Plowden quickly dismissed Pickles and Cooper (the ‘midget’ and ‘fat woman’), and focused his ire on Baker and Mrs Mills. The streets, he declared, were for ‘the free use of the public’ and many had now ‘outlived [their] taste for fat women, curiosities, and midgets’ adding that these shows were simly ‘an unmitigated nuisance and annoyance’. He fined the pair 20s each plus costs, and threatened to increase that if they came before him again’.

We might blanche at the language used, or that some of our predecessors must have enjoyed gawping at ‘fat women’ or ‘midgets’ but are we really so different? Just a casual flick though our tabloids press or social media might suggest otherwise.

The Standard, Monday, 26 March, 1894.

My new book, Nether World:Crime and the Courts in Victorian London (Reaktion Books, April 2024) is out next week priced £16.99. If you enjoy these blogs you should like the book.